Category Archives: WordPress

Windows 7 / Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 now RTM

The Windows Team Blog the other day has announced that Windows 7 / Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 has finally reached RTM.

On February 16th, both will be available to current customers of the Windows Volume Licensing program, as well as subscribers to Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) and TechNet. On February 22nd, both will be available to all customers through Windows Update and will also come preinstalled on new servers ordered.

WordPress for BlackBerry Public Beta

Since I’ve heard hat WordPress were going to release an Official Blackberry Application for their blogging software I’ve been checking now and then to see if it’s out.

Looks like it’s been out for the past month and there has been a few beta updates (currently at 0.9.0.134 as I type this). I’ve yet to give it a spin my self as I have Wi-Fi internet here on the chalet site in North Devon but hope to soon.

Here are the system requirements for the app and download link straight off the WordPress for Blackberry site

  • The app is for WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress version 2.5.1 or newer
  • This app should work with any of the new BlackBerry devices such as the 8700, Pearl, Curve, Bold, and Storm
  • BlackBerry OS requirements are OS 4.2.1 or newer
  • For self-hosted WordPress sites, please make sure you have XML-RPC enabled. To confirm, it’s a simple check box in your dashboard under Settings –> Writing

A few words of caution before you proceed: While we’ve tested this a bunch, this is a beta and there are a ton of hardware/OS combinations out there, so please test with a private blog or a backup blog before using on your high-traffic main blog — or wait for the 1.0 version before using this.

To install the beta application: Point your BlackBerry browser to http://blackberry.wordpress.org/install and follow the instructions. Most BlackBerrys will install apps, including this one, in the “Downloads” folder.

We will be pushing updates out on a fairly frequent basis, and the app should prompt you to download a new version. When you install the update, it will ask you to overwrite the current app. Doing so will just overwrite the app, but your settings and local drafts should be preserved.

If you find bugs: Review the How To Report a Bug documentation and submit tickets over on blackberry.trac.wordpress.org.

WordPress 2.82 Released

I’ve been slack in keeping track at the current version of WordPress so just a quick heads up that WordPress is now at 2.82.

2.82 is a bug fix release for an XSS vulnerability and below is what was updated in release 2.81

  • Certain themes were calling get_categories() in such a way that it would fail in 2.8. 2.8.1 works around this so these themes won’t have to change.
  • Dashboard memory usage is reduced.  Some people were running out of memory when loading the dashboard, resulting in an incomplete page.
  • The automatic upgrade no longer accidentally deletes files when cleaning up from a failed upgrade.
  • A problem where the rich text editor wasn’t being loaded due to compression issues has been worked around.
  • Extra security has been put in place to better protect you from plugins that do not do explicit permission checks.
  • Translation of role names fixed.
  • wp_page_menu() defaults to sorting by the user specified menu order rather than the page title.
  • Upload error messages are now correctly reported.
  • Autosave error experienced by some IE users is fixed.
  • Styling glitch in the plugin editor fixed.
  • SSH2 filesystem requirements updated.
  • Switched back to curl as the default transport.
  • Updated the translation library to avoid a problem with mbstring.func_overload.
  • Stricter inline style sanitization.
  • Stricter menu security.
  • Disabled code highlighting due to browser incompatibilities.
  • RTL layout fixes.

Prioritizing Features for WordPress 2.8

Everyone knows by now that WordPress 2.7 is packed with new features. Now that it’s available (almost 600,000 downloads as I write this!), it’s time to start working on 2.8. There were dozens of things that got tabled during 2.7 due to time constraints, and there are a lot of high-rated features in the Ideas forum, so there are a lot of potential features under consideration.

Right now, the lead developers are thinking the top priorities for 2.8 will be widget management, theme browser/installer and performance upgrades. The rest of the development time will be taken up with bug tickets and additional features/enhancements from a prioritized list. To that end, we’ve posted a new survey for you to help us prioritize features for 2.8. The list pulls from the developers’ “2.7 leftovers” list as well as the most popular features from the Ideas forum. Just rank each feature and tell us your top pick (up to three). You also have the option of adding comments or additional suggestions, but this is not mandatory. For your response to count, you must rank all of the features in the list. The survey has only one page.

Note that media features are not included in this list as we will be posting a separate survey for media-specific features soon.

Cast your votes any time this week, but as always the sooner the better. This survey will close at noon on December 31, 2008 UTC.

In the new year, we will be reviving scheduled IRC developer chats, where the lead developers will discuss the week’s progress on feature development, providing opportunities for people to ask questions or make suggestions. These will be held early in the day on Wednesdays (U.S. Wednesday), and the specific time will be posted here on the development blog once it’s been finalized.

As a related aside, we spent a significant amount of time during 2.7 development sifting through Trac tickets that really shouldn’t have been there. Feature ideas and requests do not belong in Trac, they belong in the Ideas forum. Please reserve Trac for reporting bugs and things that need fixing (typos, code enhancements, etc.). If you are asking for a new UI, a new feature, or a new approach to coding something, that’s not an enhancement, it’s a new feature. New features will be entered into Trac by developers once it has been determined that the feature should be included in core. To help speed up development, moving forward we will close Trac tickets that are actually feature requests, with the comment that they should be posted in the Ideas forum instead. Please help the developers maximize their time by following this guideline.

Thanks for your help!

News source: WordPress Blog

WordPress 2.7 “Coltrane”

The first thing youll notice about 2.7 is its new interface. From the top down, weve listened to your feedback and thought deeply about the design and the result is a WordPress thats just plain faster. Nearly every task you do on your blog will take fewer clicks and be faster in 2.7 than it did in a previous version. (Download it now, or read on for more.)

Next youll begin to notice the new features subtly sprinkled through the new interface: the new dashboard that you can arrange with drag and drop to put the things most important to you on top, QuickPress, comment threading, paging, and the ability to reply to comments from your dashboard, the ability to install any plugin directly from WordPress.org with a single click, and sticky posts.

Digging in further you might notice that every screen is customizable. Lets say you never care about author on your post listings  just click Screen Options and uncheck it and its instantly gone from the page. The same for any module on the dashboard or write screen. If your screen is narrow and the menu is taking up too much horizontal room, click the arrow to minimize it to be icon-only, and then go to the write page and drag and drop everything from the right column into the main one, so your posting area is full-screen. (For example I like hiding everything except categories, tags, and publish. I put categories and tags on the right, and publish under the post box.)

Introduction video and rest of article here: http://wordpress.org/development/2008/12/coltrane/