Archive for the ‘Around the Web’ Category
WordPress 2.9 “Carmen” is out!
December 21, 2009 by Emily
Around the Web
Late on Friday they finally released WordPress 2.9. Have you upgraded yet? Most people should be able to do it with the click on a button at this point, but if not you can download it here.
If you haven’t upgraded yet, here are some of the new features you’ll have when you do:
- Built-in image editor that lets you crop, edit, rotate and scale your images.
- Global “trashcan”, which means that posts or comments you delete won’t immediately go away into the ether. So you can restore anything you deleted by accident.
- Easier video embedding.
- Easily assign thumbnails for all your posts, which are great for magazine style blogs and food blogs. (You can see an example of how I used the new Post Thumbnail feature on Cooking with Michele. The thumbnails are being utilized for the “related posts” under every post, as well as on the archives, categories and search pages.) Here’s a great tutorial if you want to know how to set up Post Thumbnails on your site.
- Automatic database optimization, which is an important thing to do to keep your WP install running well, but most people who aren’t designers/developers wouldn’t have any clue how to do themselves. Now all you have to do is add this your wp-config file:
define('WP_ALLOW_REPAIR', true);
That’s just some of the big stuff, there are tons of small improvements and bug fixes. You can read a longer list over on the Dev Blog. Or you can watch this video for the highlights:
3 commentsSecure your WordPress Blog. Upgrade Now!
September 5, 2009 by Emily
Around the Web
There is a worm that has been making it’s way around since yesterday that is attacking WordPress blogs with older versions. If you haven’t upgraded to the current version, please do so right now. Otherwise there is a very high chance your blog will be compromised and it’s much harder to clean up a hacked blog than to upgrade it and keep it secure in the first place.
I’ve noticed some confusion among users at other sites, so I want to make this clear. If you have the current version of WP, which is 2.8.4, you are safe, your blog is immune from this worm. If you have an older version, especially a much older version, you need to upgrade ASAP. Also, this only applies to self-hosted WP blogs. Blogs on wordpress.com aren’t affected because they are always current.
Matt goes into specifics about this worm and the importance of upgrading over on the dev blog and I encourage you to go read it.
WordPress 2.8.2 – Security Update
July 20, 2009 by Emily
Around the Web
From the Dev Blog:
WordPress 2.8.2 fixes an XSS vulnerability. Comment author URLs were not fully sanitized when displayed in the admin. This could be exploited to redirect you away from the admin to another site. Download 2.8.2 or automatically upgrade from the Tools->Upgrade page of your blog’s admin.
