Joomla! Update Emails

[samhnky]

I hope I'm submitting this in the correct area as this is my first suggestion to Joomla! (either in a very long time or ever, not sure).

Most Joomla! site managers know the struggle (especially from Joomla! 1.x and 2.5 days) of keeping hackers/bots out of your site/server. As a result many of us rely on modifying the way to access the Administration area by using an extension that requires a URL "KEY" to even grant access to the Administrator Login page (i.e. www.mydomain.com/administrator?MySuperSecretKey) if the key is used then the login page is displayed and if it is not used then the browser either displays a 404 not found or redirects to the home page.

I'm currently managing around 10ish Joomla! websites and I have all of the setups with a KEY to access the administration login page; however, when my Joomla! installs are notified by joomla.org of a new update to the core Joomla! the system, they send me an email to update them and provide an administration update link that I can click to go straight to the page in the admin area; however, because I use the URL KEY the link in the email I receive does not work. My sites are all configured to redirect to the home page, so when I click on the update link in the email I just get redirected to the home page of the site that needs to be updated.

So my RfC/suggestion would be for 1 of the following options.

• (My guess would be that this one would be the easiest implement with the quickest results too) Simply add a field in the Joomla! Update component that asks for the URL Key (if any) you have configured in your site, and if we add something to that field then Joomla appends that to the URL when sending those update emails. (It could also just ask for the site manager to input the full URL to their site administration, and then it append to the URL what is needed to directly link to the Joomla! Update component.)
• (This one would, my guess, be harder to implement and take longer to see results from; however, I do believe it would make for a more seamless setup once the extension developers joined in.) Ad an API/Hook (Sorry I'm not a programmer so not sure if I'm using this correctly) into the system where developers of extensions that modify the Administration link by using URL KEYs, or folder rename processes could simply pass the modification they made to the core Joomla! update component and there by automatically update the email sent out when a Joomla! update has been released.