Today is: Thursday, 11th March 2010
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Technology, Web Development and Saltwater Fly Fishing, not in that order.
Wordpress 2.8.6 Released and a 2.9 Preview
I got the notice last night that Wordpress 2.8.6 was released to fix a pair of security holes. So I hopped right into the admin console from my Iphone and in 2 minutes, it was updated. If you have a Wordpress installation, I urge you to update right away as well.
This will almost certainly be the last release prior to the much anticipated release of 2.9 which is our next major (feature related) release. Aaron Brazell had a great preview on his site yesterday, and since I’m not currently running the beta, I’ll leave the full on feature review to him. Here are the major bits to expect:
- Enhanced image handling – scaling, cropping, and thumbnail sizing on a per picture basis.
- Trash Can – this really goes back to the old notion we saw in newspaper editorial systems, delete doesn’t really delete, it just hides. This will come in handy.
- The_post_image – if you’ve ever tried to add an image to an excerpt of a post you will know why this is important.
- oEmbed – video support, which I’ve had for years using Vipers Video Tag Plugin.
- Custom Post Type – this is one of those CMS type functions. It’ll make my life easier, although honestly in the past I’ve been able to make categories do my bidding with little trouble in Wordpress CMS settings.
- Comment Meta – I have no idea what to think about this one.
- Metadata API – Another feature I’m sure I’ll use, but currently I can’t think of anything I’d use it for. I guess this is like custom fields for everything, not just limited to posts.
- Theme System Modification – this will allow developers to work on one theme, while real users look at another. This has been needed for some time.
- Rel=Canonical Optimization – seems like a little thing, but it will help a lot with SEO.
Check out the preview at Technosailor.com for the full scoop.
Tags: Automattic, Wordpress
Wordpress 2.8.5 Released
A new Wordpress release came out last night. Unlike the previous, this is what they are calling “a hardening release”, i.e. it is generally designed to make the code base more secure, but doesn’t fix any known vulnerabilities. As with all minor level releases, I suggest you update as soon as possible, if for no other reason than to stay current.
- A fix for the Trackback Denial-of-Service attack that is currently being seen.
- Removal of areas within the code where php code in variables was evaluated.
- Switched the file upload functionality to be whitelisted for all users including Admins.
- Retiring of the two importers of Tag data from old plugins.
We can expect to see 2.9, the next major level release within around the end of the month, certainly before mid-November. That release will supposedly center on enhancements to image handling features.
(For those casual readers, I should probably explain that I develop sites daily with Wordpress, and have for many years…hence I think my opinion on matters Wordpress should have some level of importance to you…)
Tags: Automattic, Wordpress, Wordpress 2.8.5
Wordpress 2.8.4 – Update Now
The folks at Automattic released a security update for Wordpress today due to a very specific bug:
…a specially crafted URL could be requested that would allow an attacker to bypass a security check to verify a user requested a password reset. As a result, the first account without a key in the database (usually the admin account) would have its password reset and a new password would be emailed to the account owner.
While this isn’t an incredibly nasty bug, it does affect the admin user, which many folks use as their only point of access to the system, which is poor practice. On my customer sites, the admin user is never actually used by anyone (except for me, and only in an emergency). Everyone gets a user specific account and that account has the right privelidges for that user.
Click the upgrade button now, or have your web guy/gal/poodle take care of it for you.
Tags: Automattic, Wordpress, wordpress 2.8.4
A Grand Diaspora – The “Conversation” Disappears in the Ether
One of the things that is most missed in the Social Media rush to “join the conversation” is that in many cases, by offering a plethora of places to get our content, we’ve turned the tables. Our readers who used to find us now expect us to find them. Even though I write on my blog, I’ll often get the comments for that post on my Facebook page, or via FriendFeed or Twitter, or on some other blog somewhere that quoted from my post. So instead of my comments coming to me, right alongside my post, I need to schlep out into the great wide web and find them.
Think about where your content appears. It may start on your blog, then it shows up on a myriad of social media platforms in which you participate, each with their own means of commenting or discussion and even, in some cases, yet another email function. Let’s face it, in many cases, those commenting functions are ratholes. You may not even see them for days or weeks, at which point, why would you even bother responding?
Look at the previous post here. I had a great comment that came in via my Facebook account, but I had to do a cut and paste to pull it into my blog. How 1998 that functionality is.
How about:
- If social apps offered a “redirect comments to original publishing platform” option?
- What if we had a function like a ping back that used xml-rpc to import a comment when it was made on your Facebook, or on another blog.
- How about if readers thought to try to comment on the original article, instead of the summary?
I love comments, I love forum discussions. The problem I have is that when you start to spread them out acrross many separate and distinct platforms, their value decreases. The “conversation” is affectively split and disjointed, and we end up with a grand, yet failed, experiment.
Wordpress 2.8.1 Released
I really used to look forward to Wordpress updates, probably because there were so many things that needed to be fixed. Now we’re at a point where it’s in very good shape, and, frankly, the interim releases are kind of boring.
Still, it’s good to see that I can finally click on automatic update, for either plugins, or the main software itself, and it actually does the update.
In other Wordpress news, they have a new developers survey out for 2.9 image handling feature prioritization. My general sense as I filled it out was that there wasn’t anything earth shattering on the list. Again, a function of a fairly well featured system.
The only area I can think of that I think really needs further development right now is the workflow, but honestly, it’s not as though its not working for me. Simple workflow is good enough for my needs…but I know there are others for whom that simply doesn’t work.
So tell me, what do you think Wordpress needs in the future?
Wordpress Revision History to the Rescue
(Uh, Jeff, Kelly, move on, nothing to read here. Nothing of interest to you at all…really…)
I had one of those moments today. Mistakes were made. Bad mistakes. The “oh crap, I’m editing on the production site, not the qa or dev server” type of mistakes that immediately have you picturing your career dissipation light suddenly burning bright.
So I noticed after working on this highly important site that I’d accidently overwritten something on the live site. Yech.
Luckily, as of version 2.6, Wordpress now has Revision History. I’ve only used the feature a few times before, and then, only when I’d gotten to an unrecoverable point on a qa server. So in I went, and there it was…the content I’d overwritten, waiting for me, like a girlfriend I’d done wrong…
Saved. Career dissipation light dims to nothing.
Thank you Wordpress…without that my next stop was going to be the Internet Archive…
Over the past two years, we’ve seen the genie come out of the bag on blogging. In the good old days if you wanted our content, you came to our blog. Now, our content is being automatically posted in a bunch of spots, perhaps on Facebook, Google Buzz, Google Reader, and even the headline shows up on Twitter.
16 Feb 10 |
The permalink – nothing could be more core to the concept of blogging, and indeed, content management. In it’s early inception, it was the one link to rule all others. The problem is that with the advent of microblogging systems like Twitter, the permalink has been devalued and now faces possible extinction.
Yesterday the Federal Trade Commission issued it’s first change the policy on endorsements in over 30 years. From this point forward, if you accept any form of payment for a post, you need to disclose it. PCWorld.com sums it up:










