![\"\"](\"http://s.wordpress.org/screenshots/2.5/stats-widget.png\")
WordCamps are my favorite events to go to because there’s something about the core WordPress community that attracts smart folks with good philosophies that are fun to hang out with. In this post I’ve collated the upcoming WordCamps we know about, including the one in San Francisco. Hopefully there will be one nearby so you can meet other WordPressers in your area.
\nWordCamp San Francisco will be August 16 at the Mission Bay Conference Center.
\nWordCamp Paris will be on May 3rd. Here’s their official site.
\nWordCamp Italy in Milan will be May 10th. (And I believe I’ll be there.)
\nWordCamp Birmingham UK will be July 19-20.
\nWordCamp Toronto will be October 4th.
\nThere are people in the planning stages in Australia, Philippines, Beijing, Utah, Hawaii, UK, NYC, and possibly others, so if you live in one of those areas and would like to help set up a WordCamp in your area Google around or connect with bloggers in your area.
\nYou can always find out more at WordCamp Central.
\n\";}s:3:\"wfw\";a:1:{s:10:\"commentrss\";s:65:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2008/04/upcoming-wordcamps/feed/\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:343:\"WordCamps are my favorite events to go to because there’s something about the core WordPress community that attracts smart folks with good philosophies that are fun to hang out with. In this post I’ve collated the upcoming WordCamps we know about, including the one in San Francisco. Hopefully there will be one nearby so you [...]\";s:12:\"atom_content\";s:1446:\"WordCamps are my favorite events to go to because there’s something about the core WordPress community that attracts smart folks with good philosophies that are fun to hang out with. In this post I’ve collated the upcoming WordCamps we know about, including the one in San Francisco. Hopefully there will be one nearby so you can meet other WordPressers in your area.
\nWordCamp San Francisco will be August 16 at the Mission Bay Conference Center.
\nWordCamp Paris will be on May 3rd. Here’s their official site.
\nWordCamp Italy in Milan will be May 10th. (And I believe I’ll be there.)
\nWordCamp Birmingham UK will be July 19-20.
\nWordCamp Toronto will be October 4th.
\nThere are people in the planning stages in Australia, Philippines, Beijing, Utah, Hawaii, UK, NYC, and possibly others, so if you live in one of those areas and would like to help set up a WordCamp in your area Google around or connect with bloggers in your area.
\nYou can always find out more at WordCamp Central.
\n\";}i:1;a:12:{s:5:\"title\";s:15:\"WordPress 2.5.1\";s:4:\"link\";s:55:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2008/04/wordpress-251/\";s:8:\"comments\";s:64:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2008/04/wordpress-251/#comments\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:54:19 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:4:\"Ryan\";}s:8:\"category\";s:8:\"Releases\";s:4:\"guid\";s:39:\"http://wordpress.org/development/?p=231\";s:11:\"description\";s:360:\"Version 2.5.1 of WordPress is now available. It includes a number of bug fixes, performance enhancements, and one very important security fix. We recommend everyone update immediately, particularly if your blog has open registration. The vulnerability is not public but it will be shortly.\nIn addition to the security fix, 2.5.1 contains many bug fixes. [...]\";s:7:\"content\";a:1:{s:7:\"encoded\";s:2251:\"Version 2.5.1 of WordPress is now available. It includes a number of bug fixes, performance enhancements, and one very important security fix. We recommend everyone update immediately, particularly if your blog has open registration. The vulnerability is not public but it will be shortly.
\nIn addition to the security fix, 2.5.1 contains many bug fixes. If you are interested only in the security fixes, you can download these corrected copies of wp-includes/pluggable.php, wp-admin/includes/media.php, and wp-admin/media.php. Replace your existing copies of these files with these new copies.
\nIf you download the entire 2.5.1 release, you will be getting over 70 other fixes. 2.5.1 focuses on fixing the most annoying bugs and improving performance. Here are some highlights:
\nSince 2.5 your wp-config.php file allows a new constant called SECRET_KEY which basically is meant to introduce a little permanent randomness into the cryptographic functions used for cookies in WordPress. You can visit this link we set up to get a unique secret key for your config file. (It’s unique and random on every page load.) Having this line in your config file helps secure your blog.
Many thanks to Steven Murdoch for responsibly reporting the security issue (CVE-2008-1930) and Alex Concha for reporting an XSS issue.
\n\";}s:3:\"wfw\";a:1:{s:10:\"commentrss\";s:60:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2008/04/wordpress-251/feed/\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:360:\"Version 2.5.1 of WordPress is now available. It includes a number of bug fixes, performance enhancements, and one very important security fix. We recommend everyone update immediately, particularly if your blog has open registration. The vulnerability is not public but it will be shortly.\nIn addition to the security fix, 2.5.1 contains many bug fixes. [...]\";s:12:\"atom_content\";s:2251:\"Version 2.5.1 of WordPress is now available. It includes a number of bug fixes, performance enhancements, and one very important security fix. We recommend everyone update immediately, particularly if your blog has open registration. The vulnerability is not public but it will be shortly.
\nIn addition to the security fix, 2.5.1 contains many bug fixes. If you are interested only in the security fixes, you can download these corrected copies of wp-includes/pluggable.php, wp-admin/includes/media.php, and wp-admin/media.php. Replace your existing copies of these files with these new copies.
\nIf you download the entire 2.5.1 release, you will be getting over 70 other fixes. 2.5.1 focuses on fixing the most annoying bugs and improving performance. Here are some highlights:
\nSince 2.5 your wp-config.php file allows a new constant called SECRET_KEY which basically is meant to introduce a little permanent randomness into the cryptographic functions used for cookies in WordPress. You can visit this link we set up to get a unique secret key for your config file. (It’s unique and random on every page load.) Having this line in your config file helps secure your blog.
Many thanks to Steven Murdoch for responsibly reporting the security issue (CVE-2008-1930) and Alex Concha for reporting an XSS issue.
\n\";}i:2;a:12:{s:5:\"title\";s:23:\"An Event Apart Discount\";s:4:\"link\";s:65:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2008/04/an-event-apart-discount/\";s:8:\"comments\";s:74:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2008/04/an-event-apart-discount/#comments\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Tue, 22 Apr 2008 22:33:19 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:4:\"Matt\";}s:8:\"category\";s:36:\"Eventsan event aparthappy cogzeldman\";s:4:\"guid\";s:65:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2008/04/an-event-apart-discount/\";s:11:\"description\";s:321:\"An Event Apart is a web design and development conference which features some of the same fine folks who helped out with WordPress 2.5. (And many others.) I attended the one in Chicago a while back and was engaged the whole day in interesting talks on design, writing copy as interface, advanced CSS, and creativity [...]\";s:7:\"content\";a:1:{s:7:\"encoded\";s:1194:\"An Event Apart is a web design and development conference which features some of the same fine folks who helped out with WordPress 2.5. (And many others.) I attended the one in Chicago a while back and was engaged the whole day in interesting talks on design, writing copy as interface, advanced CSS, and creativity — each topic presented by the leading folks in the field.
\nThe conference normally costs just under a thousand dollars to attend, which is well worth it, but because of our association with the folks they’ve set up a discount for WordPress users.
\nIf you enter AEAWP on checkout the price drops to $795, or $200 below the regular registration fee. The coupon is unlimited, and can be used for one ticket or five. They have events coming up in New Orleans, Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago. You can learn more and register on their site at aneventapart.com.
\nWe’ll also have some final dates for WordCamp San Francisco coming up, I’ll be posting those soonish so people can start making vacation and travel plans. (Nothing like a blogging vacation.)
\n\";}s:3:\"wfw\";a:1:{s:10:\"commentrss\";s:70:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2008/04/an-event-apart-discount/feed/\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:321:\"An Event Apart is a web design and development conference which features some of the same fine folks who helped out with WordPress 2.5. (And many others.) I attended the one in Chicago a while back and was engaged the whole day in interesting talks on design, writing copy as interface, advanced CSS, and creativity [...]\";s:12:\"atom_content\";s:1194:\"An Event Apart is a web design and development conference which features some of the same fine folks who helped out with WordPress 2.5. (And many others.) I attended the one in Chicago a while back and was engaged the whole day in interesting talks on design, writing copy as interface, advanced CSS, and creativity — each topic presented by the leading folks in the field.
\nThe conference normally costs just under a thousand dollars to attend, which is well worth it, but because of our association with the folks they’ve set up a discount for WordPress users.
\nIf you enter AEAWP on checkout the price drops to $795, or $200 below the regular registration fee. The coupon is unlimited, and can be used for one ticket or five. They have events coming up in New Orleans, Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago. You can learn more and register on their site at aneventapart.com.
\nWe’ll also have some final dates for WordCamp San Francisco coming up, I’ll be posting those soonish so people can start making vacation and travel plans. (Nothing like a blogging vacation.)
\n\";}i:3;a:12:{s:5:\"title\";s:13:\"WordPress 2.5\";s:4:\"link\";s:62:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2008/03/wordpress-25-brecker/\";s:8:\"comments\";s:71:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2008/03/wordpress-25-brecker/#comments\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Sat, 29 Mar 2008 16:49:45 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:4:\"Matt\";}s:8:\"category\";s:8:\"Releases\";s:4:\"guid\";s:39:\"http://wordpress.org/development/?p=228\";s:11:\"description\";s:391:\"WordPress 2.5, the culmination of six months of work by the WordPress community, people just like you. The improvements in 2.5 are numerous, and almost entirely a result of your feedback: multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, [...]\";s:7:\"content\";a:1:{s:7:\"encoded\";s:15112:\"WordPress 2.5, the culmination of six months of work by the WordPress community, people just like you. The improvements in 2.5 are numerous, and almost entirely a result of your feedback: multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages.
\nFor a short overview of the features with screenshots, it’d be best to visit our sneak peek announcement for RC1. Or check out a 4-minute screencast of the new interface in action. If you just want to jump straight to the good stuff here’s where you can find 2.5 upgrade and download information.
\nIf you want to see everything I would grab a cup of coffee or a mojito, because this post is epic.
\nCleaner, faster, less cluttered dashboard — we’ve worked hard to take your feedback about what’s most important in the dashboard and organize things to allow you to focus on what’s important — your blog — and get out of your way. In collaboration with Happy Cog and the community we’ve taken the first major step forward in the WordPress interface since version 1.5.
\nDashboard Widgets — the dashboard home page is now a series of widgets, including ones to show you fun stats about your posting, latest comments, people linking to you, new and popular plugins, and of course WordPress news. You can customize any of the dashboard widgets to show, for example, news from your local paper instead of WP news. Plugins can also hook in, for example the WordPress.com stats widget adds a handy double-wide stats box.
\n
Multi-file upload with progress bar — before when you would upload a large file you’d wait forever, never knowing how far along it was. And uploading more than one photo was an exercise in patience, as you could only do one at a time. Now you can select a whole of folder images or music or videos at once and it’ll show you the progress of each upload.
\nBonus: EXIF extraction — if you upload JPEG files with EXIF metadata like camera make and model, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, et al. WordPress will extract all the data into custom fields you can use in your template. If you use the EXIF title fields or similar those will be put into their equivalent fields in WP. Most modern digital cameras generate EXIF data.
\nSearch posts and pages — search used to cover just posts, now it includes pages too, a great boon for those using WordPress as a CMS. New themes can style or sort pages differently in results.
\nTag management — you can now add, rename, delete, and do whatever else you like to tags from inside WordPress, no plugins needed.
\nPassword strength meter — when you change your password on your profile it’ll tell you how strong your password is to help you pick a good one.
\nConcurrent editing protection — for those of you on multi-author blogs, have you ever opened a post while someone was already editing it, and your auto-saves kept overwriting each other, irrecoverably losing hours of work? I bet that added a few words to your vocabulary. Now if you open a post that someone else is editing, WordPress magically locks it and prevents you from saving until the other person is done. You’ll see a message like below.
\n![\"\"](\"http://s.wordpress.org/screenshots/2.5/write-currently-editing.png\")
Few-click plugin upgrades — if the plugins you use are part of the plugin directory since 2.3 we’ve told you when they have an update available. Now we take that to the next logical step — downloading and installing the upgrade for you. This is dependent a little bit on your host setup, and it may ask you for your FTP password much like OS X or Windows will ask you for a password, but it works well on majority of hosts we were able to test, your mileage may very, plugins in mirror may be larger than they appear.
\nFriendlier visual post editor — I’m not sure how to articulate this improvement except to say “it doesn’t mess with your code anymore.” We’re now using version 3.0 of TinyMCE, which means better compatibility with Safari, and we’ve paid particular attention this release to its integration and interaction with complex HTML. It also now has a “no-distractions” mode which is like Writeroom for your browser.
\nBuilt-in galleries — when you take advantage of multi-file upload to upload a bunch of photos, we have a new shortcode that lets you to easily embed galleries by just putting [ gallery] (without the space) in your post. It’ll display all your thumbnails and captions and each will link each to a page where people can comment on the individual photos. I’ve been using this feature on my blog and have already uploaded over 1,200 pictures into 23 galleries. The shortcode has some hidden options too, check out this documentation.
\nNow for the geeky stuff. While we’re excited about the above features, each one represents a new opportunity or API for other developers to take to another level. (The best of which we’ll someday integrate back into WP.)
\nSalted passwords — we now use the phpass library to stretch and salt all passwords stored in the database, which makes brute-forcing them impractical. If you use something like mod_auth_mysql we’ve created a plugin that will allow you to use legacy MD5 hashing. (The hashing is completely pluggable.) Users will automatically switch to the more secure passwords next time they log in.
\nSecure cookies — cookies are now encrypted based on the protocol described in this PDF paper. which is something like user name|expiration time|HMAC( user name|expiration time, k) where k = HMAC(user name|expiration time, sk) and where sk is a secret key, which you can define in your config.
Easy taxonomy and URL creation — probably best illustrated with an example: I can call register_taxonomy() with a few arguments to register a “people” taxonomy and whenever I edit an image I’ll see a UI like tags has for identifying the people in a photo, and these will be URL addressable with /person/firstname-lastname/. All with a single function call.
Inline documentation — the vast majority of the new code going into WordPress include inline documentation that explains the functions and documents their arguments.
\nDatabase optimization — we haven’t changed the table layout in this release, which is one of the reasons so many plugins work fine with 2.5. We have added a few new indicies and made a few default fields more flexible based on some bottlenecks we found on WordPress.com, which now hosts 2.7 million WordPress blogs. It should be invisible to the application, just a bit faster on the database side.
\n$wpdb->prepare() — now almost all of the SQL in WordPress is prepared first, and the same functions are available to your plugins. This should prevent elementary SQL escaping issues.
\nMedia buttons — the add media buttons above the post are both expandable, so you could have an “Add Google Map” button if you like, They can be overridden, so if you think you can do the video or audio tab better than we have you can replace the default.
\nShortcode API — the new gallery functionality is powered by the new shortcode API. Shortcodes are little bracket-delineated strings that can be magically expanded at runtime to something more interesting. They give users a short, easy to type and copy/paste string they can move around their post without worrying about messing up complex HTML or embed codes. The Shortcode API is fully documented.
\nNow you see why 2.5 took a little extra time. 
2.5 does include security fixes so it is recommended for all users, the 2.3 branch will no longer be updated. The upgrade instructions for this version are pretty much the same as any other version. The most important thing to check is your plugins, so if for example everything works except the new uploader, a legacy plugin might be causing a javascript error on the page and breaking it. If something goes wrong, the safest thing to do is turn your plugins off (we have a button to do them all at once, now) and turn them back on one-by-one, testing the problem along the way. This has solved almost everybody’s problems in testing, and it also lets you know which plugin author to show some love to so they’ll update their plugin, and which plugin authors already have so you can shower them with praises on your blog.
\nOne brief note about some of the new upload and plugin upgrade features, there are some edge-case hosting platforms, like versions of Lighttpd before 1.5 or over-agressive mod_security rules, which can break. If something isn’t working like it was looked in the screenshot, ask your host if there’s something on the server side which may be interfering. Hosts, feel free to join and post to our wp-testers mailing list if you have an environment that requires some extra code to work around. We’d be happy to include it in the next update.
\nQuick tip: in 2.5 you click the name of things to edit them, like your username to edit your profile or the title of a post to edit it.
\nMore than growing, it’s on fire. We always talk about things like downloads, and the 2.3 branch has already had 1.92 million downloads as I write this post, but this time we have some far more interesting information I’d like to share.
\nThere were over 1,200 commits to our repository since 2.3.0 and over 90 people were credited in them. This means in our core code, not plugins, there were at least 90 individual folks that contributed something high-quality enough that it made the cut to be part of the download you guys get today. I had no idea this group of people was so large.
\nOutside of the core commit team, there was particular help from these people, in rough order of number of credits and tickets: mdawaffe (Michael Adams), azaozz (Andrew Ozz), nbachiyski (Nikolay Bachiyski), andy (Andy Skelton), iammattthomas (Matt Thomas), tellyworth (Alex Shiels), josephscott (Joseph Scott), lloydbudd (Lloyd Budd), DD32 (Dion), filosofo (Austin Matzko), hansengel (Hans Engel), pishmishy, ffemtcj, Viper007Bond, ionfish (Benedict Eastaugh), jhodgdon (Jennifer Hodgdon), Otto42, thee17 (Charles E. Free-Melvin), and xknown. Also want to thank MichaelH and Lorelle on the documentation side, and moshu, Kafkaesqui, whooami, MichaelH, Otto42, and jeremyclark13 for helping with support.
\nThe 2.5 branch is nicknamed “Brecker” in honor of Michael Brecker, an exceptionally talented saxophonist who could cross styles effortlessly and never stopped experimenting and pushing himself until he passed away last year.
\nAll of this wasn’t enough, so in our copious spare time we decided to redesign WordPress.org to better match the aesthetics of the new dashboard and also to spruce up a few areas that needed lovin’. Some parts of the site, like the Codex, might show the old style for a day or two. We know, just give us a bit of time. Thanks to Matt Thomas for his epic effort in designing and coding the new site.
\nAs always with WordPress, we don’t claim any of these features to be perfect, or to be better than everyone else in the world, but they are done by and for the people and the one thing we do promise is that with every release we listen and do our best to improve.
\n2.5 is a major milestone for WordPress not because it added dozens of user-requested features, but because it reaffirms that we’re as passionate about blogging as the day we started. Our community is too fierce to rest on its laurels — contrary to what pundits claim, blogging is far from “finished” and every improvement just whets our appetite for more. And more is coming.
\nIt’s a good thing WordPress doesn’t limit the length of posts, because this one would have hit it. If you made it this far, thanks for sharing a bit of your day with us. I sincerely hope this new version of WordPress helps you do what you love to do.
\n\";}s:3:\"wfw\";a:1:{s:10:\"commentrss\";s:67:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2008/03/wordpress-25-brecker/feed/\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:391:\"WordPress 2.5, the culmination of six months of work by the WordPress community, people just like you. The improvements in 2.5 are numerous, and almost entirely a result of your feedback: multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, [...]\";s:12:\"atom_content\";s:15112:\"WordPress 2.5, the culmination of six months of work by the WordPress community, people just like you. The improvements in 2.5 are numerous, and almost entirely a result of your feedback: multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages.
\nFor a short overview of the features with screenshots, it’d be best to visit our sneak peek announcement for RC1. Or check out a 4-minute screencast of the new interface in action. If you just want to jump straight to the good stuff here’s where you can find 2.5 upgrade and download information.
\nIf you want to see everything I would grab a cup of coffee or a mojito, because this post is epic.
\nCleaner, faster, less cluttered dashboard — we’ve worked hard to take your feedback about what’s most important in the dashboard and organize things to allow you to focus on what’s important — your blog — and get out of your way. In collaboration with Happy Cog and the community we’ve taken the first major step forward in the WordPress interface since version 1.5.
\nDashboard Widgets — the dashboard home page is now a series of widgets, including ones to show you fun stats about your posting, latest comments, people linking to you, new and popular plugins, and of course WordPress news. You can customize any of the dashboard widgets to show, for example, news from your local paper instead of WP news. Plugins can also hook in, for example the WordPress.com stats widget adds a handy double-wide stats box.
\n
Multi-file upload with progress bar — before when you would upload a large file you’d wait forever, never knowing how far along it was. And uploading more than one photo was an exercise in patience, as you could only do one at a time. Now you can select a whole of folder images or music or videos at once and it’ll show you the progress of each upload.
\nBonus: EXIF extraction — if you upload JPEG files with EXIF metadata like camera make and model, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, et al. WordPress will extract all the data into custom fields you can use in your template. If you use the EXIF title fields or similar those will be put into their equivalent fields in WP. Most modern digital cameras generate EXIF data.
\nSearch posts and pages — search used to cover just posts, now it includes pages too, a great boon for those using WordPress as a CMS. New themes can style or sort pages differently in results.
\nTag management — you can now add, rename, delete, and do whatever else you like to tags from inside WordPress, no plugins needed.
\nPassword strength meter — when you change your password on your profile it’ll tell you how strong your password is to help you pick a good one.
\nConcurrent editing protection — for those of you on multi-author blogs, have you ever opened a post while someone was already editing it, and your auto-saves kept overwriting each other, irrecoverably losing hours of work? I bet that added a few words to your vocabulary. Now if you open a post that someone else is editing, WordPress magically locks it and prevents you from saving until the other person is done. You’ll see a message like below.
\n
Few-click plugin upgrades — if the plugins you use are part of the plugin directory since 2.3 we’ve told you when they have an update available. Now we take that to the next logical step — downloading and installing the upgrade for you. This is dependent a little bit on your host setup, and it may ask you for your FTP password much like OS X or Windows will ask you for a password, but it works well on majority of hosts we were able to test, your mileage may very, plugins in mirror may be larger than they appear.
\nFriendlier visual post editor — I’m not sure how to articulate this improvement except to say “it doesn’t mess with your code anymore.” We’re now using version 3.0 of TinyMCE, which means better compatibility with Safari, and we’ve paid particular attention this release to its integration and interaction with complex HTML. It also now has a “no-distractions” mode which is like Writeroom for your browser.
\nBuilt-in galleries — when you take advantage of multi-file upload to upload a bunch of photos, we have a new shortcode that lets you to easily embed galleries by just putting [ gallery] (without the space) in your post. It’ll display all your thumbnails and captions and each will link each to a page where people can comment on the individual photos. I’ve been using this feature on my blog and have already uploaded over 1,200 pictures into 23 galleries. The shortcode has some hidden options too, check out this documentation.
\nNow for the geeky stuff. While we’re excited about the above features, each one represents a new opportunity or API for other developers to take to another level. (The best of which we’ll someday integrate back into WP.)
\nSalted passwords — we now use the phpass library to stretch and salt all passwords stored in the database, which makes brute-forcing them impractical. If you use something like mod_auth_mysql we’ve created a plugin that will allow you to use legacy MD5 hashing. (The hashing is completely pluggable.) Users will automatically switch to the more secure passwords next time they log in.
\nSecure cookies — cookies are now encrypted based on the protocol described in this PDF paper. which is something like user name|expiration time|HMAC( user name|expiration time, k) where k = HMAC(user name|expiration time, sk) and where sk is a secret key, which you can define in your config.
Easy taxonomy and URL creation — probably best illustrated with an example: I can call register_taxonomy() with a few arguments to register a “people” taxonomy and whenever I edit an image I’ll see a UI like tags has for identifying the people in a photo, and these will be URL addressable with /person/firstname-lastname/. All with a single function call.
Inline documentation — the vast majority of the new code going into WordPress include inline documentation that explains the functions and documents their arguments.
\nDatabase optimization — we haven’t changed the table layout in this release, which is one of the reasons so many plugins work fine with 2.5. We have added a few new indicies and made a few default fields more flexible based on some bottlenecks we found on WordPress.com, which now hosts 2.7 million WordPress blogs. It should be invisible to the application, just a bit faster on the database side.
\n$wpdb->prepare() — now almost all of the SQL in WordPress is prepared first, and the same functions are available to your plugins. This should prevent elementary SQL escaping issues.
\nMedia buttons — the add media buttons above the post are both expandable, so you could have an “Add Google Map” button if you like, They can be overridden, so if you think you can do the video or audio tab better than we have you can replace the default.
\nShortcode API — the new gallery functionality is powered by the new shortcode API. Shortcodes are little bracket-delineated strings that can be magically expanded at runtime to something more interesting. They give users a short, easy to type and copy/paste string they can move around their post without worrying about messing up complex HTML or embed codes. The Shortcode API is fully documented.
\nNow you see why 2.5 took a little extra time.
2.5 does include security fixes so it is recommended for all users, the 2.3 branch will no longer be updated. The upgrade instructions for this version are pretty much the same as any other version. The most important thing to check is your plugins, so if for example everything works except the new uploader, a legacy plugin might be causing a javascript error on the page and breaking it. If something goes wrong, the safest thing to do is turn your plugins off (we have a button to do them all at once, now) and turn them back on one-by-one, testing the problem along the way. This has solved almost everybody’s problems in testing, and it also lets you know which plugin author to show some love to so they’ll update their plugin, and which plugin authors already have so you can shower them with praises on your blog.
\nOne brief note about some of the new upload and plugin upgrade features, there are some edge-case hosting platforms, like versions of Lighttpd before 1.5 or over-agressive mod_security rules, which can break. If something isn’t working like it was looked in the screenshot, ask your host if there’s something on the server side which may be interfering. Hosts, feel free to join and post to our wp-testers mailing list if you have an environment that requires some extra code to work around. We’d be happy to include it in the next update.
\nQuick tip: in 2.5 you click the name of things to edit them, like your username to edit your profile or the title of a post to edit it.
\nMore than growing, it’s on fire. We always talk about things like downloads, and the 2.3 branch has already had 1.92 million downloads as I write this post, but this time we have some far more interesting information I’d like to share.
\nThere were over 1,200 commits to our repository since 2.3.0 and over 90 people were credited in them. This means in our core code, not plugins, there were at least 90 individual folks that contributed something high-quality enough that it made the cut to be part of the download you guys get today. I had no idea this group of people was so large.
\nOutside of the core commit team, there was particular help from these people, in rough order of number of credits and tickets: mdawaffe (Michael Adams), azaozz (Andrew Ozz), nbachiyski (Nikolay Bachiyski), andy (Andy Skelton), iammattthomas (Matt Thomas), tellyworth (Alex Shiels), josephscott (Joseph Scott), lloydbudd (Lloyd Budd), DD32 (Dion), filosofo (Austin Matzko), hansengel (Hans Engel), pishmishy, ffemtcj, Viper007Bond, ionfish (Benedict Eastaugh), jhodgdon (Jennifer Hodgdon), Otto42, thee17 (Charles E. Free-Melvin), and xknown. Also want to thank MichaelH and Lorelle on the documentation side, and moshu, Kafkaesqui, whooami, MichaelH, Otto42, and jeremyclark13 for helping with support.
\nThe 2.5 branch is nicknamed “Brecker” in honor of Michael Brecker, an exceptionally talented saxophonist who could cross styles effortlessly and never stopped experimenting and pushing himself until he passed away last year.
\nAll of this wasn’t enough, so in our copious spare time we decided to redesign WordPress.org to better match the aesthetics of the new dashboard and also to spruce up a few areas that needed lovin’. Some parts of the site, like the Codex, might show the old style for a day or two. We know, just give us a bit of time. Thanks to Matt Thomas for his epic effort in designing and coding the new site.
\nAs always with WordPress, we don’t claim any of these features to be perfect, or to be better than everyone else in the world, but they are done by and for the people and the one thing we do promise is that with every release we listen and do our best to improve.
\n2.5 is a major milestone for WordPress not because it added dozens of user-requested features, but because it reaffirms that we’re as passionate about blogging as the day we started. Our community is too fierce to rest on its laurels — contrary to what pundits claim, blogging is far from “finished” and every improvement just whets our appetite for more. And more is coming.
\nIt’s a good thing WordPress doesn’t limit the length of posts, because this one would have hit it. If you made it this far, thanks for sharing a bit of your day with us. I sincerely hope this new version of WordPress helps you do what you love to do.
\n\";}i:4;a:12:{s:5:\"title\";s:32:\"Screencast and WordPress 2.5 RC2\";s:4:\"link\";s:58:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2008/03/wordpress-25-rc2/\";s:8:\"comments\";s:67:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2008/03/wordpress-25-rc2/#comments\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Wed, 26 Mar 2008 11:36:25 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:4:\"Matt\";}s:8:\"category\";s:11:\"Development\";s:4:\"guid\";s:39:\"http://wordpress.org/development/?p=227\";s:11:\"description\";s:334:\"2.5 is coming along thanks to the fantastic feedback you guys provided on RC1 (over 580 pingbacks and counting), and we’re now ready to show you a bit more of a peek with a short screencast covering the new dashboard and uploader and Release Candidate 2. First here’s the screencast, which is also available embedded [...]\";s:7:\"content\";a:1:{s:7:\"encoded\";s:2991:\"2.5 is coming along thanks to the fantastic feedback you guys provided on RC1 (over 580 pingbacks and counting), and we’re now ready to show you a bit more of a peek with a short screencast covering the new dashboard and uploader and Release Candidate 2. First here’s the screencast, which is also available embedded below, as a Flash movie, or as a 17mb AVI download:
\n\n
I’ve uploaded more than a thousand photos already into the new gallery system — it works.
\n(This was my first screencast, but I hope we can have more on WordPress.org and our documentation in the future.)
\nIf you make frequent backups and you’re interested in helping us out with development by testing the very latest, download and install Release Candidate 2 of WordPress 2.5, and join our testers mailing list to report any bugs you find in the code.
\nFinally with regards to theme and plugin compatibility, we’ve had no reports of any broken themes in this upgrade, which makes sense because we didn’t really change anything core about themes, just added new optional capabilities like Gravatars. Plugins that work with the admin may require updating to take advantage of the new, cleaner UI in WordPress 2.5.
\nThe community has started to keep a list here of which plugins work great and which don’t. It’s worth looking at, or even better just deactivate your plugins before upgrading for 2.5 and let the built-in updater notify and give you one-click upgrades to plugins you have installed, assuming the developer is cool and has updated their code for 2.5 already.
\n\";}s:3:\"wfw\";a:1:{s:10:\"commentrss\";s:63:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2008/03/wordpress-25-rc2/feed/\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:334:\"2.5 is coming along thanks to the fantastic feedback you guys provided on RC1 (over 580 pingbacks and counting), and we’re now ready to show you a bit more of a peek with a short screencast covering the new dashboard and uploader and Release Candidate 2. First here’s the screencast, which is also available embedded [...]\";s:12:\"atom_content\";s:2991:\"2.5 is coming along thanks to the fantastic feedback you guys provided on RC1 (over 580 pingbacks and counting), and we’re now ready to show you a bit more of a peek with a short screencast covering the new dashboard and uploader and Release Candidate 2. First here’s the screencast, which is also available embedded below, as a Flash movie, or as a 17mb AVI download:
\n\n
I’ve uploaded more than a thousand photos already into the new gallery system — it works.
\n(This was my first screencast, but I hope we can have more on WordPress.org and our documentation in the future.)
\nIf you make frequent backups and you’re interested in helping us out with development by testing the very latest, download and install Release Candidate 2 of WordPress 2.5, and join our testers mailing list to report any bugs you find in the code.
\nFinally with regards to theme and plugin compatibility, we’ve had no reports of any broken themes in this upgrade, which makes sense because we didn’t really change anything core about themes, just added new optional capabilities like Gravatars. Plugins that work with the admin may require updating to take advantage of the new, cleaner UI in WordPress 2.5.
\nThe community has started to keep a list here of which plugins work great and which don’t. It’s worth looking at, or even better just deactivate your plugins before upgrading for 2.5 and let the built-in updater notify and give you one-click upgrades to plugins you have installed, assuming the developer is cool and has updated their code for 2.5 already.
\n\";}i:5;a:12:{s:5:\"title\";s:14:\"2.5 Sneak Peek\";s:4:\"link\";s:55:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2008/03/25-sneak-peek/\";s:8:\"comments\";s:64:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2008/03/25-sneak-peek/#comments\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Tue, 18 Mar 2008 07:08:57 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:4:\"Matt\";}s:8:\"category\";s:11:\"Development\";s:4:\"guid\";s:39:\"http://wordpress.org/development/?p=226\";s:11:\"description\";s:360:\"A customizable dashboard, multi-file upload, built-in galleries, one-click plugin upgrades, tag management, built-in Gravatars, full text feeds, and faster load times sound interesting? Then WordPress 2.5 might be the release for you. It’s been in the oven for a while, and we’re finally ready to open the doors a bit to give you a taste.\nFor [...]\";s:7:\"content\";a:1:{s:7:\"encoded\";s:5448:\"A customizable dashboard, multi-file upload, built-in galleries, one-click plugin upgrades, tag management, built-in Gravatars, full text feeds, and faster load times sound interesting? Then WordPress 2.5 might be the release for you. It’s been in the oven for a while, and we’re finally ready to open the doors a bit to give you a taste.
\nFor the past few months, we’ve been working with our friends at Happy Cog — Jeffrey Zeldman, Jason Santa Maria, and Liz Danzico — to redesign WordPress from the ground-up. The result is a new way of interacting with WordPress that will remain familiar to seasoned users while improving the experience for everyone. This isn’t just a fresh coat of paint — we’ve re-thought the look of WordPress, as well as how it’s organized so that you can forget about the software and focus on your own creative pursuits.
\nHere are a few vignettes of what’s in store.
\n![\"dashboard-wide.png\"](\"http://wpcom.wordpress.com/files/2008/03/dashboard-wide.png\")
The Dashboard’s most important role is to inform quickly and get you to where you’re headed in the admin. In interviewing users, we found that most of you ignore the Dashboard entirely — its useful information being mostly hidden in an overly complex design. The new Dashboard is focused on the most relevant tasks at hand: a quick summary of what’s published and scheduled for publication, the latest comments and incoming links, blog stats, and WordPress updates and news. You can add your own RSS feeds and edit the way information is presented so that the new Dashboard conforms to the way you use WordPress.
\n![\"nav-wide.png\"](\"http://wpcom.wordpress.com/files/2008/03/nav-wide.png\")
The WordPress navigation has confounded even sophisticated users. With the new design, we’ve cut the number of navigation options in half, separating the primary functions (writing, managing posts and pages, editing the blog’s design, and managing comments) from secondary functions. This presents information at a more comfortable pace, revealing only the information that’s necessary. Everything you need is still there — just better organized. (Especially for people new to WP.)
\n![\"write-wide.png\"](\"http://wpcom.wordpress.com/files/2008/03/write-wide.png\")
![\"write2.png\"](\"http://wpcom.wordpress.com/files/2008/03/write3.png\")
By far, the most frequently accessed part of WordPress is the Write screen. It gets the job done, but its myriad options can be overwhelming. The new write screen only displays the information that you’ll use most often. It displays the most common fields in a way that makes posting incredibly easy. Additional options are hidden away until you need them. The new Write screen anticipates the natural flow of the way you write, and is smart enough to remember the way you left it so that your preferred writing environment is always quickly available. The new visual editor even has a handy full-screen mode to help block out distractions while composing your newest post. (My personal favorite new feature.)
\n![\"\"](\"http://wpcom.wordpress.com/files/2008/03/manage-wide.png\")
![\"\"](\"http://wpcom.wordpress.com/files/2008/03/manage.png\")
The Manage screens have been redesigned and unified so that now, managing your pages, posts, media, and comments all use similar, consistent interfaces. We’ve omitted superfluous information and made what’s important faster to find. We believe these changes will make you a faster, more proficient blogger.
\nYou might also notice there are some new colors, the dashboard feels much fresher and lighter. If you’re jonesing for the old look under your user options you can now select the “classic” colors and get those old blues back. (It’s also pluggable so people can easily add or share their own color schemes.)
\nIf you make frequent backups and you’re interested in helping us out with development by testing the new code, download and install Release Candidate 1 of WordPress 2.5, and join our testers mailing list to report any bugs you find in the code.
\nWe’re also interested in feedback on the new interface and would love to hear your opinions, thoughts, rants, raves, and anything in between. We created a special email address just for the occasion: 2.5-feedback@wordpress.org.
\nThe software is basically done and stable, and could be released today, but we’d like to incorporate feedback from a wider audience before making it available to the general public. After a few days of your feedback we’ll set a final release date. Personally, I can’t wait.
A customizable dashboard, multi-file upload, built-in galleries, one-click plugin upgrades, tag management, built-in Gravatars, full text feeds, and faster load times sound interesting? Then WordPress 2.5 might be the release for you. It’s been in the oven for a while, and we’re finally ready to open the doors a bit to give you a taste.
\nFor the past few months, we’ve been working with our friends at Happy Cog — Jeffrey Zeldman, Jason Santa Maria, and Liz Danzico — to redesign WordPress from the ground-up. The result is a new way of interacting with WordPress that will remain familiar to seasoned users while improving the experience for everyone. This isn’t just a fresh coat of paint — we’ve re-thought the look of WordPress, as well as how it’s organized so that you can forget about the software and focus on your own creative pursuits.
\nHere are a few vignettes of what’s in store.
\n
The Dashboard’s most important role is to inform quickly and get you to where you’re headed in the admin. In interviewing users, we found that most of you ignore the Dashboard entirely — its useful information being mostly hidden in an overly complex design. The new Dashboard is focused on the most relevant tasks at hand: a quick summary of what’s published and scheduled for publication, the latest comments and incoming links, blog stats, and WordPress updates and news. You can add your own RSS feeds and edit the way information is presented so that the new Dashboard conforms to the way you use WordPress.
\n
The WordPress navigation has confounded even sophisticated users. With the new design, we’ve cut the number of navigation options in half, separating the primary functions (writing, managing posts and pages, editing the blog’s design, and managing comments) from secondary functions. This presents information at a more comfortable pace, revealing only the information that’s necessary. Everything you need is still there — just better organized. (Especially for people new to WP.)
\n
By far, the most frequently accessed part of WordPress is the Write screen. It gets the job done, but its myriad options can be overwhelming. The new write screen only displays the information that you’ll use most often. It displays the most common fields in a way that makes posting incredibly easy. Additional options are hidden away until you need them. The new Write screen anticipates the natural flow of the way you write, and is smart enough to remember the way you left it so that your preferred writing environment is always quickly available. The new visual editor even has a handy full-screen mode to help block out distractions while composing your newest post. (My personal favorite new feature.)
\n
The Manage screens have been redesigned and unified so that now, managing your pages, posts, media, and comments all use similar, consistent interfaces. We’ve omitted superfluous information and made what’s important faster to find. We believe these changes will make you a faster, more proficient blogger.
\nYou might also notice there are some new colors, the dashboard feels much fresher and lighter. If you’re jonesing for the old look under your user options you can now select the “classic” colors and get those old blues back. (It’s also pluggable so people can easily add or share their own color schemes.)
\nIf you make frequent backups and you’re interested in helping us out with development by testing the new code, download and install Release Candidate 1 of WordPress 2.5, and join our testers mailing list to report any bugs you find in the code.
\nWe’re also interested in feedback on the new interface and would love to hear your opinions, thoughts, rants, raves, and anything in between. We created a special email address just for the occasion: 2.5-feedback@wordpress.org.
\nThe software is basically done and stable, and could be released today, but we’d like to incorporate feedback from a wider audience before making it available to the general public. After a few days of your feedback we’ll set a final release date. Personally, I can’t wait.
WordPress 2.3.3 is an urgent security release. If you have registration enabled a flaw was found in the XML-RPC implementation such that a specially crafted request would allow a user to edit posts of other users on that blog. In addition to fixing this security flaw, 2.3.3 fixes a few minor bugs. If you are interested only in the security fix, download the fixed version of xmlrpc.php and copy it over your existing xmlrpc.php. Otherwise, you can get the entire release here.
Also, there is a vulnerability in the WP-Forum plugin that is being actively exploited right now. If you are using this plugin, please remove it until an update is available from its author.
\nSince we are talking security, remember to use strong passwords and change them regularly. While you’re updating WP and your plugins, consider refreshing your passwords.
\n\";}s:3:\"wfw\";a:1:{s:10:\"commentrss\";s:60:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2008/02/wordpress-233/feed/\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:307:\"WordPress 2.3.3 is an urgent security release. If you have registration enabled a flaw was found in the XML-RPC implementation such that a specially crafted request would allow a user to edit posts of other users on that blog. In addition to fixing this security flaw, 2.3.3 fixes a few minor bugs. [...]\";s:12:\"atom_content\";s:1208:\"WordPress 2.3.3 is an urgent security release. If you have registration enabled a flaw was found in the XML-RPC implementation such that a specially crafted request would allow a user to edit posts of other users on that blog. In addition to fixing this security flaw, 2.3.3 fixes a few minor bugs. If you are interested only in the security fix, download the fixed version of xmlrpc.php and copy it over your existing xmlrpc.php. Otherwise, you can get the entire release here.
Also, there is a vulnerability in the WP-Forum plugin that is being actively exploited right now. If you are using this plugin, please remove it until an update is available from its author.
\nSince we are talking security, remember to use strong passwords and change them regularly. While you’re updating WP and your plugins, consider refreshing your passwords.
\n\";}i:7;a:12:{s:5:\"title\";s:15:\"WordPress 2.3.2\";s:4:\"link\";s:55:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2007/12/wordpress-232/\";s:8:\"comments\";s:64:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2007/12/wordpress-232/#comments\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Sat, 29 Dec 2007 22:44:09 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:4:\"Ryan\";}s:8:\"category\";s:8:\"Releases\";s:4:\"guid\";s:55:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2007/12/wordpress-232/\";s:11:\"description\";s:325:\"WordPress 2.3.2 is an urgent security release that fixes a bug that can be used to expose your draft posts. 2.3.2 also suppresses some error messages that can give away information about your database table structure and limits and stops some information leaks in the XML-RPC and APP implementations. Get 2.3.2 now to [...]\";s:7:\"content\";a:1:{s:7:\"encoded\";s:1243:\"WordPress 2.3.2 is an urgent security release that fixes a bug that can be used to expose your draft posts. 2.3.2 also suppresses some error messages that can give away information about your database table structure and limits and stops some information leaks in the XML-RPC and APP implementations. Get 2.3.2 now to protect your blog from these disclosures.
\nAs a little bonus, 2.3.2 allows you to define a custom DB error page. Place your custom template at wp-content/db-error.php. If WP has a problem connecting to your database, this page will displayed rather than the default error message.
\nFor more detail on what’s new in 2.3.2, view the list of fixed bugs and see the changes between 2.3.1 and 2.3.2.
\nSpecial thanks to Alex Concha for his help on this release.
\n\";}s:3:\"wfw\";a:1:{s:10:\"commentrss\";s:60:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2007/12/wordpress-232/feed/\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:325:\"WordPress 2.3.2 is an urgent security release that fixes a bug that can be used to expose your draft posts. 2.3.2 also suppresses some error messages that can give away information about your database table structure and limits and stops some information leaks in the XML-RPC and APP implementations. Get 2.3.2 now to [...]\";s:12:\"atom_content\";s:1243:\"WordPress 2.3.2 is an urgent security release that fixes a bug that can be used to expose your draft posts. 2.3.2 also suppresses some error messages that can give away information about your database table structure and limits and stops some information leaks in the XML-RPC and APP implementations. Get 2.3.2 now to protect your blog from these disclosures.
\nAs a little bonus, 2.3.2 allows you to define a custom DB error page. Place your custom template at wp-content/db-error.php. If WP has a problem connecting to your database, this page will displayed rather than the default error message.
\nFor more detail on what’s new in 2.3.2, view the list of fixed bugs and see the changes between 2.3.1 and 2.3.2.
\nSpecial thanks to Alex Concha for his help on this release.
\n\";}i:8;a:12:{s:5:\"title\";s:27:\"Stay Warm, WordPress Hoodie\";s:4:\"link\";s:58:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2007/12/wordpress-hoodie/\";s:8:\"comments\";s:67:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2007/12/wordpress-hoodie/#comments\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Sat, 29 Dec 2007 18:39:05 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:4:\"Matt\";}s:8:\"category\";s:27:\"Storefirefoxschwagwordpress\";s:4:\"guid\";s:58:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2007/12/wordpress-hoodie/\";s:11:\"description\";s:371:\"A least for those of your in the Northern hemisphere, it’s been a little chilly recently. If you’re like me you’re thinking, “WordPress keeps my servers running hot, couldn’t it warm me too?”\nYes, it can.\n\nYou can now buy hip WordPress hoodies in our store so when you’re not blogging you can loiter around the neighborhood [...]\";s:7:\"content\";a:1:{s:7:\"encoded\";s:1059:\"A least for those of your in the Northern hemisphere, it’s been a little chilly recently. If you’re like me you’re thinking, “WordPress keeps my servers running hot, couldn’t it warm me too?”
\nYes, it can.
\n![\"WordPress](\"http://shop.wordpress.net/images/sku/WP5495NVY/WP5495NVY-A3.jpg\")
You can now buy hip WordPress hoodies in our store so when you’re not blogging you can loiter around the neighborhood like the people in the picture above. As before, we ship locally and internationally.
\nIf you find you’re still in the Open Source Hoodie mood afterward, you can check out this cool Firefox one from our friends at Mozilla.
\nHint: Buy the hoodie a size larger than you normally would, they run small. They’ll begin processing the orders on January 2nd.
\n\";}s:3:\"wfw\";a:1:{s:10:\"commentrss\";s:63:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2007/12/wordpress-hoodie/feed/\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:371:\"A least for those of your in the Northern hemisphere, it’s been a little chilly recently. If you’re like me you’re thinking, “WordPress keeps my servers running hot, couldn’t it warm me too?”\nYes, it can.\n\nYou can now buy hip WordPress hoodies in our store so when you’re not blogging you can loiter around the neighborhood [...]\";s:12:\"atom_content\";s:1059:\"A least for those of your in the Northern hemisphere, it’s been a little chilly recently. If you’re like me you’re thinking, “WordPress keeps my servers running hot, couldn’t it warm me too?”
\nYes, it can.
\n
You can now buy hip WordPress hoodies in our store so when you’re not blogging you can loiter around the neighborhood like the people in the picture above. As before, we ship locally and internationally.
\nIf you find you’re still in the Open Source Hoodie mood afterward, you can check out this cool Firefox one from our friends at Mozilla.
\nHint: Buy the hoodie a size larger than you normally would, they run small. They’ll begin processing the orders on January 2nd.
\n\";}i:9;a:12:{s:5:\"title\";s:15:\"WordPress 2.3.1\";s:4:\"link\";s:55:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2007/10/wordpress-231/\";s:8:\"comments\";s:64:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2007/10/wordpress-231/#comments\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Fri, 26 Oct 2007 20:55:30 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:4:\"Ryan\";}s:8:\"category\";s:8:\"Releases\";s:4:\"guid\";s:55:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2007/10/wordpress-231/\";s:11:\"description\";s:367:\"WordPress 2.3.1 is now available. 2.3.1 is a bug-fix and security release for the 2.3 series.\n2.3.1 fixes over twenty bugs. Some of the notable fixes are:\n\n Tagging support for Windows Live Writer\nFixes for a login bug that affected those with a Blog Address different than\ntheir WordPress Address\nFaster taxonomy database queries, especially tag intersection [...]\";s:7:\"content\";a:1:{s:7:\"encoded\";s:1357:\"WordPress 2.3.1 is now available. 2.3.1 is a bug-fix and security release for the 2.3 series.
\n2.3.1 fixes over twenty bugs. Some of the notable fixes are:
\nUnfortunately, some security issues were found in 2.3. Janek Vind found an XSS problem that can be exploited if your php setup has register_globals enabled. For this reason, upgrading to 2.3.1 is advised.
\nThe full set of changes between 2.3 and 2.3.1 is available for viewing on trac.
\nGet 2.3.1 from the download page and enjoy.
\n\";}s:3:\"wfw\";a:1:{s:10:\"commentrss\";s:60:\"http://wordpress.org/development/2007/10/wordpress-231/feed/\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:367:\"WordPress 2.3.1 is now available. 2.3.1 is a bug-fix and security release for the 2.3 series.\n2.3.1 fixes over twenty bugs. Some of the notable fixes are:\n\n Tagging support for Windows Live Writer\nFixes for a login bug that affected those with a Blog Address different than\ntheir WordPress Address\nFaster taxonomy database queries, especially tag intersection [...]\";s:12:\"atom_content\";s:1357:\"WordPress 2.3.1 is now available. 2.3.1 is a bug-fix and security release for the 2.3 series.
\n2.3.1 fixes over twenty bugs. Some of the notable fixes are:
\nUnfortunately, some security issues were found in 2.3. Janek Vind found an XSS problem that can be exploited if your php setup has register_globals enabled. For this reason, upgrading to 2.3.1 is advised.
\nThe full set of changes between 2.3 and 2.3.1 is available for viewing on trac.
\nGet 2.3.1 from the download page and enjoy.
\n\";}}s:7:\"channel\";a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:26:\"WordPress Development Blog\";s:4:\"link\";s:32:\"http://wordpress.org/development\";s:11:\"description\";s:33:\"WordPress development and updates\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:00:16 +0000\";s:9:\"generator\";s:36:\"http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6-bleeding\";s:8:\"language\";s:2:\"en\";s:7:\"tagline\";s:33:\"WordPress development and updates\";}s:9:\"textinput\";a:0:{}s:5:\"image\";a:0:{}s:9:\"feed_type\";s:3:\"RSS\";s:12:\"feed_version\";s:3:\"2.0\";s:5:\"stack\";a:0:{}s:9:\"inchannel\";b:0;s:6:\"initem\";b:0;s:9:\"incontent\";b:0;s:11:\"intextinput\";b:0;s:7:\"inimage\";b:0;s:13:\"current_field\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"current_namespace\";b:0;s:19:\"_CONTENT_CONSTRUCTS\";a:6:{i:0;s:7:\"content\";i:1;s:7:\"summary\";i:2;s:4:\"info\";i:3;s:5:\"title\";i:4;s:7:\"tagline\";i:5;s:9:\"copyright\";}s:13:\"last_modified\";s:31:\"Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:00:16 GMT\r\n\";s:4:\"etag\";s:36:\"\"0bdfbdb668c857c879575b2c915877c0\"\r\n\";}','no'); INSERT INTO wp_options VALUES (73,0,'rss_0ff4b43bd116a9d8720d689c80e7dfd4_ts','1209703872','no'); INSERT INTO wp_options VALUES (74,0,'rss_867bd5c64f85878d03a060509cd2f92c','O:9:\"magpierss\":19:{s:6:\"parser\";i:0;s:12:\"current_item\";a:0:{}s:5:\"items\";a:50:{i:0;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:46:\"Weblog Tools Collection: In a word, “wow.”\";s:4:\"guid\";s:40:\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/?p=3406\";s:4:\"link\";s:67:\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/04/08/in-a-word-wow/\";s:11:\"description\";s:212:\"Linux.com on The new WordPress How do I like WordPress 2.5? In a word, “wow.” Thanks Chris
\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Wed, 09 Apr 2008 01:14:10 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:10:\"Mark Ghosh\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:212:\"Linux.com on The new WordPress How do I like WordPress 2.5? In a word, “wow.” Thanks Chris
\";}i:1;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:33:\"Dougal Campbell: Upgrade or else!\";s:4:\"guid\";s:32:\"http://dougal.gunters.org/?p=902\";s:4:\"link\";s:57:\"http://dougal.gunters.org/blog/2008/04/08/upgrade-or-else\";s:11:\"description\";s:3108:\"Okay, people, if you are running any version of WordPress older than 2.3.3*, you need to upgrade now. Seriously. WordPress 2.3.2 and older have security holes that are being actively exploited by hackers to inject spam links into blogs which are not maintained. And search engines like Technorati are de-listing hacked blogs. Are you listening now? Do I have your attention? Upgrade your web apps before you get hacked and your site drops off the search-engine radar.
\nWhile the Technorati article specifically talks about WordPress sites, this goes for any web application. You need to pay attention to updates which are released, and upgrade whenever a security probem is fixed. WordPress gets particular attention due to its popularity and the sheer number of installed sites out in the wild. But it is no more or less secure than any other similar web application. So whatever you’re running, keep it up-to-date.
\nAnd the same goes for any add-ons — if you install third-part plugins or themes, make sure you keep up with updates. WordPress 2.5 makes updating plugins easier than ever. Review your Plugins page from time to time, and pay attention when it tells you that a newer version of a plugin is available.
\nI see comments from people all the time saying that they don’t want to upgrade because it might break this theme or that plugin that they have installed. To those people, I say, GET OVER IT. The security of your site is important. If some theme or plugin is not compatible with a newer version of WordPress, ask the author politely to update it. Or find a replacement. Or live without it. I have in excess of 25 plugins active here. But there’s not one of them that I would hesitate to deactivate when it comes to security of my site.
\nThere are several ways to keep up with new WordPress releases. The Dashboard shows you all sorts of news from the WP community, including announcements from the Development Blog. There are several mailing lists. If those lists are too noisy for you, you can get just release announcements by signing up on Freshmeat.net and subscribing to the WordPress Project. I normally submit the Freshmeat update within 24 hours of an official release.
\n* One exception is WordPress version 2.0.11 (or the 2.0 svn branch, more generally), which is maintained with security updates for the Debian package.
\n\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:48:22 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:6:\"Dougal\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:3108:\"Okay, people, if you are running any version of WordPress older than 2.3.3*, you need to upgrade now. Seriously. WordPress 2.3.2 and older have security holes that are being actively exploited by hackers to inject spam links into blogs which are not maintained. And search engines like Technorati are de-listing hacked blogs. Are you listening now? Do I have your attention? Upgrade your web apps before you get hacked and your site drops off the search-engine radar.
\nWhile the Technorati article specifically talks about WordPress sites, this goes for any web application. You need to pay attention to updates which are released, and upgrade whenever a security probem is fixed. WordPress gets particular attention due to its popularity and the sheer number of installed sites out in the wild. But it is no more or less secure than any other similar web application. So whatever you’re running, keep it up-to-date.
\nAnd the same goes for any add-ons — if you install third-part plugins or themes, make sure you keep up with updates. WordPress 2.5 makes updating plugins easier than ever. Review your Plugins page from time to time, and pay attention when it tells you that a newer version of a plugin is available.
\nI see comments from people all the time saying that they don’t want to upgrade because it might break this theme or that plugin that they have installed. To those people, I say, GET OVER IT. The security of your site is important. If some theme or plugin is not compatible with a newer version of WordPress, ask the author politely to update it. Or find a replacement. Or live without it. I have in excess of 25 plugins active here. But there’s not one of them that I would hesitate to deactivate when it comes to security of my site.
\nThere are several ways to keep up with new WordPress releases. The Dashboard shows you all sorts of news from the WP community, including announcements from the Development Blog. There are several mailing lists. If those lists are too noisy for you, you can get just release announcements by signing up on Freshmeat.net and subscribing to the WordPress Project. I normally submit the Freshmeat update within 24 hours of an official release.
\n* One exception is WordPress version 2.0.11 (or the 2.0 svn branch, more generally), which is maintained with security updates for the Debian package.
\n\";}i:2;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:69:\"Weblog Tools Collection: Vulnerable WordPress Blogs Not Being Indexed\";s:4:\"guid\";s:40:\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/?p=3401\";s:4:\"link\";s:98:\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/04/08/vulnerable-wordpress-blogs-not-being-indexed/\";s:11:\"description\";s:2575:\"Vulnerable WordPress Blogs Not Being Indexed: Technorati has decided to not index vulnerable and exploited WordPress blogs. This comes after the recent spat of hacks that were discovered on various high profile blogs and websites. What was even more interesting was the fact that some of these hacks and exploitations might have come from covert and encrypted code hidden in various themes available for free over the web. The moral of this story is that you need to upgrade your WordPress blog now to WordPress 2.5.
\nJust so that everyone is aware, WordPress 2.5 is the latest stable version and this should be the version that everyone should upgrade to. Any older versions leaves you vulnerable. [EDIT] As mentioned on the legacy 2.0 page, WordPress 2.0.11 is the latest stable download with all the latest security fixes for the 2.0 branch. However, WordPress 2.5 is still the latest and the greatest and should be everyones upgrade target.
\nAs for themes, if you feel that the theme you are using might be suspect of something strange, just disable it and get something else. I suggest you download themes from the original author’s website/blog and stay away from any theme that has an encrypted footer (though that would be hard to determine without looking at the code). At weblogtoolscollection.com we try our darnest to link directly to theme authors for the download.
\nTechnorati is just the beginning. If your blog has spammy links, has covert hidden pages or links, is used for nefarious purposes, even without your knowledge, you are being penalized by the search engines. We are going to put together a post on how to figure out if your blog is hacked/exploited, clean up your blog if it is hacked, get your blog back to order, find spammy pages if they do exist and how to get your blog re-indexed. In the meantime, if you know of a good resource, please let us know and we will add it to the post.
\nToday is a good day to upgrade to WordPress 2.5
\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:26:38 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:10:\"Mark Ghosh\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:2575:\"Vulnerable WordPress Blogs Not Being Indexed: Technorati has decided to not index vulnerable and exploited WordPress blogs. This comes after the recent spat of hacks that were discovered on various high profile blogs and websites. What was even more interesting was the fact that some of these hacks and exploitations might have come from covert and encrypted code hidden in various themes available for free over the web. The moral of this story is that you need to upgrade your WordPress blog now to WordPress 2.5.
\nJust so that everyone is aware, WordPress 2.5 is the latest stable version and this should be the version that everyone should upgrade to. Any older versions leaves you vulnerable. [EDIT] As mentioned on the legacy 2.0 page, WordPress 2.0.11 is the latest stable download with all the latest security fixes for the 2.0 branch. However, WordPress 2.5 is still the latest and the greatest and should be everyones upgrade target.
\nAs for themes, if you feel that the theme you are using might be suspect of something strange, just disable it and get something else. I suggest you download themes from the original author’s website/blog and stay away from any theme that has an encrypted footer (though that would be hard to determine without looking at the code). At weblogtoolscollection.com we try our darnest to link directly to theme authors for the download.
\nTechnorati is just the beginning. If your blog has spammy links, has covert hidden pages or links, is used for nefarious purposes, even without your knowledge, you are being penalized by the search engines. We are going to put together a post on how to figure out if your blog is hacked/exploited, clean up your blog if it is hacked, get your blog back to order, find spammy pages if they do exist and how to get your blog re-indexed. In the meantime, if you know of a good resource, please let us know and we will add it to the post.
\nToday is a good day to upgrade to WordPress 2.5
\";}i:3;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:50:\"Donncha: The best way to test new WordPress themes\";s:4:\"guid\";s:29:\"http://ocaoimh.ie/?p=89493646\";s:4:\"link\";s:71:\"http://ocaoimh.ie/2008/04/08/the-best-way-to-test-new-wordpress-themes/\";s:11:\"description\";s:2012:\"![\"\"](\"http://ocaoimh.ie/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/themetester.png\" "\\"theme")
My new Theme Tester plugin allows you to change themes and view the results without the visitors to your blog seeing any changes.
\nThere is one cavaet. Your visitors may notice some changes if your current theme uses blog options that a new theme overwrites. This could happen if for example you’re testing a newer version of your current theme or testing a theme based on the same engine as your current theme. The K2 theme springs to mind here because it’s the base for several other themes but YMMV.
I used the plugin already when I trawled the themes sites and the archives at Weblog Tools Collection for a new theme for this place. As you can guess if you’re a regular visitor, I haven’t changed theme yet, but I found a couple of very pretty designs that may make an appearance here eventually.
\nRelated Posts
\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:15:10 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:7:\"Donncha\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:2012:\"My new Theme Tester plugin allows you to change themes and view the results without the visitors to your blog seeing any changes.
\nThere is one cavaet. Your visitors may notice some changes if your current theme uses blog options that a new theme overwrites. This could happen if for example you’re testing a newer version of your current theme or testing a theme based on the same engine as your current theme. The K2 theme springs to mind here because it’s the base for several other themes but YMMV.
I used the plugin already when I trawled the themes sites and the archives at Weblog Tools Collection for a new theme for this place. As you can guess if you’re a regular visitor, I haven’t changed theme yet, but I found a couple of very pretty designs that may make an appearance here eventually.
\nRelated Posts
\";}i:4;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:58:\"Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress Plugin releases for 4/7\";s:4:\"guid\";s:86:\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/04/07/wordpress-plugin-releases-for-47/\";s:4:\"link\";s:86:\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/04/07/wordpress-plugin-releases-for-47/\";s:11:\"description\";s:2503:\"Plugin Central
\nPlugin Central is a WordPress plugin management add-on to automatically install and update WordPress plugins. It works with WordPress 2.5+ only. Install plugin by typing the name of the plugin and allows you to install multiple plugins at once.
\n\nLogin Error Cleanup
\nReturns the message “Error” when the username and password combination are invalid while logging into WordPress account. The message helps thwart attackers who are trying to guess username and passwords.
\n\nReadySetFlickr
\nReadySetFlickr will display a photo set from Flickr. Two options for layout display. Also supports a random and a most recent option.
\n\nWidgetized Admin Dashboard
\nWidgetized Admin Dashboard is a Wordpress Plugin for 2.5+ that lets you edit the Wordpress Dashboard in the Design > Widgets area.
\n\nKeywordLuv
\nKeywordLuv separates commentators name from their keywords in the link to their website, giving them improved anchor text.
\n\nLogin-box
\nLogin-box is a plugin that inserts a hidden login box into all the pages that can be opened with Ctrl + E.
\n\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Tue, 08 Apr 2008 03:55:24 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:12:\"Keith Dsouza\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:2503:\"Plugin Central
\nPlugin Central is a WordPress plugin management add-on to automatically install and update WordPress plugins. It works with WordPress 2.5+ only. Install plugin by typing the name of the plugin and allows you to install multiple plugins at once.
\n\nLogin Error Cleanup
\nReturns the message “Error” when the username and password combination are invalid while logging into WordPress account. The message helps thwart attackers who are trying to guess username and passwords.
\n\nReadySetFlickr
\nReadySetFlickr will display a photo set from Flickr. Two options for layout display. Also supports a random and a most recent option.
\n\nWidgetized Admin Dashboard
\nWidgetized Admin Dashboard is a Wordpress Plugin for 2.5+ that lets you edit the Wordpress Dashboard in the Design > Widgets area.
\n\nKeywordLuv
\nKeywordLuv separates commentators name from their keywords in the link to their website, giving them improved anchor text.
\n\nLogin-box
\nLogin-box is a plugin that inserts a hidden login box into all the pages that can be opened with Ctrl + E.
\n\";}i:5;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:50:\"Lorelle on WP: Strip Down Your Blog: CSS Naked Day\";s:4:\"guid\";s:36:\"http://lorelle.wordpress.com/?p=2445\";s:4:\"link\";s:75:\"http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2008/04/07/strip-down-your-blog-css-naked-day/\";s:11:\"description\";s:14380:\"![\"Articles](\"http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/cssarticles.gif\")
Get ready to go naked. On April 9th, 2008, hundreds, possibly thousands, of blogs and websites will go naked in honor of CSS Naked Day. Join fellow WordPress bloggers in honoring web designers and WordPress Theme builders by going naked.
This is the third year of the annual CSS Naked Day which honors web design and designers around the world who help make our websites and blogs look “pretty” to the eye while still being totally functional under the hood. Dustin Diaz wanted to give the web world an opportunity to remind everyone of the benefits of CSS web page design. By removing the stylesheet for the day, the world would see naked web pages, giving a little more appreciation for the skills of web page designers.
\nAs explained yesterday in the Blog Herald announcement of CSS Naked Day, this is also an opportunity to showcase how usable and accessible your web page structure is even without the pretty, reminding the world that it is the law that your website must accessible by everyone using any method to access your blog.
\nGoing naked is easy for WordPress blogs. In Lorelle is Naked, I explained the various options last year on how to turn off your blog’s stylesheet using WordPress Plugins with WordPress Naked Day Plugin for all WordPress versions, CSS Naked Day WordPress Plugin for pre-WordPress 2x blogs, the Naked Day PHP Function script for non-WordPress and PHP driven blogs, do it manually by renaming your blog’s stylesheet for the day, or removing the stylesheet temporarily on WordPress.com blogs.
\nRecent versions of WordPress will automatically reset to the Default WordPress Theme if no Theme is detected, which means changing the style.css file will revert your Theme to the Default/Kubrick style. To override this redirection, you must use the WordPress Naked Day Plugin or create a separate Theme that has no styles in the stylesheet, which I’ve prepared just for this event.
I have stripped down the styles in the Default WordPress Theme for current versions of WordPress and pre-WordPress 2.1 versions which changed some of the sidebar tags.
\nthemes directory.\n\nFor those on WordPress.com, you can also participate if you are using the Sandbox WordPress Theme with the WordPress.com CSS Extra feature.
\nReverse the process to restore your Sandbox Theme on April 10.
\nBe sure and sign up for the CSS Naked Day so your blog will be celebrated as one of those honoring web design and designers. Last year, almost 2,000 sites signed up for CSS Naked Day. So far, the list is over 400. Let your naked stance join with others on April 9.
\n![\"\"](\"http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2006/08/sig.gif\")
\n
Site Search Tags: css naked day, naked css, css, web design, blog event, wordpress news, turn off stylesheets, accessibility, usability, honor web designers
\n![\"Feed](\"http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2007/02/rss.png\")
Subscribe ![\"Feedburner](\"http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/feedburnericon.gif\")
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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won\'t Tell You About Blogging.
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Get ready to go naked. On April 9th, 2008, hundreds, possibly thousands, of blogs and websites will go naked in honor of CSS Naked Day. Join fellow WordPress bloggers in honoring web designers and WordPress Theme builders by going naked.
This is the third year of the annual CSS Naked Day which honors web design and designers around the world who help make our websites and blogs look “pretty” to the eye while still being totally functional under the hood. Dustin Diaz wanted to give the web world an opportunity to remind everyone of the benefits of CSS web page design. By removing the stylesheet for the day, the world would see naked web pages, giving a little more appreciation for the skills of web page designers.
\nAs explained yesterday in the Blog Herald announcement of CSS Naked Day, this is also an opportunity to showcase how usable and accessible your web page structure is even without the pretty, reminding the world that it is the law that your website must accessible by everyone using any method to access your blog.
\nGoing naked is easy for WordPress blogs. In Lorelle is Naked, I explained the various options last year on how to turn off your blog’s stylesheet using WordPress Plugins with WordPress Naked Day Plugin for all WordPress versions, CSS Naked Day WordPress Plugin for pre-WordPress 2x blogs, the Naked Day PHP Function script for non-WordPress and PHP driven blogs, do it manually by renaming your blog’s stylesheet for the day, or removing the stylesheet temporarily on WordPress.com blogs.
\nRecent versions of WordPress will automatically reset to the Default WordPress Theme if no Theme is detected, which means changing the style.css file will revert your Theme to the Default/Kubrick style. To override this redirection, you must use the WordPress Naked Day Plugin or create a separate Theme that has no styles in the stylesheet, which I’ve prepared just for this event.
I have stripped down the styles in the Default WordPress Theme for current versions of WordPress and pre-WordPress 2.1 versions which changed some of the sidebar tags.
\nthemes directory.\n\nFor those on WordPress.com, you can also participate if you are using the Sandbox WordPress Theme with the WordPress.com CSS Extra feature.
\nReverse the process to restore your Sandbox Theme on April 10.
\nBe sure and sign up for the CSS Naked Day so your blog will be celebrated as one of those honoring web design and designers. Last year, almost 2,000 sites signed up for CSS Naked Day. So far, the list is over 400. Let your naked stance join with others on April 9.
\n
\n
Site Search Tags: css naked day, naked css, css, web design, blog event, wordpress news, turn off stylesheets, accessibility, usability, honor web designers
\n Subscribe Via Feedburner Subscribe by Email Visit
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won\'t Tell You About Blogging.
This might be the last WordCamp Dallas 2008 post you see on this blog and since that is the case, better to go out with a bang! In case you were one of the unlucky ones who didn’t have a chance to attend the conference live, the good news is that there were plenty of attendees blogging, vlogging, and live blogging the event. I present to you a list of links which will correspond to the conference schedule.
\nMatt Mullenweg discussing WordPress 2.5 and beyond. Actually, he announced the redesign of WordPress.org along with the release of 2.5.
\nJohn Pozadzides presented his 45 ways to power up your blog.
\nAfter Lunch, Jonathan Bailey gave us the lowdown on content theft and protection along with a number of other things that bloggers of any platform would be interested in. Jonathan has also published the slides for his presentation on his own blog which can be viewed here.
\nCali Lewis and Neal Campbell shared their experience with using WordPress for powering their websites.
\nLiz Strauss gave a presentation that was titled, C’mon, Let’s Talk! which dealt with building influence and interaction with blogging. You can check out her full presentation here.
\nLorelle VanFossen stepped up to the plate and shared her WordPress Power Tips. Her presentation can be viewed here.
\nThe next day of the event featured a live recording of the WordPress Podcast. The full video of this presentation is now online at WeblogToolsVideos.com.
\nThe next panel was by Chris Smith who went over SEO for Bloggers. The link to the Natural Search Blog contains a link to the presentation that Chris Smith gave the attendees.
\nAaron Brazell offered up an extensive presentation called WordPress FAQ. The FAQ answers questions such as can you have too many tags, what is the GPL, and the explanation of hooks. The end of the presentation takes questions from the attendees.
\nA panel that I particularly found interesting was the Business of blogging session featuring Liz Strauss, Mark Ghosh, Matt Mullenweg and Aaron Brazell. A ton of interesting points and conversations took place during the session and I thought it was one of the highlights of the event. Check out the ustream video that Mark Rizzn of Mashable.com recorded here.
\nLast but not least, Jacob Santos closed out the event with his presentation on Testing With WordPress. I have yet to see any videos posted of his session but he goes over it in more detail here.
\nFor those that have yet to see what this thing called Woopra is all about, Cali Lewis of GeekBrief.TV interviews John Pozadzides and gives you the low down.
\n![](\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/04/2376093093_3f46109388_b-150x150.jpg\")
\n![](\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/04/2376871018_2e1353c568_b-150x150.jpg\")
\n![](\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/04/2378034725_2c3498838e_b-150x150.jpg\")
\n![](\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/04/2378039399_d7783a9436_b-150x150.jpg\")
\n![](\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/04/2378870448_38eaa7c1f8_b-150x150.jpg\")
\n![](\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/04/2378887266_0ed9380e56_b-150x150.jpg\")
\n![](\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/04/2383062076_d856037103_b-150x150.jpg\")
\n![](\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/04/2378040919_27f468e78b_b-150x150.jpg\")
\n![](\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/04/2376024993_a77cc46e6f_b-150x150.jpg\")
This might be the last WordCamp Dallas 2008 post you see on this blog and since that is the case, better to go out with a bang! In case you were one of the unlucky ones who didn’t have a chance to attend the conference live, the good news is that there were plenty of attendees blogging, vlogging, and live blogging the event. I present to you a list of links which will correspond to the conference schedule.
\nMatt Mullenweg discussing WordPress 2.5 and beyond. Actually, he announced the redesign of WordPress.org along with the release of 2.5.
\nJohn Pozadzides presented his 45 ways to power up your blog.
\nAfter Lunch, Jonathan Bailey gave us the lowdown on content theft and protection along with a number of other things that bloggers of any platform would be interested in. Jonathan has also published the slides for his presentation on his own blog which can be viewed here.
\nCali Lewis and Neal Campbell shared their experience with using WordPress for powering their websites.
\nLiz Strauss gave a presentation that was titled, C’mon, Let’s Talk! which dealt with building influence and interaction with blogging. You can check out her full presentation here.
\nLorelle VanFossen stepped up to the plate and shared her WordPress Power Tips. Her presentation can be viewed here.
\nThe next day of the event featured a live recording of the WordPress Podcast. The full video of this presentation is now online at WeblogToolsVideos.com.
\nThe next panel was by Chris Smith who went over SEO for Bloggers. The link to the Natural Search Blog contains a link to the presentation that Chris Smith gave the attendees.
\nAaron Brazell offered up an extensive presentation called WordPress FAQ. The FAQ answers questions such as can you have too many tags, what is the GPL, and the explanation of hooks. The end of the presentation takes questions from the attendees.
\nA panel that I particularly found interesting was the Business of blogging session featuring Liz Strauss, Mark Ghosh, Matt Mullenweg and Aaron Brazell. A ton of interesting points and conversations took place during the session and I thought it was one of the highlights of the event. Check out the ustream video that Mark Rizzn of Mashable.com recorded here.
\nLast but not least, Jacob Santos closed out the event with his presentation on Testing With WordPress. I have yet to see any videos posted of his session but he goes over it in more detail here.
\nFor those that have yet to see what this thing called Woopra is all about, Cali Lewis of GeekBrief.TV interviews John Pozadzides and gives you the low down.
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
Today’s WordPress Plugin video review is of Admin Favicon by John Kolbert.
\nVideo Summary: Admin Favicon is a plugin for those who have a lot of open tabs and would like to use a Favicon to show using the WordPress Administrative Panels.
\nPros: Extremely simple to use and quite useful for those who have a lot of open tabs in their browser. Very light-weight script.
\nCons: None. Admin Favicon is not ideal for those who use desktop publishers or browsers without tabbed support.
\nIf you would like your own plugin reviewed, please get in contact with me via e-mail (ronalfy+wltc @ gmail dot com). Please keep in mind I will not review premium plugins.
\nFor more videos, please check out our brand new video website at Weblog Tools Videos.
\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Mon, 07 Apr 2008 08:00:27 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:14:\"Ronald Huereca\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:1176:\"\nToday’s WordPress Plugin video review is of Admin Favicon by John Kolbert.
\nVideo Summary: Admin Favicon is a plugin for those who have a lot of open tabs and would like to use a Favicon to show using the WordPress Administrative Panels.
\nPros: Extremely simple to use and quite useful for those who have a lot of open tabs in their browser. Very light-weight script.
\nCons: None. Admin Favicon is not ideal for those who use desktop publishers or browsers without tabbed support.
\nIf you would like your own plugin reviewed, please get in contact with me via e-mail (ronalfy+wltc @ gmail dot com). Please keep in mind I will not review premium plugins.
\nFor more videos, please check out our brand new video website at Weblog Tools Videos.
\";}i:8;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:81:\"WordPress Podcast: Episode 39: WordPress 2.5 released - Live from WordCamp Dallas\";s:4:\"guid\";s:29:\"http://wp-community.org/?p=74\";s:4:\"link\";s:46:\"http://wp-community.org/2008/04/06/episode-39/\";s:11:\"description\";s:7169:\"I’d intended to release this episode during the week of March 30th, days after it was recorded live at WordCamp Dallas, but problems with the recorded audio prevented doing so. The audio you’ll hear was actually ripped from the video John Pozadzides released, so thanks, John!
\nJoining me on the dais were Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today, Mark Jaquith of b5media, later Mark Ghosh of Weblog Tools Collection, and later still, Matt Mullenweg of Automattic. Lorelle Van Fossen was nice enough to run around handing the wireless mic around so people could comment and ask questions. Subjects discussed and links to items mentioned in this episode include:
I’d intended to release this episode during the week of March 30th, days after it was recorded live at WordCamp Dallas, but problems with the recorded audio prevented doing so. The audio you’ll hear was actually ripped from the video John Pozadzides released, so thanks, John!
\nJoining me on the dais were Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today, Mark Jaquith of b5media, later Mark Ghosh of Weblog Tools Collection, and later still, Matt Mullenweg of Automattic. Lorelle Van Fossen was nice enough to run around handing the wireless mic around so people could comment and ask questions. Subjects discussed and links to items mentioned in this episode include:
Social Media Marketing at SeaWorld They put up a WordPress blog and uploaded raw content to Flickr and YouTube. They then worked the online communities focused on roller coasters to get the word out. This article is based on a video podcast by Shel Israel of FastCompany.tv. On one of the panels at WordCamp, we were asked a question that roughly translated to the same one that Shel is trying to get answers for. “How do you measure a conversation?” SeaWorld simply put together a blog and some pictures and videos using tools that are feely available, to generate buzz and conversation amongst ethusiasts they might have normally overlooked. The question in my mind is not how we measure but what we measure as the outcome of a social media marketing strategy and how we know that it is time to measure a particular set of results.
\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Sun, 06 Apr 2008 20:11:51 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:10:\"Mark Ghosh\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:1069:\"Social Media Marketing at SeaWorld They put up a WordPress blog and uploaded raw content to Flickr and YouTube. They then worked the online communities focused on roller coasters to get the word out. This article is based on a video podcast by Shel Israel of FastCompany.tv. On one of the panels at WordCamp, we were asked a question that roughly translated to the same one that Shel is trying to get answers for. “How do you measure a conversation?” SeaWorld simply put together a blog and some pictures and videos using tools that are feely available, to generate buzz and conversation amongst ethusiasts they might have normally overlooked. The question in my mind is not how we measure but what we measure as the outcome of a social media marketing strategy and how we know that it is time to measure a particular set of results.
\";}i:10;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:59:\"Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress Theme releases for 4 / 5\";s:4:\"guid\";s:86:\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/04/05/wordpress-theme-releases-for-4-5/\";s:4:\"link\";s:86:\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/04/05/wordpress-theme-releases-for-4-5/\";s:11:\"description\";s:2551:\"Mercedes
\n![\"mercedes-thumbnail\"](\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/04/mercedes-thumbnail.png\")
A fixed width 2 column theme which sports a Mercedes in its header. The theme is widget ready with a 2 column footer.
\nDemo | Release Page | Download
\nBlue Ecstasy
\n![\"blue-ecstasy-thumbnail\"](\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/04/blue-ecstasy-thumbnail.png\")
Blue Ecstasy is a simple, usable, and customizable widget-ready theme based on the famous Kubrick theme. The theme lighter than the original Kubrick theme.
\nDemo | Release Page | Download
\nSimply News
\n![\"simply-news-thumbnail\"](\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/04/simply-news-thumbnail.png\")
Simply News is a two column widget ready theme which makes use of red, black and while colors.
\nDemo | Release Page | Download
\nNight Whimsy
\n![\"night-wimsy-thumbnail\"](\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/04/night-wimsy-thumbnail.png\")
A three column theme which makes use of blue colors and also includes a illustration created by the author. The theme is widget ready.
\nDemo | Release Page | Download
\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Sun, 06 Apr 2008 03:55:31 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:12:\"Keith Dsouza\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:2551:\"Mercedes
\n
A fixed width 2 column theme which sports a Mercedes in its header. The theme is widget ready with a 2 column footer.
\nDemo | Release Page | Download
\nBlue Ecstasy
\n
Blue Ecstasy is a simple, usable, and customizable widget-ready theme based on the famous Kubrick theme. The theme lighter than the original Kubrick theme.
\nDemo | Release Page | Download
\nSimply News
\n
Simply News is a two column widget ready theme which makes use of red, black and while colors.
\nDemo | Release Page | Download
\nNight Whimsy
\n
A three column theme which makes use of blue colors and also includes a illustration created by the author. The theme is widget ready.
\nDemo | Release Page | Download
\";}i:11;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:79:\"Lorelle on WP: Scott Reilly: Two Weeks of WordPress Plugin Releases and Updates\";s:4:\"guid\";s:36:\"http://lorelle.wordpress.com/?p=2444\";s:4:\"link\";s:104:\"http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2008/04/05/scott-reilly-two-weeks-of-wordpress-plugin-releases-and-updates/\";s:11:\"description\";s:15006:\"![\"WordPress](\"http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/wpplugins.gif\")
In March of 2005, Scott Reilly of Coffee2Code shook up the WordPress Community with 7 Days of Plugins. During that week, Scott created and released:
<code> and <pre> tags to make writing code easier.This was a major undertaking, and the WordPress Community loved these useful and powerful Plugins. Customizable Post Listings, though, became Scott’s most powerful and most desirable Plugin over the past three plus years, surviving all WordPress upgrades until just recently.
\n![\"Customizable](\"http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2007/02/postshighlighted.png\")
Starting Monday, March 31, 2008, Scott began a double version of his 2005 success with 14 Days of WordPress Plugins, which began with the release of the new version of Customizable Post Listings v3.0.
Some of the new features in this amazingly versatile Plugin are:
\nBut the fun doesn’t stop with the update of Customizable Post Listings. In the past week, Scott has released numerous posts, updated old Plugins, and released new ones. Here are some highlights.
\nSo far, a week into the 14 day WordPress Plugin party, Scott has released five new Plugins and updated four older ones. A few of his Plugins have been deprecated, as their features are no longer needed in current WordPress versions, but the 5 new Plugins and the ones to come over the next 7 days will definitely make up for the loss of the old ones.
\nScott Reilly is one of the most innovative WordPress Plugin authors within the WordPress Community. He goes for usefulness rather than showy Plugins, improving how WordPress works for you and not against you. He may be taking requests, so if you have an idea for a great Plugin for WordPress, stop by Coffee2Code and offer your suggests.
\nIf you don’t have a new idea for a WordPress Plugin, stop by anyway and cheer on this exhausting two week project of giving back to the WordPress Community.
\nScott, good luck and thank you for all the hard work you do to help us blog better with WordPress.
\n
\n
Site Search Tags: wordpress plugins, wordpress news, scott reilly, coffee2code, week of wordpress plugins, two weeks of wordpress plugins, customizable post listings, wordpress plugin news, wordpress plugin releases, plugins
\n Subscribe Via Feedburner Subscribe by Email Visit
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won\'t Tell You About Blogging.
![\"\"](\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/categories/lorelle.wordpress.com/2444/\")
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![\"\"](\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/lorelle.wordpress.com/2444/\")
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![\"\"](\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=lorelle.wordpress.com&blog=72&post=2444&subd=lorelle&ref=&feed=1\")
In March of 2005, Scott Reilly of Coffee2Code shook up the WordPress Community with 7 Days of Plugins. During that week, Scott created and released:
<code> and <pre> tags to make writing code easier.This was a major undertaking, and the WordPress Community loved these useful and powerful Plugins. Customizable Post Listings, though, became Scott’s most powerful and most desirable Plugin over the past three plus years, surviving all WordPress upgrades until just recently.
\nStarting Monday, March 31, 2008, Scott began a double version of his 2005 success with 14 Days of WordPress Plugins, which began with the release of the new version of Customizable Post Listings v3.0.
Some of the new features in this amazingly versatile Plugin are:
\nBut the fun doesn’t stop with the update of Customizable Post Listings. In the past week, Scott has released numerous posts, updated old Plugins, and released new ones. Here are some highlights.
\nSo far, a week into the 14 day WordPress Plugin party, Scott has released five new Plugins and updated four older ones. A few of his Plugins have been deprecated, as their features are no longer needed in current WordPress versions, but the 5 new Plugins and the ones to come over the next 7 days will definitely make up for the loss of the old ones.
\nScott Reilly is one of the most innovative WordPress Plugin authors within the WordPress Community. He goes for usefulness rather than showy Plugins, improving how WordPress works for you and not against you. He may be taking requests, so if you have an idea for a great Plugin for WordPress, stop by Coffee2Code and offer your suggests.
\nIf you don’t have a new idea for a WordPress Plugin, stop by anyway and cheer on this exhausting two week project of giving back to the WordPress Community.
\nScott, good luck and thank you for all the hard work you do to help us blog better with WordPress.
\n
\n
Site Search Tags: wordpress plugins, wordpress news, scott reilly, coffee2code, week of wordpress plugins, two weeks of wordpress plugins, customizable post listings, wordpress plugin news, wordpress plugin releases, plugins
\n Subscribe Via Feedburner Subscribe by Email Visit
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won\'t Tell You About Blogging.
We had talked about introducing something new and exciting and I would like to take this opportunity to introduce Weblog Tools Videos to my readers. It is simply an extension of Weblog Tools Collection and a means for us to have the ability to find, upload, view, peruse and aggregate videos related to WordPress, blogging, tutorials, web design etc.
\nI am really excited about quite a few of the features of Weblog Tools Videos. In addition to the obvious ability to browse through the latest videos and the most popular ones, readers can add videos from various video upload sites, link to videos published elsewhere, upload their own videos and most importantly, record and upload videos from their computers directly from their webcam. There are plans to allow screencast capture and record and post Skype videos and conferences as well. So go ahead and register and start uploading and linking videos.
\nThe power of Weblog Tools Videos is in its users (which is why I ask you to register). When you upload a WordPress or a blogging video to YouTube, your video is lost in YouTube’s content stream, picked up and washed away in the barrage of new content. On Weblog Tools Videos, your multimedia will be exposed to a highly concentrated and well defined audience looking to view and absorb just the kind of media you are looking to produce. Since most of the other features, including the embedding and the social interaction is the same, you could upload your newly produced videos to Weblog Tools Videos and use it/embed it on your blog and/or social content in almost exactly the same way as before (expect an embed plugin soon). In the process, you will receive the attention of the Weblog Tools Collection audience as well as benefit from the exposure on your own site.
\nAre you videoing yet?
\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Sat, 05 Apr 2008 15:51:12 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:10:\"Mark Ghosh\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:1979:\"We had talked about introducing something new and exciting and I would like to take this opportunity to introduce Weblog Tools Videos to my readers. It is simply an extension of Weblog Tools Collection and a means for us to have the ability to find, upload, view, peruse and aggregate videos related to WordPress, blogging, tutorials, web design etc.
\nI am really excited about quite a few of the features of Weblog Tools Videos. In addition to the obvious ability to browse through the latest videos and the most popular ones, readers can add videos from various video upload sites, link to videos published elsewhere, upload their own videos and most importantly, record and upload videos from their computers directly from their webcam. There are plans to allow screencast capture and record and post Skype videos and conferences as well. So go ahead and register and start uploading and linking videos.
\nThe power of Weblog Tools Videos is in its users (which is why I ask you to register). When you upload a WordPress or a blogging video to YouTube, your video is lost in YouTube’s content stream, picked up and washed away in the barrage of new content. On Weblog Tools Videos, your multimedia will be exposed to a highly concentrated and well defined audience looking to view and absorb just the kind of media you are looking to produce. Since most of the other features, including the embedding and the social interaction is the same, you could upload your newly produced videos to Weblog Tools Videos and use it/embed it on your blog and/or social content in almost exactly the same way as before (expect an embed plugin soon). In the process, you will receive the attention of the Weblog Tools Collection audience as well as benefit from the exposure on your own site.
\nAre you videoing yet?
\";}i:13;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:57:\"Ryan Boren: New admin UI on WordPress.com, 2.5.1, and 2.6\";s:4:\"guid\";s:23:\"http://boren.nu/?p=1545\";s:4:\"link\";s:76:\"http://boren.nu/archives/2008/04/04/new-admin-ui-on-wordpresscom-251-and-26/\";s:11:\"description\";s:824:\"I went on an already planned vacation on the day we released 2.5. While I’ve been chilling out with my family in SoCal, the WP devs have been fixing bugs in preparation for 2.5.1, and the Automattic crew unveiled the new admin UI on WordPress.com. Feedback on the new UI from the large WordPress.com user base will be interesting and educational.
\nI’ll be back to WP work on Monday. I and the other WP devs will be focusing on fixing bugs for 2.5.1 and planning 2.6 features. After the lengthy 2.5 cycle, we’ll aim for a shorter feature list and quicker turn-around on 2.6.
\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Sat, 05 Apr 2008 01:32:35 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:4:\"Ryan\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:824:\"I went on an already planned vacation on the day we released 2.5. While I’ve been chilling out with my family in SoCal, the WP devs have been fixing bugs in preparation for 2.5.1, and the Automattic crew unveiled the new admin UI on WordPress.com. Feedback on the new UI from the large WordPress.com user base will be interesting and educational.
\nI’ll be back to WP work on Monday. I and the other WP devs will be focusing on fixing bugs for 2.5.1 and planning 2.6 features. After the lengthy 2.5 cycle, we’ll aim for a shorter feature list and quicker turn-around on 2.6.
\";}i:14;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:61:\"Weblog Tools Collection: Ultimate Guide to the WordPress Loop\";s:4:\"guid\";s:40:\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/?p=3374\";s:4:\"link\";s:90:\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/04/04/ultimate-guide-to-the-wordpress-loop/\";s:11:\"description\";s:891:\"The Ultimate Guide to the WordPress Loop: Ah, the famed WordPress loop that runs it all. Ronald has done a very nice job of identifying global variables in the WordPress loop in the past. Much like that post, this guide is for themers and plugin developers who want the inside scoop with some technical details on how things progress and what each of the pieces of code mean and how they do their job. The release of the fantastic 2.5 Brecker, all of this useful documentation being put together by the community and the tremendous theme designs being released, makes me want to add some fuel to the fire and build up the fever pitch. Stay tuned to this channel for some exciting news.
\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Fri, 04 Apr 2008 23:30:09 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:10:\"Mark Ghosh\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:891:\"The Ultimate Guide to the WordPress Loop: Ah, the famed WordPress loop that runs it all. Ronald has done a very nice job of identifying global variables in the WordPress loop in the past. Much like that post, this guide is for themers and plugin developers who want the inside scoop with some technical details on how things progress and what each of the pieces of code mean and how they do their job. The release of the fantastic 2.5 Brecker, all of this useful documentation being put together by the community and the tremendous theme designs being released, makes me want to add some fuel to the fire and build up the fever pitch. Stay tuned to this channel for some exciting news.
\";}i:15;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:31:\"Matt: WP Meetup in Philadelphia\";s:4:\"guid\";s:20:\"http://ma.tt/?p=4981\";s:4:\"link\";s:47:\"http://ma.tt/2008/04/wp-meetup-in-philadelphia/\";s:11:\"description\";s:432:\"I’m being honored by the Temple Fox School IT Awards so I’ll be in Philadelphia next week. I extended my trip so we can do a WordPress meetup on Thursday night, April 10. The current plan, thanks to Alex Hillman, is meeting at National Mechanics at 6PM.
\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Thu, 03 Apr 2008 23:40:36 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:4:\"Matt\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:432:\"I’m being honored by the Temple Fox School IT Awards so I’ll be in Philadelphia next week. I extended my trip so we can do a WordPress meetup on Thursday night, April 10. The current plan, thanks to Alex Hillman, is meeting at National Mechanics at 6PM.
\";}i:16;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:53:\"Weblog Tools Collection: Organizing A WordCamp Part 1\";s:4:\"guid\";s:82:\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/04/03/organizing-a-wordcamp-part-1/\";s:4:\"link\";s:82:\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/04/03/organizing-a-wordcamp-part-1/\";s:11:\"description\";s:1299:\"WordCamps are awesome events that take up an extraordinary amount of time and effort to put together. I was lucky enough to be able to attend the recent WordCamp Dallas and I must admit, Charles Stricklin along with John Pozadzides did one heck of a job putting on a great conference. I thought it went over rather well and I have yet to hear anyone complain about any aspect of the event.
\nAs promised, Charles has published the first in a series of articles which will cover in detail what it took in order to turn WordCamp Dallas from an idea, into a reality. The first article contains information related to the very beginnings of a WordCamp event. This is the brainstorming session.
\nThe first three steps you should consider before going any further include:
\nCharles plans on tackling the subjects of venue selection, pricing and sponsors so be sure to keep an eye on his blog for those posts.
\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Thu, 03 Apr 2008 20:52:04 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:10:\"Jeffro2pt0\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:1299:\"WordCamps are awesome events that take up an extraordinary amount of time and effort to put together. I was lucky enough to be able to attend the recent WordCamp Dallas and I must admit, Charles Stricklin along with John Pozadzides did one heck of a job putting on a great conference. I thought it went over rather well and I have yet to hear anyone complain about any aspect of the event.
\nAs promised, Charles has published the first in a series of articles which will cover in detail what it took in order to turn WordCamp Dallas from an idea, into a reality. The first article contains information related to the very beginnings of a WordCamp event. This is the brainstorming session.
\nThe first three steps you should consider before going any further include:
\nCharles plans on tackling the subjects of venue selection, pricing and sponsors so be sure to keep an eye on his blog for those posts.
\";}i:17;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:17:\"Matt: New bbPress\";s:4:\"guid\";s:20:\"http://ma.tt/?p=4980\";s:4:\"link\";s:33:\"http://ma.tt/2008/04/new-bbpress/\";s:11:\"description\";s:94:\"\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:34:44 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:4:\"Matt\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:94:\"\";}i:18;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:66:\"Donncha: Slow down trackback spam with Simple Trackback Validation\";s:4:\"guid\";s:29:\"http://ocaoimh.ie/?p=89493627\";s:4:\"link\";s:87:\"http://ocaoimh.ie/2008/04/03/slow-down-trackback-spam-with-simple-trackback-validation/\";s:11:\"description\";s:2482:\"I used the Simple Trackback Validation plugin for a while until I noticed these errors showing up in php_errors.
\n\n
PHP Fatal error: Cannot instantiate non-existent class: snoopy in /home/www/wp-content/plugins/simple-trackback-validation/simple-trackback-validation.php on line 158
This morning I decided to fix it as the spammers have been going crazy. I spotted dozens of POST requests to trackbacks as I tailed my log files.
\n![\"\"](\"http://ocaoimh.ie/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/spamtrackbacks-300x276.jpg\" "\\"spam")
How to fix the plugin:
\n$stbvSnoopy = new Snoopy;\n
include_once( ABSPATH . \'wp-includes/class-snoopy.php\' );\n
It’s no substitute for Akismet but along with Cookies for comments it should help keep your blog spam free!
\nOr, as I’ve just done because this blog is being inundated with trackback spam right now (over 17,000 in the last 9 hours), I blocked off access completely with this rewrite rule. Any WordPress blog will send a pingback anyway and MT even supports pingback now!
\n\n
RewriteRule ^(.*)/trackback/ - [F]
Related Posts
\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Thu, 03 Apr 2008 06:30:06 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:7:\"Donncha\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:2482:\"I used the Simple Trackback Validation plugin for a while until I noticed these errors showing up in php_errors.
\n\n
PHP Fatal error: Cannot instantiate non-existent class: snoopy in /home/www/wp-content/plugins/simple-trackback-validation/simple-trackback-validation.php on line 158
This morning I decided to fix it as the spammers have been going crazy. I spotted dozens of POST requests to trackbacks as I tailed my log files.
\nHow to fix the plugin:
\n$stbvSnoopy = new Snoopy;\n
include_once( ABSPATH . \'wp-includes/class-snoopy.php\' );\n
It’s no substitute for Akismet but along with Cookies for comments it should help keep your blog spam free!
\nOr, as I’ve just done because this blog is being inundated with trackback spam right now (over 17,000 in the last 9 hours), I blocked off access completely with this rewrite rule. Any WordPress blog will send a pingback anyway and MT even supports pingback now!
\n\n
RewriteRule ^(.*)/trackback/ - [F]
Related Posts
\";}i:19;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:29:\"bbPress: bbPress 0.9 released\";s:4:\"guid\";s:24:\"http://bbpress.org/?p=79\";s:4:\"link\";s:51:\"http://bbpress.org/blog/2008/04/bbpress-09-brubeck/\";s:11:\"description\";s:5893:\"The bbPress team is happy to release bbPress 0.9 for download. This release is important for anyone who integrates bbPress with WordPress and wishes to update to WordPress 2.5.
\nPrimarily this is a compatibility release so that we can continue to provide the same integration levels with WordPress as in the past, however quite a few other improvements have made their way into this version.
\nImprovements and changes include:
\nWe intend to provide updated and more detailed installation and integration instructions in the near future, but most users will find the following “quickstart” sufficient:
\nUpgrading to bbPress 0.9 will not be as straight-forward as past releases. Our recommended upgrade path is to follow the sequence below:
\nconfig.php file to config.old.phpbbPress 0.9 is named “Brubeck” after American Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck. In his early career he often performed with saxophonist Paul Desmond, after whom bbPress 0.8 was named. Brubeck has composed a number of jazz standards many of which employ complex rhythms and unusual time signatures.
\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Thu, 03 Apr 2008 03:16:30 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:10:\"Sam Bauers\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:5893:\"The bbPress team is happy to release bbPress 0.9 for download. This release is important for anyone who integrates bbPress with WordPress and wishes to update to WordPress 2.5.
\nPrimarily this is a compatibility release so that we can continue to provide the same integration levels with WordPress as in the past, however quite a few other improvements have made their way into this version.
\nImprovements and changes include:
\nWe intend to provide updated and more detailed installation and integration instructions in the near future, but most users will find the following “quickstart” sufficient:
\nUpgrading to bbPress 0.9 will not be as straight-forward as past releases. Our recommended upgrade path is to follow the sequence below:
\nconfig.php file to config.old.phpbbPress 0.9 is named “Brubeck” after American Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck. In his early career he often performed with saxophonist Paul Desmond, after whom bbPress 0.8 was named. Brubeck has composed a number of jazz standards many of which employ complex rhythms and unusual time signatures.
\";}i:20;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:55:\"Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress 2.5 Upgrade Guide(s)\";s:4:\"guid\";s:81:\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/04/02/wordpress-25-upgrade-guides/\";s:4:\"link\";s:81:\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/04/02/wordpress-25-upgrade-guides/\";s:11:\"description\";s:1658:\"There are many guides out there (one in particular I won’t dare mention) about upgrading to 2.5, but I was curious how your experience was.
\nI’ve personally upgraded two of my blogs — one manually, and one using Keith’s awesome WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin. In both cases, I ran into no issues aside from a few incompatible plugins (you did check the list, right?).
\nTo get the ball rolling, here are several links to some upgrade experiences around the web. My hope is to make this post a resource with a list of upgrade guides and experiences. Please feel free to add your own in the comments below (only one link please).
\nSo what was your upgrade experience like?
\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:56:12 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:14:\"Ronald Huereca\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:1658:\"There are many guides out there (one in particular I won’t dare mention) about upgrading to 2.5, but I was curious how your experience was.
\nI’ve personally upgraded two of my blogs — one manually, and one using Keith’s awesome WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin. In both cases, I ran into no issues aside from a few incompatible plugins (you did check the list, right?).
\nTo get the ball rolling, here are several links to some upgrade experiences around the web. My hope is to make this post a resource with a list of upgrade guides and experiences. Please feel free to add your own in the comments below (only one link please).
\nSo what was your upgrade experience like?
\";}i:21;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:25:\"Matt: Why Blog? Book Deal\";s:4:\"guid\";s:20:\"http://ma.tt/?p=4979\";s:4:\"link\";s:40:\"http://ma.tt/2008/04/why-blog-book-deal/\";s:11:\"description\";s:373:\"Why Blog? Reason No. 92: Book Deal - New York Times. Talks about two WordPress.com blogs - Stuff White People Like and I Can Haz Cheezburger.
\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Wed, 02 Apr 2008 19:54:32 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:4:\"Matt\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:373:\"Why Blog? Reason No. 92: Book Deal - New York Times. Talks about two WordPress.com blogs - Stuff White People Like and I Can Haz Cheezburger.
\";}i:22;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:28:\"Dougal Campbell: Atlanta PHP\";s:4:\"guid\";s:32:\"http://dougal.gunters.org/?p=901\";s:4:\"link\";s:53:\"http://dougal.gunters.org/blog/2008/04/02/atlanta-php\";s:11:\"description\";s:2309:\"Tomorrow night, I will be attending the April Atlanta PHP meeting. My friend Glen Gordon will be giving a presentation titled, “I’m a PHP dev! Why should I care about Microsoft?”
\n\nThere are a host of technologies and tools from Microsoft that can add value to your PHP solutions, save you time, and are just plain cool. This presentation will cover server technologies like FastCGI, IIS and the PHP SQL Server Driver, client technologies like the ASP.NET AJAX Library and Silverlight, as well as developer tools. This is not a sales pitch – it’s a technical walkthrough with demos, and will give you pointers to lots of resources for digging deeper.
I’m sure Glen’s talk will be interesting, and I’m looking forward to a chance to catch up on the current state of web servers in Microsoft-land. While I tend to use unix-based systems for most of my own work, there are plenty of organizations who are standardized on Microsoft products, and you have to be able to be able to work with what they have. Case in point, my wife is hoping to set up a WordPress website for her department at work, and they’ll probably set it up on a Windows-based server.
\nIf anybody reading this is planning to attend, please introduce yourself. I’ll be wearing a WordPress shirt.
\n\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:42:16 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:6:\"Dougal\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:2309:\"Tomorrow night, I will be attending the April Atlanta PHP meeting. My friend Glen Gordon will be giving a presentation titled, “I’m a PHP dev! Why should I care about Microsoft?”
\n\nThere are a host of technologies and tools from Microsoft that can add value to your PHP solutions, save you time, and are just plain cool. This presentation will cover server technologies like FastCGI, IIS and the PHP SQL Server Driver, client technologies like the ASP.NET AJAX Library and Silverlight, as well as developer tools. This is not a sales pitch – it’s a technical walkthrough with demos, and will give you pointers to lots of resources for digging deeper.
I’m sure Glen’s talk will be interesting, and I’m looking forward to a chance to catch up on the current state of web servers in Microsoft-land. While I tend to use unix-based systems for most of my own work, there are plenty of organizations who are standardized on Microsoft products, and you have to be able to be able to work with what they have. Case in point, my wife is hoping to set up a WordPress website for her department at work, and they’ll probably set it up on a Windows-based server.
\nIf anybody reading this is planning to attend, please introduce yourself. I’ll be wearing a WordPress shirt.
\n\";}i:23;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:21:\"Matt: OpenID and Spam\";s:4:\"guid\";s:20:\"http://ma.tt/?p=4978\";s:4:\"link\";s:37:\"http://ma.tt/2008/04/openid-and-spam/\";s:11:\"description\";s:2368:\"Magnolia is going to be restricting their signups to only OpenID users:
\n\nWhy? Because 75% of new accounts being created there lately have been created by spammers using automated tools. Spammers took over Ma.gnolia. Now, the company is using OpenID as a system of 3rd party verified identity and using the superior spam blocking skills of services like Yahoo! and AIM to clean up the Ma.gnolia ranks. Spamfighting could be the incentive that puts many other vendors over the edge to leverage OpenID.
At best this is a Club solution, meaning it’ll be effective as long as Magnolia is not a worthwhile enough target or not enough people use the technique.
\nAnyone advocating that a Yahoo, Google, or AOL account is going to stop spam signups, sploggers, or anything of the sort is out of touch with the dark side of the internet. The going rate for a valid Google account is about a penny each. For $100 get a text file with 10,000 valid logins and passwords, and go to town. We used to require email verification to signup for WordPress.com, and the vast majority of splogs were coming from Gmail or Yahoo email addresses, hundreds of thousands of them. Myspace and ICQ are both good examples of completely closed identity systems with registration barriers but still overrun with spam.
\nEach of the big guys probably has an anti-abuse team larger than all of Magnolia fighting these spam signups, but it obviously hasn’t been effective. In theory you could blacklist OpenID providers but who’s going to block Google and Yahoo and even if they did they’re just pushing the problem outward, to the point where spammers eventually run their own identity providers, and if you think they won’t come from millions of unique registered domains look at your comment spam queue.
\nOpenID has a ton of promise for the web — let’s not hurt it by setting people up for disappointment by telling them it’s a spam blocker when it’s not. Regardless of registration, identity verification, or CAPTCHA, you still need something working at the content level to block spam.
\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Wed, 02 Apr 2008 06:38:19 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:4:\"Matt\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:2368:\"Magnolia is going to be restricting their signups to only OpenID users:
\n\nWhy? Because 75% of new accounts being created there lately have been created by spammers using automated tools. Spammers took over Ma.gnolia. Now, the company is using OpenID as a system of 3rd party verified identity and using the superior spam blocking skills of services like Yahoo! and AIM to clean up the Ma.gnolia ranks. Spamfighting could be the incentive that puts many other vendors over the edge to leverage OpenID.
At best this is a Club solution, meaning it’ll be effective as long as Magnolia is not a worthwhile enough target or not enough people use the technique.
\nAnyone advocating that a Yahoo, Google, or AOL account is going to stop spam signups, sploggers, or anything of the sort is out of touch with the dark side of the internet. The going rate for a valid Google account is about a penny each. For $100 get a text file with 10,000 valid logins and passwords, and go to town. We used to require email verification to signup for WordPress.com, and the vast majority of splogs were coming from Gmail or Yahoo email addresses, hundreds of thousands of them. Myspace and ICQ are both good examples of completely closed identity systems with registration barriers but still overrun with spam.
\nEach of the big guys probably has an anti-abuse team larger than all of Magnolia fighting these spam signups, but it obviously hasn’t been effective. In theory you could blacklist OpenID providers but who’s going to block Google and Yahoo and even if they did they’re just pushing the problem outward, to the point where spammers eventually run their own identity providers, and if you think they won’t come from millions of unique registered domains look at your comment spam queue.
\nOpenID has a ton of promise for the web — let’s not hurt it by setting people up for disappointment by telling them it’s a spam blocker when it’s not. Regardless of registration, identity verification, or CAPTCHA, you still need something working at the content level to block spam.
\";}i:24;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:58:\"Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress Plugin releases for 4/1\";s:4:\"guid\";s:86:\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/04/01/wordpress-plugin-releases-for-41/\";s:4:\"link\";s:86:\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/04/01/wordpress-plugin-releases-for-41/\";s:11:\"description\";s:1651:\"iBox
\niBox is plugin that allows you to create overlays of images, html pages, inline layers and YouTube videos or any other flash videos. The plugin works even when there is no JavaScript support in the browser.
\n\niShare
\nAnother plugin from the previous authors which allows you to easily share your content using social networking and email. Even allows you users to directly print the document or download word and PDF documents.
\n\nShashin
\nUse Shashin to embed Picasa photos and album galleries in your posts, pages, and sidebar. Includes widgets, random photos, newest photos, links to Google Maps, and more.
\n\nBranded Login Screen
\nThis plugin allows custom graphics for the login screen that will not be overwritten with an upgrade of WordPress. It is complatible with WP 2.3.3 & WP 2.5.
\n\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Wed, 02 Apr 2008 03:55:49 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:12:\"Keith Dsouza\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:1651:\"iBox
\niBox is plugin that allows you to create overlays of images, html pages, inline layers and YouTube videos or any other flash videos. The plugin works even when there is no JavaScript support in the browser.
\n\niShare
\nAnother plugin from the previous authors which allows you to easily share your content using social networking and email. Even allows you users to directly print the document or download word and PDF documents.
\n\nShashin
\nUse Shashin to embed Picasa photos and album galleries in your posts, pages, and sidebar. Includes widgets, random photos, newest photos, links to Google Maps, and more.
\n\nBranded Login Screen
\nThis plugin allows custom graphics for the login screen that will not be overwritten with an upgrade of WordPress. It is complatible with WP 2.3.3 & WP 2.5.
\n\";}i:25;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:51:\"Mark Jaquith: Mike Industries switches to WordPress\";s:4:\"guid\";s:39:\"http://markjaquith.wordpress.com/?p=140\";s:4:\"link\";s:82:\"http://markjaquith.wordpress.com/2008/04/01/mike-industries-switches-to-wordpress/\";s:11:\"description\";s:2442:\"Mike Davidson, CEO of the very cool Newsvine, switched from Movable Type to WordPress three months ago, and spent some time listing his reasons for doing so. Consider this the antidote for any WordPress community members who were feeling a little bruised by Anil Dash’s recent article about switching in the opposite direction.
\nAside to Mike: are you planning on attending Gnomedex this year? Rumored to be the weekend of August 8th. I’d love a chance to meet you.
\nAside to Anil: I swear I’m going to reply to the technical points of your WP 2.5 article eventually. There are a few points that merit correction, and other points that deserve a response.
\n![\"\"](\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/categories/markjaquith.wordpress.com/140/\")
![\"\"](\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/tags/markjaquith.wordpress.com/140/\")
![\"\"](\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/markjaquith.wordpress.com/140/\")
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![\"\"](\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/markjaquith.wordpress.com/140/\")
![\"\"](\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/markjaquith.wordpress.com/140/\")
![\"\"](\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/markjaquith.wordpress.com/140/\")
![\"\"](\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=markjaquith.wordpress.com&blog=316&post=140&subd=markjaquith&ref=&feed=1\")
Mike Davidson, CEO of the very cool Newsvine, switched from Movable Type to WordPress three months ago, and spent some time listing his reasons for doing so. Consider this the antidote for any WordPress community members who were feeling a little bruised by Anil Dash’s recent article about switching in the opposite direction.
\nAside to Mike: are you planning on attending Gnomedex this year? Rumored to be the weekend of August 8th. I’d love a chance to meet you.
\nAside to Anil: I swear I’m going to reply to the technical points of your WP 2.5 article eventually. There are a few points that merit correction, and other points that deserve a response.
\n [I did not write this post. It was written with great care and in great detail by MichaelH on the news section and is reproduced verbatim here. For those of you that do not know Michael’s work, his work on the Codex and his help with WordPress and its documentation makes him a legend in my books. Thank you Michael!]
\nThese questions and answers were gleaned from the wp-hackers and wp-testers e-mail lists over that last several weeks.
\nQ. How can I find the Post ID or Page ID?
\nA. If your browser shows the URL in the status bar, when you mouse over a link, you can see the ID in the as part of the URL displayed in the browser status bar. In FireFox you can show the status bar by checking the Status bar choice under View. A more complicated method to finding the ID is to use something like phpMyAdmin to look at the database table wp_posts–look down the column of post_title to find your Post or Page Title. The ID field on that row will be your Post (or Page) ID.
Q. How do I find the Category ID?
\nA. In Manage->Categories, place your mouse over the Category Name you are trying to find the ID for and the ‘cat_ID’ will show as part of the URL displayed in the browser status bar. In FireFox you can show the status bar by checking the Status bar choice under View. A more complicated method to finding the Category ID is to use something like phpMyAdmin to look at the database table wp_terms and find the row where name column is your Category Description. The term_id on that row will be your Category ID.
Q. How can I edit my Post slug or my Page slug?
\nA. The Post (or Page) slug is now displayed as the Permalink under the Title field in writing or editing a Post or Page. If you are using the “Default” Peramlink Settings you will not see and can’t edit the Permalink. Only if you are using a ‘pretty Permalink’ (e.g. Month and name) in Settings->Permalinks will the Permalink be available for edit. When creating a new Post or Page, the Permalink field won’t show up until you complete the Title.
Q. Where are my Post Categories and Tags when writing a Post?
\nA. Scroll down below the Post content box.
Q. How do I rearrange the order Advanced Options boxes like Custom Fields and Excerpt?
\nA. This is no longer possible.
Q. I don’t see a link to edit a user’s name.
\nA. In the table of Users, click on the name (represented as a link), to edit that user’s information.
Q. What happened to my Import Links ability?
\nA. Export Links is displayed under the Related section on the Write->Link screen
Q. Where’s the menu tab to access the Dashboard?
\nA. The link to the Dashboard is in the dark border at the top left of the screen.
Q. What happened to my child categories? I had the Category Ford both as a Child of New Cars, and as a Child of Old Car, but I can’t do that any longer?
\nA. Duplicate Category (and Tag) names are not longer allowed.
Q. I can’t upload certain file types and get message “File type does not meet security guidelines. Try another”
\nA. Unknown file extensions are ‘blocked from uploading’. New extensions and their icons can be added via changes to the functions wp_check_filetype and wp_ext2type in wp-includes/functions.php.
Q. How can I change that red banner in the Dashboard?
\nA. Change to the ‘Classic’ Admin Color Schemes in Users->Your Profile.
Q. What happened to my Options choices?
\nA. Options are now called Settings and that menu tab is to the right on your menu next to Plugins and Users.
Q. How do I edit a Category Description?
\nA. Under Manage->Categories, click on the Category Name you wish to edit.
Q. How do I edit a Comment?
\nA. Under Comments, click on the name of the comment author and then you will be placed in ‘Edit Comment’ mode.
Q. Where is the WordPress Bookmarklet?
\nA. It’s gone for now but will likely be available in Version 2.6 but see Dion Hulce’s suggestion in the Forums.
Q. When in the Media Library, what is this error — Fatal error: Call to undefined function: wp_get_attachment_image() in /home/public_html/wp-includes/post-template.php on line 384
\nA. This is usually caused by a PHP file not being correctly uploaded. Make sure wp-includes/media.php and wp-settings.php are intact (reupload them).
Q. When trying to upload media files I get the message “Are you sure you want to do that?” with a link telling me to try again. Clicking “Please try again” simply reloads the dashboard into the frame.
\nA. You may need to disable your plugins one-by-one to find the ‘problem’ plugin. Some older plugins, such as Ryan Duff’s old WP-Contact plugin, have been reported to cause this problem, so check under the Plugins tab to see if your Plugins need updating.
Q. Has the option to enable/disable Gzip compression been removed from 2.5?
\nA Yes, the option is gone. WordPress now leaves compression as a decision for the server.
Q. Why can’t I add media in Manage->Media Library?
\nA. This was planned for 2.5 but didn’t make it into code so this will be included in a future release.
Q. How do I add links to my Blogroll?
\nA. A new menu choice, Write->Link, allows creation of new Links. In Manage->Links, there is an “add new” link to the right of the Manage Links heading. Also remember the new Manage->Link Categories to add and maintain Link Categories.
Q. What happened to the Post Timestamp box? How do I change the Post Timestamp?
\nA. In Write->Post, in the Publish Status area, click on the Edit button to the right of Publish immediately. When editing a Post, there is a similar edit button in the Publish Status area next to the Published on date and time.
Q. My screen is using 1280×960 pixels and I notice that admin screens are left aligned, not centered or stretched 100%.
\nA. This is the intended design. Viper007bond has Remove Max Width Plugin to change this.
Q. The collation set in “wp-config.php” (DB_COLLATE) is not being used in searches.
\nA. This will be likely be fixed in 2.5.1 but see this thread at wp-testers for a suggested fix.
Q. I get a “403 Forbidden” error when uploading files. I am also using the Bad Behavior plugin.
\nA. May need to delete the “Shockwave Flash” from the Bad Behavior blacklist file. See Rick Beckman’s post for a detailed description.
Q. I just tried to upload several media file and my browser crashed when it got to the “Crunching” part.
\nA. It is possible your system doesn’t support the Flash uploader or needs an upgrade to your Flash Player. Dion Hulse also wrote the the No Flash Uploader plugin to disable the Flash uploader.
Q. I can’t edit the Post slug/permalink and I’m sure I’m using pretty permalinks
\nA. To help debug the problem, answer these questions. What is your permalink structure? Can you provide the permalink for a post that does not show the Permalink field in the editor? Do you get any JS errors in the console? If you have plugins activated, does the problem persist if they are deactivated?
Q. The Change button (beside the Remove button) in Design->Widgets isn’t working. When I click change (beside remove button) it doesn’t save the changes to the widget.
\nA. Clicking Change doesn’t actually do a save and reload. You have to click “Save Changes” at the bottom to make the changes stick.
Q. In older versions, below widgets we had the option to select how many ‘Text’ widgets we want to use, but I don’t see that in 2.5.
\nA. The option is no longer needed. Widgets that allow multiple instances (e.g. Text widget) can be added as many times as you like by just clicking on the Add button. Remember to “Save Changes” when done adding the widgets.
Q. Can I revert from Version 2.5 to Version 2.3.3?
\nA. The best way is to restore your 2.3.3 database and files. If that is not possible, then any user that accessed the 2.5 blog or was added in 2.5 would need the MD5 password reset in the user table.
Q. I have several production blogs using Version 2.3.3 and I just upgraded to Version 2.5 on one of those blog. All the blogs share a common user table for the user names and passwords, but when I login to the Version 2.5 blog with a user, why can’t I use that same user to login to the 2.3.3 blogs.
\nA. Version 2.5 has enhance the password authentication so the passwords created/used for a 2.5 blog will not work on a 2.3.3 blog. Ryan wrote MD5 Password Hashes plugin to use the old password hashing (like what is used in Version 2.3.3) in a Version 2.5 blog.
Q. How do I add a youtube video to a 2.5 Post?
\nA. In the HTML mode, paste the youtube URL (youtube tells you this) into the post. In the Visual mode, paste the youtube URL into the popup activated when you click on the “Insert/edit embedded media” icon on the 2nd toolbar row.
In addition to these questions and the provided answers, if you have any new ones that you would like to add, please leave us a comment and we will add them to the list.
\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:08:31 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:10:\"Mark Ghosh\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:10797:\"[I did not write this post. It was written with great care and in great detail by MichaelH on the news section and is reproduced verbatim here. For those of you that do not know Michael’s work, his work on the Codex and his help with WordPress and its documentation makes him a legend in my books. Thank you Michael!]
\nThese questions and answers were gleaned from the wp-hackers and wp-testers e-mail lists over that last several weeks.
\nQ. How can I find the Post ID or Page ID?
\nA. If your browser shows the URL in the status bar, when you mouse over a link, you can see the ID in the as part of the URL displayed in the browser status bar. In FireFox you can show the status bar by checking the Status bar choice under View. A more complicated method to finding the ID is to use something like phpMyAdmin to look at the database table wp_posts–look down the column of post_title to find your Post or Page Title. The ID field on that row will be your Post (or Page) ID.
Q. How do I find the Category ID?
\nA. In Manage->Categories, place your mouse over the Category Name you are trying to find the ID for and the ‘cat_ID’ will show as part of the URL displayed in the browser status bar. In FireFox you can show the status bar by checking the Status bar choice under View. A more complicated method to finding the Category ID is to use something like phpMyAdmin to look at the database table wp_terms and find the row where name column is your Category Description. The term_id on that row will be your Category ID.
Q. How can I edit my Post slug or my Page slug?
\nA. The Post (or Page) slug is now displayed as the Permalink under the Title field in writing or editing a Post or Page. If you are using the “Default” Peramlink Settings you will not see and can’t edit the Permalink. Only if you are using a ‘pretty Permalink’ (e.g. Month and name) in Settings->Permalinks will the Permalink be available for edit. When creating a new Post or Page, the Permalink field won’t show up until you complete the Title.
Q. Where are my Post Categories and Tags when writing a Post?
\nA. Scroll down below the Post content box.
Q. How do I rearrange the order Advanced Options boxes like Custom Fields and Excerpt?
\nA. This is no longer possible.
Q. I don’t see a link to edit a user’s name.
\nA. In the table of Users, click on the name (represented as a link), to edit that user’s information.
Q. What happened to my Import Links ability?
\nA. Export Links is displayed under the Related section on the Write->Link screen
Q. Where’s the menu tab to access the Dashboard?
\nA. The link to the Dashboard is in the dark border at the top left of the screen.
Q. What happened to my child categories? I had the Category Ford both as a Child of New Cars, and as a Child of Old Car, but I can’t do that any longer?
\nA. Duplicate Category (and Tag) names are not longer allowed.
Q. I can’t upload certain file types and get message “File type does not meet security guidelines. Try another”
\nA. Unknown file extensions are ‘blocked from uploading’. New extensions and their icons can be added via changes to the functions wp_check_filetype and wp_ext2type in wp-includes/functions.php.
Q. How can I change that red banner in the Dashboard?
\nA. Change to the ‘Classic’ Admin Color Schemes in Users->Your Profile.
Q. What happened to my Options choices?
\nA. Options are now called Settings and that menu tab is to the right on your menu next to Plugins and Users.
Q. How do I edit a Category Description?
\nA. Under Manage->Categories, click on the Category Name you wish to edit.
Q. How do I edit a Comment?
\nA. Under Comments, click on the name of the comment author and then you will be placed in ‘Edit Comment’ mode.
Q. Where is the WordPress Bookmarklet?
\nA. It’s gone for now but will likely be available in Version 2.6 but see Dion Hulce’s suggestion in the Forums.
Q. When in the Media Library, what is this error — Fatal error: Call to undefined function: wp_get_attachment_image() in /home/public_html/wp-includes/post-template.php on line 384
\nA. This is usually caused by a PHP file not being correctly uploaded. Make sure wp-includes/media.php and wp-settings.php are intact (reupload them).
Q. When trying to upload media files I get the message “Are you sure you want to do that?” with a link telling me to try again. Clicking “Please try again” simply reloads the dashboard into the frame.
\nA. You may need to disable your plugins one-by-one to find the ‘problem’ plugin. Some older plugins, such as Ryan Duff’s old WP-Contact plugin, have been reported to cause this problem, so check under the Plugins tab to see if your Plugins need updating.
Q. Has the option to enable/disable Gzip compression been removed from 2.5?
\nA Yes, the option is gone. WordPress now leaves compression as a decision for the server.
Q. Why can’t I add media in Manage->Media Library?
\nA. This was planned for 2.5 but didn’t make it into code so this will be included in a future release.
Q. How do I add links to my Blogroll?
\nA. A new menu choice, Write->Link, allows creation of new Links. In Manage->Links, there is an “add new” link to the right of the Manage Links heading. Also remember the new Manage->Link Categories to add and maintain Link Categories.
Q. What happened to the Post Timestamp box? How do I change the Post Timestamp?
\nA. In Write->Post, in the Publish Status area, click on the Edit button to the right of Publish immediately. When editing a Post, there is a similar edit button in the Publish Status area next to the Published on date and time.
Q. My screen is using 1280×960 pixels and I notice that admin screens are left aligned, not centered or stretched 100%.
\nA. This is the intended design. Viper007bond has Remove Max Width Plugin to change this.
Q. The collation set in “wp-config.php” (DB_COLLATE) is not being used in searches.
\nA. This will be likely be fixed in 2.5.1 but see this thread at wp-testers for a suggested fix.
Q. I get a “403 Forbidden” error when uploading files. I am also using the Bad Behavior plugin.
\nA. May need to delete the “Shockwave Flash” from the Bad Behavior blacklist file. See Rick Beckman’s post for a detailed description.
Q. I just tried to upload several media file and my browser crashed when it got to the “Crunching” part.
\nA. It is possible your system doesn’t support the Flash uploader or needs an upgrade to your Flash Player. Dion Hulse also wrote the the No Flash Uploader plugin to disable the Flash uploader.
Q. I can’t edit the Post slug/permalink and I’m sure I’m using pretty permalinks
\nA. To help debug the problem, answer these questions. What is your permalink structure? Can you provide the permalink for a post that does not show the Permalink field in the editor? Do you get any JS errors in the console? If you have plugins activated, does the problem persist if they are deactivated?
Q. The Change button (beside the Remove button) in Design->Widgets isn’t working. When I click change (beside remove button) it doesn’t save the changes to the widget.
\nA. Clicking Change doesn’t actually do a save and reload. You have to click “Save Changes” at the bottom to make the changes stick.
Q. In older versions, below widgets we had the option to select how many ‘Text’ widgets we want to use, but I don’t see that in 2.5.
\nA. The option is no longer needed. Widgets that allow multiple instances (e.g. Text widget) can be added as many times as you like by just clicking on the Add button. Remember to “Save Changes” when done adding the widgets.
Q. Can I revert from Version 2.5 to Version 2.3.3?
\nA. The best way is to restore your 2.3.3 database and files. If that is not possible, then any user that accessed the 2.5 blog or was added in 2.5 would need the MD5 password reset in the user table.
Q. I have several production blogs using Version 2.3.3 and I just upgraded to Version 2.5 on one of those blog. All the blogs share a common user table for the user names and passwords, but when I login to the Version 2.5 blog with a user, why can’t I use that same user to login to the 2.3.3 blogs.
\nA. Version 2.5 has enhance the password authentication so the passwords created/used for a 2.5 blog will not work on a 2.3.3 blog. Ryan wrote MD5 Password Hashes plugin to use the old password hashing (like what is used in Version 2.3.3) in a Version 2.5 blog.
Q. How do I add a youtube video to a 2.5 Post?
\nA. In the HTML mode, paste the youtube URL (youtube tells you this) into the post. In the Visual mode, paste the youtube URL into the popup activated when you click on the “Insert/edit embedded media” icon on the 2nd toolbar row.
In addition to these questions and the provided answers, if you have any new ones that you would like to add, please leave us a comment and we will add them to the list.
\";}i:27;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:25:\"Matt: New BuddyPress Site\";s:4:\"guid\";s:20:\"http://ma.tt/?p=4977\";s:4:\"link\";s:41:\"http://ma.tt/2008/03/new-buddypress-site/\";s:11:\"description\";s:353:\"The new BuddyPress site is up and includes the key ingredients of an open source project: mailing list, bug tracker, and SVN. No official release of anything yet, but if you’re interested in following the development you should join the mailing list. The site itself is, of course, powered by WordPress.
\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Tue, 01 Apr 2008 06:57:12 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:4:\"Matt\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:353:\"The new BuddyPress site is up and includes the key ingredients of an open source project: mailing list, bug tracker, and SVN. No official release of anything yet, but if you’re interested in following the development you should join the mailing list. The site itself is, of course, powered by WordPress.
\";}i:28;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:56:\"Weblog Tools Collection: Phenomenal WordCamp Dallas 2008\";s:4:\"guid\";s:85:\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/03/31/phenomenal-wordcamp-dallas-2008/\";s:4:\"link\";s:85:\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/03/31/phenomenal-wordcamp-dallas-2008/\";s:11:\"description\";s:1106:\"So we had a really good time and wished that all of you were there. The presentations were all top notch and audience participation was very good. In his keynote Matt mentioned that attendees would get the most from this conference if they mingled and connected with each other as much as they paid attention to the people up on stage and I noticed a lot of mingling going on. ![\":)\"](\"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif\"){kind=icon}
It was wonderful to finally meet a whole bunch of people. I have all the pictures that I took (I should have taken the D70) on my Flickr account with the agreed upon WordCampDallas2008 tag. If you have any questions, have any media from the event that you would like to share or have any questions for any of the events/presenters, please let us know.
Special thanks to Charles for organizing the event and to John for being a terrific host.
\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:17:15 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:10:\"Mark Ghosh\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:1106:\"So we had a really good time and wished that all of you were there. The presentations were all top notch and audience participation was very good. In his keynote Matt mentioned that attendees would get the most from this conference if they mingled and connected with each other as much as they paid attention to the people up on stage and I noticed a lot of mingling going on. It was wonderful to finally meet a whole bunch of people. I have all the pictures that I took (I should have taken the D70) on my Flickr account with the agreed upon WordCampDallas2008 tag. If you have any questions, have any media from the event that you would like to share or have any questions for any of the events/presenters, please let us know.
Special thanks to Charles for organizing the event and to John for being a terrific host.
\";}i:29;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:26:\"Matt: Catching up on March\";s:4:\"guid\";s:20:\"http://ma.tt/?p=4975\";s:4:\"link\";s:42:\"http://ma.tt/2008/03/catching-up-on-march/\";s:11:\"description\";s:373:\"March is almost over, but email-wise I’m just getting started. Between the travel, conferences like SxSW and WordCamp, the 2.5 release, and the wisdom tooth stuff I’ve got stuff backed up even from Febuary. I’m back home this week so I’ll be doing as much catch-up as possible. If you get a response to an old email from me, that’s why.
\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:16:24 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:4:\"Matt\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:373:\"March is almost over, but email-wise I’m just getting started. Between the travel, conferences like SxSW and WordCamp, the 2.5 release, and the wisdom tooth stuff I’ve got stuff backed up even from Febuary. I’m back home this week so I’ll be doing as much catch-up as possible. If you get a response to an old email from me, that’s why.
\";}i:30;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:32:\"Alex King: WP Mobile Edition 2.1\";s:4:\"guid\";s:56:\"http://alexking.org/blog/2008/03/30/wp-mobile-edition-21\";s:4:\"link\";s:56:\"http://alexking.org/blog/2008/03/30/wp-mobile-edition-21\";s:11:\"description\";s:1667:\"I’ve updated my WordPress Mobile Edition plugin. I’ve made a couple of changes:
\nThis plugin creates a PDA friendly interface for your blog. You can see it in action by visiting this site in a mobile browser. If your mobile browser is not automatically detected, get your browser details here and let me know.
\nThis plugin could use some CSS now that mobile browsers are supporting them better. Send me your submissions if you’d like to contribute.
\nThe download and more information are available on my WordPress Plugins page.
\nIf you have any trouble with this, please open a thread in the WP Support Forums and send me the link.
\nUPDATE: Version 2.1.1 is now available and should work better than version 2.1. ![\":)\"](\"http://alexking.org/wp/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif\"){kind=icon}
I’ve updated my WordPress Mobile Edition plugin. I’ve made a couple of changes:
\nThis plugin creates a PDA friendly interface for your blog. You can see it in action by visiting this site in a mobile browser. If your mobile browser is not automatically detected, get your browser details here and let me know.
\nThis plugin could use some CSS now that mobile browsers are supporting them better. Send me your submissions if you’d like to contribute.
\nThe download and more information are available on my WordPress Plugins page.
\nIf you have any trouble with this, please open a thread in the WP Support Forums and send me the link.
\nUPDATE: Version 2.1.1 is now available and should work better than version 2.1.
I’ve updated my Shortcut Macros plugin to make it WordPress 2.5 compatible.
\nThis plugin allows you to set up shortcuts that expand into longer text when you save a post/page. For example, if you link to my site often, you might create a macro of ak. You type ##ak into a post/page and when you save it will expand to <a href=\"http://alexking.org/\">Alex King</a>.
The download and more information are available on my WordPress Plugins page.
\nIf you have any trouble with this, please open a thread in the WP Support Forums and send me the link.
\n\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Mon, 31 Mar 2008 04:34:03 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:4:\"Alex\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:1018:\"I’ve updated my Shortcut Macros plugin to make it WordPress 2.5 compatible.
\nThis plugin allows you to set up shortcuts that expand into longer text when you save a post/page. For example, if you link to my site often, you might create a macro of ak. You type ##ak into a post/page and when you save it will expand to <a href=\"http://alexking.org/\">Alex King</a>.
The download and more information are available on my WordPress Plugins page.
\nIf you have any trouble with this, please open a thread in the WP Support Forums and send me the link.
\n\";}i:32;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:36:\"Alex King: Delink Comment Author 1.2\";s:4:\"guid\";s:60:\"http://alexking.org/blog/2008/03/30/delink-comment-author-12\";s:4:\"link\";s:60:\"http://alexking.org/blog/2008/03/30/delink-comment-author-12\";s:11:\"description\";s:989:\"I’ve updated Delink Comment Author to make it compatible with WordPress 2.5. It should also still be compatible with versions prior to 2.5.
\nThis plugin gives you the ability to remove the link a commenter left as their URL without removing the entire comment. A link to do this is added to your new comment e-mail notifications and to the comments list in your admin area.
\nThe download and more information are available on my WordPress Plugins page.
\nIf you have any trouble with this, please open a thread in the WP Support Forums and send me the link.
\n\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Mon, 31 Mar 2008 04:17:18 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:4:\"Alex\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:989:\"I’ve updated Delink Comment Author to make it compatible with WordPress 2.5. It should also still be compatible with versions prior to 2.5.
\nThis plugin gives you the ability to remove the link a commenter left as their URL without removing the entire comment. A link to do this is added to your new comment e-mail notifications and to the comments list in your admin area.
\nThe download and more information are available on my WordPress Plugins page.
\nIf you have any trouble with this, please open a thread in the WP Support Forums and send me the link.
\n\";}i:33;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:30:\"Alex King: Comment License 1.2\";s:4:\"guid\";s:54:\"http://alexking.org/blog/2008/03/30/comment-license-12\";s:4:\"link\";s:54:\"http://alexking.org/blog/2008/03/30/comment-license-12\";s:11:\"description\";s:838:\"I’ve updated my Comment License plugin to make it look nicer in WordPress 2.5.
\nThis plugin shows a license with terms of your choosing in your comments form. You can edit the terms of your license in the options page. You can see it in use on my site wherever there are comment forms.
\nThe download and more information are available on my WordPress Plugins page.
\nIf you have any trouble with this, please open a thread in the WP Support Forums and send me the link.
\n\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Mon, 31 Mar 2008 03:49:49 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:4:\"Alex\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:838:\"I’ve updated my Comment License plugin to make it look nicer in WordPress 2.5.
\nThis plugin shows a license with terms of your choosing in your comments form. You can edit the terms of your license in the options page. You can see it in use on my site wherever there are comment forms.
\nThe download and more information are available on my WordPress Plugins page.
\nIf you have any trouble with this, please open a thread in the WP Support Forums and send me the link.
\n\";}i:34;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:27:\"Alex King: 404 Notifier 1.2\";s:4:\"guid\";s:51:\"http://alexking.org/blog/2008/03/30/404-notifier-12\";s:4:\"link\";s:51:\"http://alexking.org/blog/2008/03/30/404-notifier-12\";s:11:\"description\";s:884:\"I’ve updated my 404 Notifier plugin to make it look nicer in WordPress 2.5 (seems like old admin CSS classes were removed).
\nThis plugin logs 404 hits on your WordPress powered site and will notify you of them via e-mail or in an RSS feed.
\nThe download and more information are available on my WordPress Plugins page.
\nIf you have any trouble with this, please open a thread in the WP Support Forums and send me the link.
\nUPDATE: The RSS feed was broken in version 1.2, version 1.2a is now available to fix this.
\n\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Mon, 31 Mar 2008 03:37:10 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:4:\"Alex\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:884:\"I’ve updated my 404 Notifier plugin to make it look nicer in WordPress 2.5 (seems like old admin CSS classes were removed).
\nThis plugin logs 404 hits on your WordPress powered site and will notify you of them via e-mail or in an RSS feed.
\nThe download and more information are available on my WordPress Plugins page.
\nIf you have any trouble with this, please open a thread in the WP Support Forums and send me the link.
\nUPDATE: The RSS feed was broken in version 1.2, version 1.2a is now available to fix this.
\n\";}i:35;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:54:\"Lorelle on WP: Whooping Woopra Blog Statistics Program\";s:4:\"guid\";s:36:\"http://lorelle.wordpress.com/?p=2438\";s:4:\"link\";s:80:\"http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2008/03/30/whooping-woopra-blog-statistics-program/\";s:11:\"description\";s:10652:\"![\"Woopra Dashboard\"](\"http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/woopra-dashboard.jpg\")
I’m rarely totally and completely blown away by anything, and yesterday at WordCamp Dallas, John Pozadzides blew the whole crowd away with his new blog statistics program, Woopra.
John is a blogger, author of the popular One Man’s Blog, and an experienced web user, web company owner and business man. He understands the importance blog statistics play in determining how to best serve your readers. Like me, he wasn’t happy with what was currently available. He and his partners, Elie Khoury and Jad Younan, decided to break all the rules, revolutionizing the way we think and use blog statistics. He totally blew us all away with the demo at WordCamp.
\n![\"Woopra](\"http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/woopra-landing-page-stats.jpg\")
Woopra is a live statistics program. It tells you what is happening on your blog right now, this very second. When he showed it the crowd at WordCamp Dallas, I logged onto his blog, and there on the screen, the audience saw my name pop up in Woopra. The cookie created when I commented on his blog passed on my site information, information I had already provided freely when I left a comment. Those who have not commented or registered are just shown as anonymous visitors.
It features counts of how many are on your blog at that moment, which adjusted as we watched the screen and other audience members jumped on board. We all watched the number go from 48 to over 60 and kept growing as more and more signed on.
\n![\"Woopra](\"http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/woopra-map.jpg\")
There is a listing of the basic information provided by your browser like where you are arriving from, the browser you are using, screen size, and so on, but much more. There is a live action map that shows the countries with white dots that flash like a radar signal to show the geographical location from where the visitors are on the map. When we switched to the map, we saw flashing signals from Australia, Alaska, Europe, but the collection of radar rings radiating from Dallas, Texas, was huge, showing all of us on his blog.
While we watched, John clicked on my name on the list of visitors in Woopra and initiated a conversation with me. On my laptop, a tiny window popped up inviting me to start a conversation with him. I did not have the program installed on my computer. I agreed, and the audience watched as I responded and we “chatted” live via Woopra.
\n![\"Woopra](\"http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/woopra-start-a-chat.jpg\")
This program could revolutionize the way we gather information about our visitors and interact with them. Imagine being able to communicate with your visitors without any extra software or hardware. Imagine getting information you need in a way you can really use it to focus your blog’s content to better server your readership. The possibilities are endless.
It works on Windows, Linux, and Mac. Once you site up with a Woopra account, the admin panels allow you to add your sites and download an optional WordPress Plugin to make the process of adding the Javascript to your blog easier from the Administration Panels. If you cannot add a Plugin to your blog, or want to add the Javascript manually in a text widget or other fashion, you can choose the Manual Installation method.
\nI could go on and on about all the features of this amazing and revolutionary product. I’m still learning so much about it and as I learn more, you’ll hear about it. Hosted by Layered Technologies, Woopra is currently in beta testing and only available by invitation. There is still some testing and sorting that has to happen, but at it stands right now, it knocked my socks off.
\nIt also knocked the socks off of Cali and Neal of GeekBrief.TV who videoed Woopra in action, then blogged about it with glee with an indepth interview and video with John. Techcrunch jumped on this new blog stats toy and went nuts with it, as did Mashable, all within a few hours. It’s been so exciting to watch!
\nI want to use Woopra desperately here on Lorelle on WordPress, but I’m frustrated. WordPress.com does not allow Javascripts on the site. John has told me that there are already over 5,000 invitations from WordPress.com users, and the number is growing as we watched, but he can’t hand out the demo invitations to WordPress.com users.
\nMatt Mullenweg and the Automattic team were there and appeared to be seriously impressed, so maybe we can do a little nudging to get access via WordPress.com.
\nTo help you nudge, I’ve added adding Woopra to WordPress.com to the WordPress Ideas and a post on the WordPress.com Forum on the subject for you to comment on and offer your opinions.
\nPlease, don’t ask me for invitations. Sign up for Woopra and register your blog, even if you are on WordPress.com. They will send you an invitation when they can. Remember, this is still in testing, so it’s first come first serve. They will add new users as fast as they can. WordPress.com users will be the first in line to get access, if WordPress.com opens the door.
\n
\n
Site Search Tags: woopra, john Pozadzides, blog stats, blog statistics, statistics, wordcampdallas2008, wordcamp
\n Subscribe Via Feedburner Subscribe by Email Visit
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won\'t Tell You About Blogging.
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I’m rarely totally and completely blown away by anything, and yesterday at WordCamp Dallas, John Pozadzides blew the whole crowd away with his new blog statistics program, Woopra.
John is a blogger, author of the popular One Man’s Blog, and an experienced web user, web company owner and business man. He understands the importance blog statistics play in determining how to best serve your readers. Like me, he wasn’t happy with what was currently available. He and his partners, Elie Khoury and Jad Younan, decided to break all the rules, revolutionizing the way we think and use blog statistics. He totally blew us all away with the demo at WordCamp.
\nWoopra is a live statistics program. It tells you what is happening on your blog right now, this very second. When he showed it the crowd at WordCamp Dallas, I logged onto his blog, and there on the screen, the audience saw my name pop up in Woopra. The cookie created when I commented on his blog passed on my site information, information I had already provided freely when I left a comment. Those who have not commented or registered are just shown as anonymous visitors.
It features counts of how many are on your blog at that moment, which adjusted as we watched the screen and other audience members jumped on board. We all watched the number go from 48 to over 60 and kept growing as more and more signed on.
\nThere is a listing of the basic information provided by your browser like where you are arriving from, the browser you are using, screen size, and so on, but much more. There is a live action map that shows the countries with white dots that flash like a radar signal to show the geographical location from where the visitors are on the map. When we switched to the map, we saw flashing signals from Australia, Alaska, Europe, but the collection of radar rings radiating from Dallas, Texas, was huge, showing all of us on his blog.
While we watched, John clicked on my name on the list of visitors in Woopra and initiated a conversation with me. On my laptop, a tiny window popped up inviting me to start a conversation with him. I did not have the program installed on my computer. I agreed, and the audience watched as I responded and we “chatted” live via Woopra.
\nThis program could revolutionize the way we gather information about our visitors and interact with them. Imagine being able to communicate with your visitors without any extra software or hardware. Imagine getting information you need in a way you can really use it to focus your blog’s content to better server your readership. The possibilities are endless.
It works on Windows, Linux, and Mac. Once you site up with a Woopra account, the admin panels allow you to add your sites and download an optional WordPress Plugin to make the process of adding the Javascript to your blog easier from the Administration Panels. If you cannot add a Plugin to your blog, or want to add the Javascript manually in a text widget or other fashion, you can choose the Manual Installation method.
\nI could go on and on about all the features of this amazing and revolutionary product. I’m still learning so much about it and as I learn more, you’ll hear about it. Hosted by Layered Technologies, Woopra is currently in beta testing and only available by invitation. There is still some testing and sorting that has to happen, but at it stands right now, it knocked my socks off.
\nIt also knocked the socks off of Cali and Neal of GeekBrief.TV who videoed Woopra in action, then blogged about it with glee with an indepth interview and video with John. Techcrunch jumped on this new blog stats toy and went nuts with it, as did Mashable, all within a few hours. It’s been so exciting to watch!
\nI want to use Woopra desperately here on Lorelle on WordPress, but I’m frustrated. WordPress.com does not allow Javascripts on the site. John has told me that there are already over 5,000 invitations from WordPress.com users, and the number is growing as we watched, but he can’t hand out the demo invitations to WordPress.com users.
\nMatt Mullenweg and the Automattic team were there and appeared to be seriously impressed, so maybe we can do a little nudging to get access via WordPress.com.
\nTo help you nudge, I’ve added adding Woopra to WordPress.com to the WordPress Ideas and a post on the WordPress.com Forum on the subject for you to comment on and offer your opinions.
\nPlease, don’t ask me for invitations. Sign up for Woopra and register your blog, even if you are on WordPress.com. They will send you an invitation when they can. Remember, this is still in testing, so it’s first come first serve. They will add new users as fast as they can. WordPress.com users will be the first in line to get access, if WordPress.com opens the door.
\n
\n
Site Search Tags: woopra, john Pozadzides, blog stats, blog statistics, statistics, wordcampdallas2008, wordcamp
\n Subscribe Via Feedburner Subscribe by Email Visit
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won\'t Tell You About Blogging.
I haven’t officially released WordPress 2.3 compatible versions of all of my plugins yet, but WordPress 2.5 is out nonetheless and brings some more plugin compatibility issues along with it.
\nI’ll try to get updated versions out soon - I’ll update this post with status as the plugins are updated.
\nI haven’t officially released WordPress 2.3 compatible versions of all of my plugins yet, but WordPress 2.5 is out nonetheless and brings some more plugin compatibility issues along with it.
\nI’ll try to get updated versions out soon - I’ll update this post with status as the plugins are updated.
\nProgrammer’s Toolbox Part 3: Consistent Hashing. It would be interesting if something like this could be folded into the currently random slave server selection for HyperDB.
\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:52:22 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:4:\"Matt\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:278:\"Programmer’s Toolbox Part 3: Consistent Hashing. It would be interesting if something like this could be folded into the currently random slave server selection for HyperDB.
\";}i:38;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:39:\"Dougal Campbell: WordPress 2.5 Released\";s:4:\"guid\";s:32:\"http://dougal.gunters.org/?p=899\";s:4:\"link\";s:63:\"http://dougal.gunters.org/blog/2008/03/29/wordpress-25-released\";s:11:\"description\";s:2641:\"If you already run WordPress, then you’ve probably seen the other announcements in your Dashboard about the release of WordPress 2.5. There are plenty of details in the Development Blog posting, so I won’t rehash the feature list here. I’ll just point out a few important details.
\nFirst of all, in my post about Release Candidate 1, I mentioned that I had problems with the plugin updater. Since that time, I have been able to upgrade complex plugins with out a problem. I didn’t do extensive testing, but I feel like this is probably safer now. Other folks on the wp-testers mailing list have reported observed improvements similar to mine.
\nNext, I’ll point out that since the introduction of the WYSIWYG editor back in version 2.0, I have always stuck to the “Code” editor. And on top of that, I have disabled the auto-formatting (wptexturize and wpautop) filters. I’ve always entered every bit of HTML within my posts by hand. Starting with version 2.5, I’m going to relax my grip and hand the reigns back over to the system. I’ve disabled my “untexturize” plugin, and switched to the “Visual” editor as my default. The Visual editor should be just fine for most of the posts that I write. And on those occassions when I need to do something advanced (like <code>, <ins> or <del> tags, my standard “pull-quote” div for images, etc), I can seamlessly switch to the HTML view and back, without worrying about the Visual editor messing with my manual edits later.
And for those of you who might wonder, but haven’t seen it mentioned, the new improvements will be filtering into WordPress.com and the WordPress-MU codebase very soon.
\n\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Sun, 30 Mar 2008 03:09:54 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:6:\"Dougal\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:2641:\"If you already run WordPress, then you’ve probably seen the other announcements in your Dashboard about the release of WordPress 2.5. There are plenty of details in the Development Blog posting, so I won’t rehash the feature list here. I’ll just point out a few important details.
\nFirst of all, in my post about Release Candidate 1, I mentioned that I had problems with the plugin updater. Since that time, I have been able to upgrade complex plugins with out a problem. I didn’t do extensive testing, but I feel like this is probably safer now. Other folks on the wp-testers mailing list have reported observed improvements similar to mine.
\nNext, I’ll point out that since the introduction of the WYSIWYG editor back in version 2.0, I have always stuck to the “Code” editor. And on top of that, I have disabled the auto-formatting (wptexturize and wpautop) filters. I’ve always entered every bit of HTML within my posts by hand. Starting with version 2.5, I’m going to relax my grip and hand the reigns back over to the system. I’ve disabled my “untexturize” plugin, and switched to the “Visual” editor as my default. The Visual editor should be just fine for most of the posts that I write. And on those occassions when I need to do something advanced (like <code>, <ins> or <del> tags, my standard “pull-quote” div for images, etc), I can seamlessly switch to the HTML view and back, without worrying about the Visual editor messing with my manual edits later.
And for those of you who might wonder, but haven’t seen it mentioned, the new improvements will be filtering into WordPress.com and the WordPress-MU codebase very soon.
\n\";}i:39;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:39:\"Matt: WordCamp Dallas and WordPress 2.5\";s:4:\"guid\";s:20:\"http://ma.tt/?p=4891\";s:4:\"link\";s:37:\"http://ma.tt/2008/03/wc-dallas-wp-25/\";s:11:\"description\";s:859:\"The talk this morning at WordCamp Dallas was quite enjoyable. The audience here is very sharp and on-point, there was a ton of participation and great questions. They also had delicious Rudy’s BBQ for lunch, which I nibbled at as much as I could. Also (roughly) concurrent with the talk we released WordPress 2.5. Funnily because I kept the edit screen for the announcement open from stage the concurrent editing protection prevented anyone else fom publishing the post! Andy told me after I was done and I pushed the button, but it’s good to know the feature works. ![\":)\"](\"http://ma.tt/blog/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif\"){kind=icon}
The talk this morning at WordCamp Dallas was quite enjoyable. The audience here is very sharp and on-point, there was a ton of participation and great questions. They also had delicious Rudy’s BBQ for lunch, which I nibbled at as much as I could. Also (roughly) concurrent with the talk we released WordPress 2.5. Funnily because I kept the edit screen for the announcement open from stage the concurrent editing protection prevented anyone else fom publishing the post! Andy told me after I was done and I pushed the button, but it’s good to know the feature works.
WordPress 2.5 has been released and includes a huge number of changes over the WordPress 2.3 series. Rather than list the changes in detail which would probably take me some days to write out I offer the following statistics and information about the WordPress 2.5 release:
\nIf you want to read the more detailed blow-by-blow changes for WordPress 2.5 then I suggest you dig back through the archives on this site and read all the weekly digest posts covering WordPress 2.5.
\nThese links should help you find them: posts tagged wordpress-2.4 and posts tagged wordpress-2.5.
\n![\"\"](\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/categories/westi.wordpress.com/47/\")
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![\"\"](\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=westi.wordpress.com&blog=15396&post=47&subd=westi&ref=&feed=1\")
WordPress 2.5 has been released and includes a huge number of changes over the WordPress 2.3 series. Rather than list the changes in detail which would probably take me some days to write out I offer the following statistics and information about the WordPress 2.5 release:
\nIf you want to read the more detailed blow-by-blow changes for WordPress 2.5 then I suggest you dig back through the archives on this site and read all the weekly digest posts covering WordPress 2.5.
\nThese links should help you find them: posts tagged wordpress-2.4 and posts tagged wordpress-2.5.
\n It was a busy week again for WordPress 2.5, this list look short as we have been doing the final polishing on today’s WordPress 2.5 release, the changes were:
\nis_numeric() instead of ctype_digit() (#5481).For even more information on some of the other little changes that went in this week you can read the whole weekly trac timeline.
\nNow go an update to WordPress 2.5 - you know you want to!
\n![\"\"](\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/categories/westi.wordpress.com/46/\")
![\"\"](\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/tags/westi.wordpress.com/46/\")
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![\"\"](\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=westi.wordpress.com&blog=15396&post=46&subd=westi&ref=&feed=1\")
It was a busy week again for WordPress 2.5, this list look short as we have been doing the final polishing on today’s WordPress 2.5 release, the changes were:
\nis_numeric() instead of ctype_digit() (#5481).For even more information on some of the other little changes that went in this week you can read the whole weekly trac timeline.
\nNow go an update to WordPress 2.5 - you know you want to!
\n WordPress 2.5, the culmination of six months of work by the WordPress community, people just like you. The improvements in 2.5 are numerous, and almost entirely a result of your feedback: multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages.
\nFor a short overview of the features with screenshots, it’d be best to visit our sneak peek announcement for RC1. Or check out a 4-minute screencast of the new interface in action. If you just want to jump straight to the good stuff here’s where you can find 2.5 upgrade and download information.
\nIf you want to see everything I would grab a cup of coffee or a mojito, because this post is epic.
\nCleaner, faster, less cluttered dashboard — we’ve worked hard to take your feedback about what’s most important in the dashboard and organize things to allow you to focus on what’s important — your blog — and get out of your way. In collaboration with Happy Cog and the community we’ve taken the first major step forward in the WordPress interface since version 1.5.
\nDashboard Widgets — the dashboard home page is now a series of widgets, including ones to show you fun stats about your posting, latest comments, people linking to you, new and popular plugins, and of course WordPress news. You can customize any of the dashboard widgets to show, for example, news from your local paper instead of WP news. Plugins can also hook in, for example the WordPress.com stats widget adds a handy double-wide stats box.
\n
Multi-file upload with progress bar — before when you would upload a large file you’d wait forever, never knowing how far along it was. And uploading more than one photo was an exercise in patience, as you could only do one at a time. Now you can select a whole of folder images or music or videos at once and it’ll show you the progress of each upload.
\nBonus: EXIF extraction — if you upload JPEG files with EXIF metadata like camera make and model, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, et al. WordPress will extract all the data into custom fields you can use in your template. If you use the EXIF title fields or similar those will be put into their equivalent fields in WP. Most modern digital cameras generate EXIF data.
\nSearch posts and pages — search used to cover just posts, now it includes pages too, a great boon for those using WordPress as a CMS. New themes can style or sort pages differently in results.
\nTag management — you can now add, rename, delete, and do whatever else you like to tags from inside WordPress, no plugins needed.
\nPassword strength meter — when you change your password on your profile it’ll tell you how strong your password is to help you pick a good one.
\nConcurrent editing protection — for those of you on multi-author blogs, have you ever opened a post while someone was already editing it, and your auto-saves kept overwriting each other, irrecoverably losing hours of work? I bet that added a few words to your vocabulary. Now if you open a post that someone else is editing, WordPress magically locks it and prevents you from saving until the other person is done. You’ll see a message like below.
\n
Few-click plugin upgrades — if the plugins you use are part of the plugin directory since 2.3 we’ve told you when they have an update available. Now we take that to the next logical step — downloading and installing the upgrade for you. This is dependent a little bit on your host setup, and it may ask you for your FTP password much like OS X or Windows will ask you for a password, but it works well on majority of hosts we were able to test, your mileage may very, plugins in mirror may be larger than they appear.
\nFriendlier visual post editor — I’m not sure how to articulate this improvement except to say “it doesn’t mess with your code anymore.” We’re now using version 3.0 of TinyMCE, which means better compatibility with Safari, and we’ve paid particular attention this release to its integration and interaction with complex HTML. It also now has a “no-distractions” mode which is like Writeroom for your browser.
\nBuilt-in galleries — when you take advantage of multi-file upload to upload a bunch of photos, we have a new shortcode that lets you to easily embed galleries by just putting [ gallery] (without the space) in your post. It’ll display all your thumbnails and captions and each will link each to a page where people can comment on the individual photos. I’ve been using this feature on my blog and have already uploaded over 1,200 pictures into 23 galleries. The shortcode has some hidden options too, check out this documentation.
\nNow for the geeky stuff. While we’re excited about the above features, each one represents a new opportunity or API for other developers to take to another level. (The best of which we’ll someday integrate back into WP.)
\nSalted passwords — we now use the phpass library to stretch and salt all passwords stored in the database, which makes brute-forcing them impractical. If you use something like mod_auth_mysql we’ve created a plugin that will allow you to use legacy MD5 hashing. (The hashing is completely pluggable.) Users will automatically switch to the more secure passwords next time they log in.
\nSecure cookies — cookies are now encrypted based on the protocol described in this PDF paper. which is something like user name|expiration time|HMAC( user name|expiration time, k) where k = HMAC(user name|expiration time, sk) and where sk is a secret key, which you can define in your config.
Easy taxonomy and URL creation — probably best illustrated with an example: I can call register_taxonomy() with a few arguments to register a “people” taxonomy and whenever I edit an image I’ll see a UI like tags has for identifying the people in a photo, and these will be URL addressable with /person/firstname-lastname/. All with a single function call.
Inline documentation — the vast majority of the new code going into WordPress include inline documentation that explains the functions and documents their arguments.
\nDatabase optimization — we haven’t changed the table layout in this release, which is one of the reasons so many plugins work fine with 2.5. We have added a few new indicies and made a few default fields more flexible based on some bottlenecks we found on WordPress.com, which now hosts 2.7 million WordPress blogs. It should be invisible to the application, just a bit faster on the database side.
\n$wpdb->prepare() — now almost all of the SQL in WordPress is prepared first, and the same functions are available to your plugins. This should prevent elementary SQL escaping issues.
\nMedia buttons — the add media buttons above the post are both expandable, so you could have an “Add Google Map” button if you like, They can be overridden, so if you think you can do the video or audio tab better than we have you can replace the default.
\nShortcode API — the new gallery functionality is powered by the new shortcode API. Shortcodes are little bracket-delineated strings that can be magically expanded at runtime to something more interesting. They give users a short, easy to type and copy/paste string they can move around their post without worrying about messing up complex HTML or embed codes. The Shortcode API is fully documented.
\nNow you see why 2.5 took a little extra time. ![\":)\"](\"http://wordpress.org/development/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif\"){kind=icon}
The upgrade instructions for this version are pretty much the same as any other version. The most important thing to check is your plugins, so if for example everything works except the new uploader, a legacy plugin might be causing a javascript error on the page and breaking it. If something goes wrong, the safest thing to do is turn your plugins off (we have a button to do them all at once, now) and turn them back on one-by-one, testing the problem along the way. This has solved almost everybody’s problems in testing, and it also lets you know which plugin author to show some love to so they’ll update their plugin, and which plugin authors already have so you can shower them with praises on your blog.
\nOne brief note about some of the new upload and plugin upgrade features, there are some edge-case hosting platforms, like versions of Lighttpd before 1.5 or over-agressive mod_security rules, which can break. If something isn’t working like it was looked in the screenshot, ask your host if there’s something on the server side which may be interfering. Hosts, feel free to join and post to our wp-testers mailing list if you have an environment that requires some extra code to work around. We’d be happy to include it in the next update.
\nQuick tip: in 2.5 you click the name of things to edit them, like your username to edit your profile or the title of a post to edit it.
\nMore than growing, it’s on fire. We always talk about things like downloads, and the 2.3 branch has already had 1.92 million downloads as I write this post, but this time we have some far more interesting information I’d like to share.
\nThere were over 1,200 commits to our repository since 2.3.0 and over 90 people were credited in them. This means in our core code, not plugins, there were at least 90 individual folks that contributed something high-quality enough that it made the cut to be part of the download you guys get today. I had no idea this group of people was so large.
\nOutside of the core commit team, there was particular help from these people, in rough order of number of credits and tickets: mdawaffe (Michael Adams), azaozz (Andrew Ozz), nbachiyski (Nikolay Bachiyski), andy (Andy Skelton), iammattthomas (Matt Thomas), tellyworth (Alex Shiels), josephscott (Joseph Scott), lloydbudd (Lloyd Budd), DD32 (Dion), filosofo (Austin Matzko), hansengel (Hans Engel), pishmishy, ffemtcj, Viper007Bond, ionfish (Benedict Eastaugh), jhodgdon (Jennifer Hodgdon), Otto42, thee17 (Charles E. Free-Melvin), and xknown. Also want to thank MichaelH and Lorelle on the documentation side, and moshu, Kafkaesqui, whooami, MichaelH, Otto42, and jeremyclark13 for helping with support.
\nThe 2.5 branch is nicknamed “Brecker” in honor of Michael Brecker, an exceptionally talented saxophonist who could cross styles effortlessly and never stopped experimenting and pushing himself until he passed away last year.
\nAll of this wasn’t enough, so in our copious spare time we decided to redesign WordPress.org to better match the aesthetics of the new dashboard and also to spruce up a few areas that needed lovin’. Some parts of the site, like the Codex, might show the old style for a day or two. We know, just give us a bit of time. Thanks to Matt Thomas for his epic effort in designing and coding the new site.
\nAs always with WordPress, we don’t claim any of these features to be perfect, or to be better than everyone else in the world, but they are done by and for the people and the one thing we do promise is that with every release we listen and do our best to improve.
\n2.5 is a major milestone for WordPress not because it added dozens of user-requested features, but because it reaffirms that we’re as passionate about blogging as the day we started. Our community is too fierce to rest on its laurels — contrary to what pundits claim, blogging is far from “finished” and every improvement just whets our appetite for more. And more is coming.
\nIt’s a good thing WordPress doesn’t limit the length of posts, because this one would have hit it. If you made it this far, thanks for sharing a bit of your day with us. I sincerely hope this new version of WordPress helps you do what you love to do.
\";s:7:\"pubdate\";s:31:\"Sat, 29 Mar 2008 16:49:45 +0000\";s:2:\"dc\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";s:4:\"Matt\";}s:7:\"summary\";s:15001:\"WordPress 2.5, the culmination of six months of work by the WordPress community, people just like you. The improvements in 2.5 are numerous, and almost entirely a result of your feedback: multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages.
\nFor a short overview of the features with screenshots, it’d be best to visit our sneak peek announcement for RC1. Or check out a 4-minute screencast of the new interface in action. If you just want to jump straight to the good stuff here’s where you can find 2.5 upgrade and download information.
\nIf you want to see everything I would grab a cup of coffee or a mojito, because this post is epic.
\nCleaner, faster, less cluttered dashboard — we’ve worked hard to take your feedback about what’s most important in the dashboard and organize things to allow you to focus on what’s important — your blog — and get out of your way. In collaboration with Happy Cog and the community we’ve taken the first major step forward in the WordPress interface since version 1.5.
\nDashboard Widgets — the dashboard home page is now a series of widgets, including ones to show you fun stats about your posting, latest comments, people linking to you, new and popular plugins, and of course WordPress news. You can customize any of the dashboard widgets to show, for example, news from your local paper instead of WP news. Plugins can also hook in, for example the WordPress.com stats widget adds a handy double-wide stats box.
\n
Multi-file upload with progress bar — before when you would upload a large file you’d wait forever, never knowing how far along it was. And uploading more than one photo was an exercise in patience, as you could only do one at a time. Now you can select a whole of folder images or music or videos at once and it’ll show you the progress of each upload.
\nBonus: EXIF extraction — if you upload JPEG files with EXIF metadata like camera make and model, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, et al. WordPress will extract all the data into custom fields you can use in your template. If you use the EXIF title fields or similar those will be put into their equivalent fields in WP. Most modern digital cameras generate EXIF data.
\nSearch posts and pages — search used to cover just posts, now it includes pages too, a great boon for those using WordPress as a CMS. New themes can style or sort pages differently in results.
\nTag management — you can now add, rename, delete, and do whatever else you like to tags from inside WordPress, no plugins needed.
\nPassword strength meter — when you change your password on your profile it’ll tell you how strong your password is to help you pick a good one.
\nConcurrent editing protection — for those of you on multi-author blogs, have you ever opened a post while someone was already editing it, and your auto-saves kept overwriting each other, irrecoverably losing hours of work? I bet that added a few words to your vocabulary. Now if you open a post that someone else is editing, WordPress magically locks it and prevents you from saving until the other person is done. You’ll see a message like below.
\n
Few-click plugin upgrades — if the plugins you use are part of the plugin directory since 2.3 we’ve told you when they have an update available. Now we take that to the next logical step — downloading and installing the upgrade for you. This is dependent a little bit on your host setup, and it may ask you for your FTP password much like OS X or Windows will ask you for a password, but it works well on majority of hosts we were able to test, your mileage may very, plugins in mirror may be larger than they appear.
\nFriendlier visual post editor — I’m not sure how to articulate this improvement except to say “it doesn’t mess with your code anymore.” We’re now using version 3.0 of TinyMCE, which means better compatibility with Safari, and we’ve paid particular attention this release to its integration and interaction with complex HTML. It also now has a “no-distractions” mode which is like Writeroom for your browser.
\nBuilt-in galleries — when you take advantage of multi-file upload to upload a bunch of photos, we have a new shortcode that lets you to easily embed galleries by just putting [ gallery] (without the space) in your post. It’ll display all your thumbnails and captions and each will link each to a page where people can comment on the individual photos. I’ve been using this feature on my blog and have already uploaded over 1,200 pictures into 23 galleries. The shortcode has some hidden options too, check out this documentation.
\nNow for the geeky stuff. While we’re excited about the above features, each one represents a new opportunity or API for other developers to take to another level. (The best of which we’ll someday integrate back into WP.)
\nSalted passwords — we now use the phpass library to stretch and salt all passwords stored in the database, which makes brute-forcing them impractical. If you use something like mod_auth_mysql we’ve created a plugin that will allow you to use legacy MD5 hashing. (The hashing is completely pluggable.) Users will automatically switch to the more secure passwords next time they log in.
\nSecure cookies — cookies are now encrypted based on the protocol described in this PDF paper. which is something like user name|expiration time|HMAC( user name|expiration time, k) where k = HMAC(user name|expiration time, sk) and where sk is a secret key, which you can define in your config.
Easy taxonomy and URL creation — probably best illustrated with an example: I can call register_taxonomy() with a few arguments to register a “people” taxonomy and whenever I edit an image I’ll see a UI like tags has for identifying the people in a photo, and these will be URL addressable with /person/firstname-lastname/. All with a single function call.
Inline documentation — the vast majority of the new code going into WordPress include inline documentation that explains the functions and documents their arguments.
\nDatabase optimization — we haven’t changed the table layout in this release, which is one of the reasons so many plugins work fine with 2.5. We have added a few new indicies and made a few default fields more flexible based on some bottlenecks we found on WordPress.com, which now hosts 2.7 million WordPress blogs. It should be invisible to the application, just a bit faster on the database side.
\n$wpdb->prepare() — now almost all of the SQL in WordPress is prepared first, and the same functions are available to your plugins. This should prevent elementary SQL escaping issues.
\nMedia buttons — the add media buttons above the post are both expandable, so you could have an “Add Google Map” button if you like, They can be overridden, so if you think you can do the video or audio tab better than we have you can replace the default.
\nShortcode API — the new gallery functionality is powered by the new shortcode API. Shortcodes are little bracket-delineated strings that can be magically expanded at runtime to something more interesting. They give users a short, easy to type and copy/paste string they can move around their post without worrying about messing up complex HTML or embed codes. The Shortcode API is fully documented.
\nNow you see why 2.5 took a little extra time.
The upgrade instructions for this version are pretty much the same as any other version. The most important thing to check is your plugins, so if for example everything works except the new uploader, a legacy plugin might be causing a javascript error on the page and breaking it. If something goes wrong, the safest thing to do is turn your plugins off (we have a button to do them all at once, now) and turn them back on one-by-one, testing the problem along the way. This has solved almost everybody’s problems in testing, and it also lets you know which plugin author to show some love to so they’ll update their plugin, and which plugin authors already have so you can shower them with praises on your blog.
\nOne brief note about some of the new upload and plugin upgrade features, there are some edge-case hosting platforms, like versions of Lighttpd before 1.5 or over-agressive mod_security rules, which can break. If something isn’t working like it was looked in the screenshot, ask your host if there’s something on the server side which may be interfering. Hosts, feel free to join and post to our wp-testers mailing list if you have an environment that requires some extra code to work around. We’d be happy to include it in the next update.
\nQuick tip: in 2.5 you click the name of things to edit them, like your username to edit your profile or the title of a post to edit it.
\nMore than growing, it’s on fire. We always talk about things like downloads, and the 2.3 branch has already had 1.92 million downloads as I write this post, but this time we have some far more interesting information I’d like to share.
\nThere were over 1,200 commits to our repository since 2.3.0 and over 90 people were credited in them. This means in our core code, not plugins, there were at least 90 individual folks that contributed something high-quality enough that it made the cut to be part of the download you guys get today. I had no idea this group of people was so large.
\nOutside of the core commit team, there was particular help from these people, in rough order of number of credits and tickets: mdawaffe (Michael Adams), azaozz (Andrew Ozz), nbachiyski (Nikolay Bachiyski), andy (Andy Skelton), iammattthomas (Matt Thomas), tellyworth (Alex Shiels), josephscott (Joseph Scott), lloydbudd (Lloyd Budd), DD32 (Dion), filosofo (Austin Matzko), hansengel (Hans Engel), pishmishy, ffemtcj, Viper007Bond, ionfish (Benedict Eastaugh), jhodgdon (Jennifer Hodgdon), Otto42, thee17 (Charles E. Free-Melvin), and xknown. Also want to thank MichaelH and Lorelle on the documentation side, and moshu, Kafkaesqui, whooami, MichaelH, Otto42, and jeremyclark13 for helping with support.
\nThe 2.5 branch is nicknamed “Brecker” in honor of Michael Brecker, an exceptionally talented saxophonist who could cross styles effortlessly and never stopped experimenting and pushing himself until he passed away last year.
\nAll of this wasn’t enough, so in our copious spare time we decided to redesign WordPress.org to better match the aesthetics of the new dashboard and also to spruce up a few areas that needed lovin’. Some parts of the site, like the Codex, might show the old style for a day or two. We know, just give us a bit of time. Thanks to Matt Thomas for his epic effort in designing and coding the new site.
\nAs always with WordPress, we don’t claim any of these features to be perfect, or to be better than everyone else in the world, but they are done by and for the people and the one thing we do promise is that with every release we listen and do our best to improve.
\n2.5 is a major milestone for WordPress not because it added dozens of user-requested features, but because it reaffirms that we’re as passionate about blogging as the day we started. Our community is too fierce to rest on its laurels — contrary to what pundits claim, blogging is far from “finished” and every improvement just whets our appetite for more. And more is coming.
\nIt’s a good thing WordPress doesn’t limit the length of posts, because this one would have hit it. If you made it this far, thanks for sharing a bit of your day with us. I sincerely hope this new version of WordPress helps you do what you love to do.
\";}i:43;a:7:{s:5:\"title\";s:37:\"Lorelle on WP: WordPress 2.5 Released\";s:4:\"guid\";s:62:\"http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2008/03/29/wordpress-25-released/\";s:4:\"link\";s:62:\"http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2008/03/29/wordpress-25-released/\";s:11:\"description\";s:3834:\"Within the last hour, WordPress 2.5 was released for public access. Go for it.
\nI’m in Dallas for WordCamp Dallas and Matt Mullenweg is speaking right now and just made the annoucement.
\nI’ll have more information later. Go get your copy and have fun with the new Administration Panels. Click EVERYTHING.
\nWordPress.com users will hopefully get upgraded within the week.
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