WordPress 2.6.5
November 28th, 2008 at 7:16 PM by Matt FreedmanWordPress 2.6.5 has been released. It contains security and bug fixes, and is recommended that everybody should update immediately. Please note that there is no 2.6.4 as there was a fake download of WordPress containing an exploit claiming it was 2.6.4. There never was or will be a WordPress 2.6.4.
Plugin: Twitter Links
November 16th, 2008 at 1:31 PM by Matt FreedmanA couple of days ago, I released another WordPress plugin called Twitter Links. What this plugin does is search comments of posts for any mentions of Twitter usernames (in the form of “@mattfreedman”) and then replaces them with a link to the mentioned username’s profile page. It will first check to see if the user actually exists on Twitter.
As this plugin checks Twitter for every username it finds, I strongly recommend using a caching plugin (such as WP Super Cache) with this plugin. Which will both help ease the load on Twitter’s servers, and also speed up your page load times.
This plugin requires cURL to be installed on your server, and has only been tested with PHP 5.2.x. It is available to download here.
Plugin: Comment Approval Notification
November 12th, 2008 at 12:07 AM by Matt FreedmanTwo days ago, I released a plugin called Comment Approval Notification and yesterday I released a WordPress version 2.6 compatible version (it previously required WordPress 2.7, which is still in beta).
The Comment Approval Notification plugin will send comment authors an email when their comment gets approved (if it was held for moderation, of course). The email sent to the comment author is fully customizable using “shortcodes”. Shortcodes are special placeholders (in the form of [shortcode_name]) which allow you to add dynamic information to the email (such as the name of the comment author), and have it replaced with the actual information. A full list of the available shortcodes is available here.
This plugin will be useful for people who require comments to be moderated before being shown, to not leave comment author in the dark as to when their comment will appear.
You can find more information about this plugin, and where to download it, over at it’s plugin page.
Update (November 16, 2008): It turns out this plugin wasn’t quite WordPress 2.6 compatible. I have fixed this and released version 1.1.1, which can be downloaded from here. Thanks to Ricky Buchanan for bringing this to my attention.
WordPress 2.6.3
October 23rd, 2008 at 6:24 PM by Matt FreedmanWordPress 2.6.3 was released today to address a security risk in one of the included libraries WordPress uses. It is recommended for everybody to upgrade immediately. If you’re already using 2.6.2, the only 3 files you need to re-upload are:
- wp-includes/class-snoopy.php
- wp-includes/version.php
- wp-admin/includes/media.php
Which you can conveniently download in ZIP format right here.
If you’re not using 2.6.2, then you should re-upload all the files.
You should upgrade immediately to ensure your blog is protected from security risks.
Google AdSense Data to Get Integrated with Analytics
October 22nd, 2008 at 9:02 PM by Matt FreedmanGoogle announced today that Google AdSense users will soon be able to have their AdSense data integrated into their Google Analytics account. This is a feature that many people have been waiting for and expecting for quite some time now.
This integration will provide users with more data about user behavior, such as which pages advertisements are clicked on and referring sites. This looks to be very useful data that publishers will be able to use to optimize their earnings. They posted the following video:
Google is currently in the process of rolling out this integration, and you can look for you invitation on your AdSense overview page.