Rob Larsen

WordPress 2.6

I'd like to upgrade. It's usually very quick, but in fear that it won't be I like to block out a good section of time to actually do the upgrade. Considering I manage a half dozen or so Wordpress installations (between home and work) that's actually a reasonable chunk of time to carve out of an already busy day.

The upgrade looks like a good one. I especially like the ability to track changes. We sell Wordpress installation and theming as a cheaper alternative to more expensive CMSs (no licensing fees) and one of the things I always wanted to be able to offer was version control. Now we have it (of sorts?) How robust it is remains to be seen.

I'll report back once I've been able to kick the tires.

The weirdest thing about it is that it's Hammer (yes even weirder than the fact that his mom is knitting in the background.) I'm not even sure this guy was alive when Hammer was doing his thing.

And yeah, Wordpress is upgraded to 2.5. As I mentioned on twitter, it might take five minutes (and the core upgrade will.) The problem is, the "extra" stuff might break and cause me nothing but problems for hours or even days on end. I'm especially curious about the Amazon S3 plugin for WordPress since I post so many images to the site and want to continue to host them @ Amazon S3. Since so much of the admin interface is changed, I fear that will just break.

If you're feeling nerdy, you can check out the long-neglected comic book blog I run. It's been redesigned and moved into Wordpress, which means I'm more likely to update it than I was when it was on Blogger.

The design is a "knocked out as quick as possible" special. I'll be tinkering with it over the next few weeks until I'm fully happy with it. I just wanted to get it out there. It's a full Wordpress site now, which is really the fun part- Valid HTML; a YSLow score in the upper 70s; easier to update; a fancy new sprite; S3 integration for all those cover scans…

What's not to love?

Click. If you dare!

It’s All Just Comics

WordPress 2.3.3 is out.

Since it fixes a security issue there's no better time than now to upgrade…

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.

Since 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.

Speaking of Wordpress, does anyone know why Akismet suddenly sucks? The past few days it's consistently been beaten by trackback spam touting the night vision exploits of a certain hotel heiress. It's the EXACT same URL, with the EXACT same text and formatting, but it keeps getting through. I've had a handful of false negatives over the years I've used it (a few a month) and all of a sudden I've seen dozens of identical examples in just the past week.

Is someone gaming the system?

I used to use AddThis for social bookmarking here on the blog. And by "used to" I mean up until two days ago . Over the past couple of days I've been working on setting up my own version to use here and throughout the rest of the site. I launched it yesterday.
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