John T. Haller's blog

Greetings Portable-Appers,

I wanted to take a moment to update you all on the possible impact of hurricane Sandy on PortableApps.com. Firstly, our servers for our website and downloads are located outside of the affected areas, so we've got nothing to worry about there. One of our US mirrors for downloads of open source software hosted by SourceForge may be affected, but the system will automatically fail over to the other dozen plus mirrors, so users will likely not even notice. You can continue downloading the platform and apps and using the website.

Dear PortableApps.com User,

Today, just after the new 11.0 release of our platform and the start of work on 12.0, I am going to ask you to support PortableApps.com with a donation. Why, you might ask, would a a popular software platform like ours need donations? Read on to find out the full story and to help PortableApps.com free and growing for years to come...

For those who don't know, the 2+ year old Firefox 3.6.x release is officially discontinued and unsupported. It will receive no more security updates or bug fixes. All users on 3.6 should upgrade to the current Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition 12.0 immediately to ensure they are running a secure and stable browser going forward.

We've got a new test build of the PortableApps.com Installer for everyone to test. It's got a brand new look and a ton of new features including improved online installer support, improved Windows 7 taskbar integration, 2TB+ drive support, better error handling, run on finish, and more. We'd like to get a few folks testing it out so we can release it as soon as possible. You can test it out and report your findings in the PortableApps.com Installer 3.0 Pre-Release 1 (and Google Chrome Portable installer) forum post.

We're in the process of updating the PortableApps.com Installer and Format to bring in a few bug fixes (2TB+ drive issues when used with the platform), features (automated/integrated file associations), and a new set of branding to modernize the look.

Earlier today, a 'possible malware' warning appeared about PortableApps.com within Norton 360, Mozilla Firefox, within Google search results and similar products. This was due to an attempted hack on PortableApps.com via a Drupal exploit Plesk exploit. No PortableApps.com portable apps, databases, logins, user data, project data or security credentials were compromised. A full security audit was undertaken in the hours after the attempt to ensure nothing else was affected (it wasn't) and additional security measures were implemented to ensure everything keeps on working. The full details follow...

We're just posting a quick status update to keep everyone in the loop. The content delivery network came online as expected on June 2nd and server performance is much-improved as are page load times for both logged-in and guest users. We've been doing a ton of app updates over the past few weeks to keep things humming along, including the new Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition 6.0 Beta 1 release. We even have a nice new app, Instantbird Portable 1.0, for everyone to use. Hosting costs are still rising with our increasing popularity so we've secured another bridge loan until our next big release. Donations are always appreciated to help out with everything.

July 6th Update: The next status update will be posted later this week!

It's time for a (bit belated) update on the goings-on of PortableApps.com and the Road to 2.0. We've got the translations in for the new app directory included with the 2.0 platform, some additional theme/chrome options, details on the site availability issues we've been experiencing, an update on finances and when drives will be available and some more 2.0 screenshots. So, let's get to it...