Just Another Wordpress Noob
Wordpress
WordPress 2.6.3
Oct 23rd
WordPress has released version 2.6.3 as a security fix. A vulnerability in the Snoopy library was announced today. WordPress uses Snoopy to fetch the feeds shown in the Dashboard. Although this seems to be a low risk vulnerability for WordPress users, we wanted to get an update out immediately. 2.6.3 is available for download right now. If you don’t want to download the whole release to get the security fix, you can download the following two files and copy them over your 2.6.2 installation.
bbpress 1.0-alpha-2 released
Oct 8th
Just received notice that bbPress 1.0 alpha 2 has been released to the general public for download. The next installation in the bbPress alpha series introduces new features and fixes most of the issues raised by testers from the previous release.
A lot of the features were covered in a previous post. You can view the changes in bbPress between 1.0-alpha-1 and 1.0-alpha-2, as well as the changes that have been made to BackPress between revision 109 and 161.
The XML-RPC functionality now built into bbPress 1.0 alpha has made possible a new plugin for WordPress called “bbPress Live“.
bbPress Live allows the display of information from a bbPress 1.0 forum from inside a WordPress blog.
Specifically, it provides two new widgets:
- bbPress Forum List – Provides a list or table of forums
- bbPress Latest Topics – Provides a list or table of the latest topics
Each widget can be used multiple times, and configured individually.
There are also two functions for use in themes. These functions return a raw php array which can be manipulated inside the theme:
bbpress_live_get_forums()– Provides an array of forumsbbpress_live_get_topics()– Provides an array of the latest topics
bbPress Live can only connect to a bbPress forum running bbPress with a version of 1.0 or higher. The bbPress blog must have XML-RPC enabled in it’s settings.
**Update: if you can’t download bbPress 1.0 Alpha 2 from the regular download site you can get it here http://trac.bbpress.org/browser/tags/1.0-alpha-2.
Revolution WordPress Themes Going Open Source
Oct 1st
Brian Gardner, the author and creator of the very popular Revolution WordPress premium themes, has announced that he will be releasing all future Revolution themes as open source under the GPL License and in accordance with WordPress standards. This change is set to take effect on Saturday, November 1st.
Explaining why he has decided to go open source, Brian says:
Jason Schuller, who runs WP Elements as well as created the Featured Content Gallery plugin, will be teaming up with me on the upcoming Revolution project. His creativity and resources will be a huge asset to Revolution and the community. He and I will both be developing themes, and all of them will be made available on the upcoming site. He also has plans to develop more plugins, which will all be housed on the site as well.
Many of you know that a few weeks ago, Jason flew out here to Chicago so we could discuss some things. Well obviously it was all about working together, and our desire to build something in the WordPress community that would be really big. The reason for the delay in our announcement was a result of something I threw out there to him – only hours before he was to fly back to Seattle. “Hey man, what if we released all of our themes open source?” Thus the delay…
Why the change of heart?
This one is really simple – more than anything, Jason and I want to develop a resource and community that is perfectly aligned with WordPress. Both he and I have been fortunate enough to leave our day jobs within the past year and have developed our own media companies. None of that would have been possible without the existence of WordPress, which is solely built and supported by the open source community.
It only seems fair that we abandon our current premium theme models, and begin a new way of doing business. I contacted Matt and Toni to see if they would be gracious enough to carve out some time to meet with us, so we could ensure that our business model was in compliance with standards set forth by the authors of the GPL license as well as with WordPress.
WordPress 2.5.1 Is Now Available
Apr 25th
WordPress 2.5.1 is now available for download at wordpress.org. This WordPress release is full of tweaks and bug fixes for WordPress 2.5.
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.
In 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.
If 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:
- Performance improvements for the Dashboard, Write Post, and Edit Comments pages.
- Better performance for those who have many categories
- Media Uploader fixes
- An upgrade to TinyMCE 3.0.7
- Widget Administration fixes
- Various usability improvements
- Layout fixes for IE
Read the full article about WordPress 2.5.1 here.
How To Setup An Automated WordPress Blog
Apr 12th
While I was cruising around the internet searching for a cool new theme for this website, I stumbled upon www.themelab.com. After reviewing tons of their high quality free themes, I realized they also had some helpful articles about the WordPress publishing platform.
I found this really cool article titled “Put your dormant domains to use with WordPress“. It’s a very simple and straightforward tutorial about how to set up your WordPress blog to automatically syndicate posts from other blog feeds. He goes on to say:
For those of you domainers who have a lot of unused domain names earning nominal revenue at old-fashioned domain parking services or simply collecting dust and not doing anything, read on. Developed domains will almost always outperform one-click landers at parking sites. One of the easiest ways to do quickly develop a domain is to set up an automated WordPress blog.
Just a small note before continuing. This isn’t a guide on making content scraping/rewriting splogs. I’m merely going over a much more efficient way to monetize unused domains, or possibly to augment your current blog with regularly updated news from relevant feeds. Aggregating RSS feeds legally is a perfectly legitimate way to add content to your WordPress blog.
Click here to visit www.themelab.com to read the entire article.
