WordPress 2.5 was finally released today, after much anticipation. Matt Mullenweg did a comprehensive post on the WordPress Blog about this new update and the changes to 2.5. I won’t go through all the major changes - - just read Matt’s post.. he’s done a nice job of explaining a few things and includes a video on some the enhancements. The WordPress.Org website has undergone a brand new re-design that coordinates with the new design of the WordPress Dashboard, as well. Some very nice improvements in the design you’ll notice when you upgrade to WordPress 2.4 - - it’s a little difficult to get used to, at first, but it’s a lighter interface with, overall, some very nice improvements. I think once users get over the initial shock of everything looking different and being moved around and renamed… the old design will be a distant memory as we all move forward. My only sticky point on the new interface design is that it is all left aligned. On my 1280 monitor - - it’s a little hard to take. But if that’s the worst of it - I’m good.

I ran into a little buggy issue with the image uploader in 2.5 that seems to revolve around the fact that my server runs mod_security. The new image uploader uses a Flash interface and mod_security was rejecting it completely. I could not upload images at all and kept getting errors. (Read my post in the WordPress Support Forum about this issue and the errors).

If you find this to be the case in your situation - disabling mod_security on one file, in particular, has solved the problem for me and I accomplished that by adding the following rules to the .htaccess file in my WordPress installation directory:

<IfModule mod_security.c>
<Files async-upload.php>
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</Files>
</IfModule>

For me, that worked like a dream - - now the image uploader works fine and I’m able to take advantage of the gallery features with 2.5. Though, if everyone is shutting off security on that one single file - - it will become a file targeted for foolery and exploit, and it won’t take long, so the hole will need to be closed, eventually. Locking that file down to a particular IP is a solution for someone who has that kind of access.

When this weekend is over, I will have completed a PDF chapter that covers the changes in WordPress 2.5. This chapter will be available as a free, downloadable PDF document on Dummies.com, as well as being available here on my site for free download.

This free PDF chapter update for WordPress For Dummies is being done in tandem to the planning and writing of the second edition of WordPress For Dummies, due to be released a bit later this year. This weekend, I am revising the Table of Contents as I plan the content inclusion for the second edition, which will, of course, include WordPress 2.5 updates. Though, due to much feedback I’ve recieved from readers - - there’s much demand for more information on WordPress theme information: tweaking, modifying existing themes, theme development, CSS information , etc. Themes were covered in the first edition - - but on a pretty basic level. We’ll be looking at more in-depth information on themes, template tags and the like with the second edition, as well as more information on upgrading, using custom fields and plugin information.

I’m thrilled that the fine folks at Wiley Publishing recognize the popularity of the WordPress blogging platform and understand the community and the progressive nature of the software development, so much so that they want to keep the book project moving forward, rather than stagnating on the shelves with only a first edition that covers outdated development. This was one of my main concerns when entering into this book project - and they have answered the call. Good on them, I say!

Cross-posted to Lisa Sabin-Wilson’s blog and Blogs About Hosting

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© Lisa Sabin-Wilson, 2008 - Author of WordPress for Dummies

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I took the opportunity to install the latest changes to the WordPress software we all know and love. Right now, the Administration Panel footer says I’m using 2.4-Bleeding - - it is the latest build as of 2.12.08. There are some things I just love about - - other things? Not so much. I do understand the design work on it is not completed yet. With a release date of sometime the middle to the end of March.. I would say WP has a ways to go.

The Dashboard. Have a look:

While I am not in love with the design… the colors or the layout - - what I am in love with is the ability to edit certain sections of the dashboard.. mainly the RSS Feeds that are fed into the Dashboard:

The Write Post page:
This page bothers me and I hope there’s more development to be done on it. All of the items that you’re used to having on the right sidebar is waaaaaaaay at the bottom. I have a feeling this is temporary and we’ll see those times wrap up to the right side soon (I suspect this is the reason for the blank white space to the right of the write post box).

WordPress Widgets
Looks like the Widgets page gets an overhaul, as well.

Instead of the Widget boxes being at the bottom… they are on the left site. This is nice and clean….maybe until you have a theme with three, four or five columns of widgets - - looks like there is a drop down menu so you can choose which sidebar you’re currently working with. Kind of nice… I rather liked having it all on one page so I could look at all the sidebars together and do a mental check on which widgets I’ve placed where - - now I have to choose the sidebar in the drop down and click “Go” to view each, individual sidebar within the Widget Panel.

The Widget boxes that we’re used to dragging into the sidebar are no longer ‘draggable’ - - rather, you click an “Add” link to add it to the sidebar… and only THEN can you drag it around to re-organized the sidebar. The Sidebars in the Widget panel, right NOW, have labels on them - - and you can use the functions.php to change the label to “Left Sidebar”, “Right Sidebar”, etc, etc - hopefully that remains the case when 2.5 comes out and the labels I assign in the functions.php will show up in the drop down menu on the Widgets page. Havent’ played with this yet…. I suspect it will work that way, though.

Theme Editor
So far, it doesn’t look like the Theme Editor has changed much:

Tag Manager
Happily - they’ve built a Tag Manager into this upcoming release. Currently, WordPress 2.3.x has tags and that was a great addition to the platform… unfortunately, there is no easy way to manage those tags without dipping into the database, and not every user is willing, or able, to do that. Expect the ability to manage those tags with 2.5:

Gravatar Support
As reported on this blog, and others, Automattic recently acquired Gravatar and it looks like WordPress 2.5 is going to come with built-in Gravatar support. Does this mean no more Gravatar plugins? Unsure.. but it seems so:

Although, if that is the case with Gravatars - - it would be nice to see some form of integration in the User Profile area, but so far, there’s not:

Although, a very nice addition to the User Profile page is the Password area… WordPress will let you know if your Password is strong, or weak:

Here’s a wishlist item: Password generator that generates a random, strong password. Although, remembering said password is usually tough.

The End.

That’s my review for the moment. I’m not loving the new design - but I’m sure it will grow on me. I am also looking forward to the end result - - when all is said and done, I’m hopeful that I will fall in love with the new design of the Admininstration panel. Right now, it somewhat reminds me of what Blogger used to be in the beginning…. and, in someways, it almost feels like its’ headed in the direction that MT4 currently is right now (though, MT4’s panel design is more sophisticated than this beta version of WP - at the moment) - I think that has to do, primarily, with the color scheme of choice and the way the top menu/tabs are arranged.

I do worry about users who are already complaining to me about “WordPress Fatigue” - in reference to the amount of updates and upgrades they have to perform on a pretty regular basis. I’ve had quite a few clients make the move from WordPress to Movable Type for just that reason alone. As WordPress becomes more and more popular with bloggers and website owners - people are beginning to realize how much maintainance WordPress really does require. Not all users are so technical and want to keep up with such fast-paced development. It’s not just the upgrades - - but it’s the adjustments after the upgrades, as well. Adjustments to template tags, adjustments to plugins and just plain old adjustments to the ol’ learning curve. These upcoming changes to the admin panel are likely to throw some of those users into a tizzy just trying to figure out where everything is….just as soon as they’ve begun to figure it out with the latest version.

I had a client comment “I’ve been using WordPress for a year now - - it was bragged to me as ‘user friendly’ and it is - - once you have it running. USING it is no problem… keeping it running with upgrades to the software, the template tags and plugins is a whole thing altogether. I thought WordPress eliminated my need for a webmaster… but I’m finding that not to be the case. I need one just to keep me up to date. WordPress makes my head spin.”

I can see validity to that constructive criticism.

However, I can also say that WordPress is progressing and developing into a REAL content management system to be reckoned with (ok - it already is) - - ongoing progress and improvement will only enhance the user experience.. that goes for end users of the software… and users/readers of the sites powered by WordPress.

Growing pains sometimes are just that - - painful. You either grow with the flow, or stagnate - - and I admire WordPress for taking on the challenge to grow and continue developing and building one awesome platform.

***NOTE*** I cannot emphasize enough that the design of the WordPress Administration Panel for 2.5 is not done yet. They are still tweaking, pulling and wrangling it into shape — this post was written based on WordPress 2.4-bleeding build as of February 12, 2008. I wrote this post as a preview of what is to come… but it is, by no means, a done deal. By the time WordPress 2.5 is released - the WordPress Administration Panel may look completely different than what I have presented here. I write this review from the standpoint of an end user - - I’m no expert or code jockey..as much as I would love to be

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© Lisa Sabin-Wilson, 2008 - Author of WordPress for Dummies

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A reader of this blog submitted a question regarding a problem he is currently having with the RSS feed in his WordPress installation:

I am the webmaster of XXX and i am having a problem with my feeds.

When i try to validate them it shows me this:

You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ‘ON ( wp_posts.ID = .object_id ) WHERE 1 = 1 AND .term_taxonomy_id.term_taxonomy_’ at line 1

Do you know what i can do to fix it?

I am using v2.2.1
Kind Regards

My recommendation is to upgrade your WordPress installation to the latest version available: 2.3.2.

Reason? The error message you are receiving refers to a database table called term_taxonomy_id.term_taxonomy.

That database table did not exist in version 2.2.1 - - it was introduced into the WordPress core in version 2.3.2.

I would suspect that you may have attempted an upgrade - but forgot to follow through with all the upgrade requirements. If you have uploaded the files for the new WordPress 2.3.2 version - try visiting http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php (where ‘yourdomain.com’ is YOUR actual domain)…. it may be that you neglected to perform this vital piece during the upgraded which would mean that your WordPress files are updated… but your WordPress database is not. The upgrade script will also update your database and it may remove that error for you.

I do have detailed instructions on how to upgrade your WordPress blog on this blog. Good luck and let me know how it goes for you! Thanks for writing in.

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© Lisa Sabin-Wilson, 2008 - Author of WordPress for Dummies

Design Portfolio | Design Blog | Request a Custom Design | Lisa's Personal Blog | Lisa's Photoblog

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Matt Mullenweg announced on his blog this week that all free WordPress.Com accounts now come with 3 Gigabytes of disk space available. This is HUGE - considering that space generally costs money on the web and 3GB is rather generous. The space increase for WordPress.Com users is not only useful, but greatly appreciated!

The space is increased from the original 50MB - that’s quite a leap!

More details can be found at the WordPress.Com News Blog:

Much of the work we do at Automattic is behind the scenes, infrastructure you’ll (hopefully) never notice or see, but we’re always thinking about how the improvements we make to the foundation of the site will allow us to build more interesting things on top of it.

…..

Our hope is that much in the same way Gmail transformed the way people think about email, we’ll give people the freedom to blog rich media without having to worry about how many kilobytes are left in their upload space.

What about those folks who had already purchased the 1GB upgrade???

..we’re also increasing the limits of the paid upgrades, so if you bought a 1GB upgrade before it now adds 5GB for no additional charge.

Before you think that this is your solution for streaming your own video or audio files on your WordPress.Com - in order to do that, you’ll still need to pay for the space upgrade.

How does the free WordPress.Com blogging soluton now compare with their competition at Typepad.com and Blogger.com - in terms of space availability??

Today, one of those developments comes to fruition — everyone’s free upload space has been increased 60x from 50mb to 3,000mb. To get the same amount of space at our nearest competitor, Typepad, you’d pay at least $300 a year. Blogger only gives you 1GB. We’re doing the same thing for free.

As always - bandwidth at WordPress.com is unlimited, and remains free.

This makes WordPress.Com *almost* perfect. The one thing that Typepad and Blogger have over WordPress.Com is that on those two other services, you can freely advertise on your blog. As of right now, WordPress.Com disallows advertising unless you are a member of their VIP Club.

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© Lisa Sabin-Wilson, 2008 - Author of WordPress for Dummies

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This question came in via my email today, from a reader of my WordPress For Dummies book, regarding adding themes to a WordPress.Com blog ¹ :

How do I set up my wordpress.com blog to use your xMark theme? The setup instructions on the website say to send the xMark folder to the server, but that sounds like a wordpress.org setup. …. Recently I’ve tried again using the wordpress.com setup, and found that was more my speed. Now that my blog is up, http://dominickrusso.wordpress.com/ I’m trying to find a fluid theme, and that’s why I wanted to try xMark.

The simple answer to this is you cannot add any theme you want to your WordPress.Com blog. You are limited to the themes that WordPress.Com provides for you - you are not able to add any new themes to your WordPress.Com blog. For a fee, the best you can do is upgrade your WordPress.Com account so that you are able to edit the CSS for the template you’re currently using - - if you know how to edit/write CSS, that is.

However, if you find a WordPress theme on the web that you’d like to use, and it’s not included in the WordPress.Com themes page — then you’re out of luck. There is no way around it - you cannot upload themes to your WordPress.Com account.

Your best bet is to obtain your own domain name, hosting account and begin using the WordPress.Org software on your own hosting account - - you can change themes to your hearts content at that point!

Have a theme that you think the folks at WordPress.Com should add to their theme selection? Then read this!

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1. Management of themes on your WordPress.Com account is covered in WordPress For Dummies in Chapter 5.

© Lisa Sabin-Wilson, 2008 - Author of WordPress for Dummies

Design Portfolio | Design Blog | Request a Custom Design | Lisa's Personal Blog | Lisa's Photoblog

Browse the archive of posts filed under Reader Sumitted Questions, WordPress.com.

A reader of my WordPress For Dummies book¹ submitted this question today:

I’ve been through WordPress for Dummies twice already.

I’m setting up a new blog and I’m running into something I’ve not experienced before. I have two (2) sticky posts displaying on my front page, each post tagged with several categories. For some reason when I click on any link, I’m getting a 404 Not Found Error. I’ve set up several WordPress blogs, but never with this issue.

Can you suggest a solution for resolution?

Thanks and Happy New Year!

My response:

Check your permalinks rules (under Options/Permalinks in your WordPress Administration Panel) and make sure your .htaccess file has the correct re_write rules written to it to make sure the permalinks work correctly. When you set the permalinks in your WordPress Administration panel - WordPress will only write those rules to the .htaccess if that file exists and is writeable… and if the server you are working on has the Apache mod_re_write module installed and activated.

If you don’t know whether or not the server you are working with has the Apache mod_re_write module installed - contact your web hosting provider, they should be able to tell you that information.

As a side note - Yahoo! hosting does not give users access to the .htaccess file, so you are not able to use the permalink structure given by WordPress. Though, I believe that Yahoo has its own plugin that works around this issue, please contact them for support if you are hosting your WordPress blog with their services.

Hope that helps!

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1. Permalinks, .htaccess and information about these re_write rules can be found in Chapter 8: pages 144 - 146 in the WordPress For Dummies book.

© Lisa Sabin-Wilson, 2008 - Author of WordPress for Dummies

Design Portfolio | Design Blog | Request a Custom Design | Lisa's Personal Blog | Lisa's Photoblog

Browse the archive of posts filed under Reader Sumitted Questions, WordPress.org.

It was announced today that what was to be the next new version of WordPress, 2.4 - which was scheduled for a January 24 release has now been abandoned and replaced with version 2.5 and is now scheduled for an early March release.

Due to such major changes in the code base, and in the administration panel, the WordPress team chose not to rush things and opted, instead, to allow for more time for a quality release. Let’s hope this means not quite so many updates so soon after the initial release (i.e. 2.5.1, 2.5.2, etc, etc).

Matt made the announcement in the WordPress mailing list and had this to say:

This is the timeframe when 2.5 was originally schedule for, so we’re treating the originally planned 2.4 in December as a skipped release, as a result of both the holidays and the large changes which we weren’t able to start on until late October.

There’s some good stuff in the oven, and we don’t want to rush it.

The new release shall be called 2.5. Various official docs and roadmaps will be updated in due course.

This announcement was met with developer breaths of relief far and wide and is admired as a wise decision, considering the vast amount of changes we’re looking forward to in the next release of WordPress.

For users - it means:

1. We have more time until we need to upgrade to the next major release - - allowing users to get completely comfortable with 2.3 before they go and change everything in 2.5
2. The developers of WordPress are taking their time to produce quality over quantity - and that’s awesome, man!

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© Lisa Sabin-Wilson, 2008 - Author of WordPress for Dummies

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Browse the archive of posts filed under WordPress News.

Happy New Year - here’s a listing of some of the plugins I added to my blog in recent months and have fast become some of my favorites to recommend to WordPress users:

Different Posts Per Page - Set default value for each different page in WordPress. For example, without this plugin, if you have 1 post set to be viewed on your front page - then only 1 post will show on your archives, search, categories and tags pages. But, you may want more of a listing on those internal pages. With this plugin - you can set values for each of those pages, completely bypassing the setting in Options/Reading in your WordPress administration panel.

Single Click Plugin Updater - A very handy plugin that extends the plugin notification system, introduced in WordPress version 2.3. This plugin also provides an ‘update automatically’ link that, when clicked, will automatically download and install the new version on your blog.

SideBlog - makes it easy and painless for you to add “Asides” to your blog. For an example of “Asides” - you can see an example on my personal blog. On the right side of the site, you’ll see a green area with the title “On the side…snippets of stuff” - - kind of a nice way to have a ’side blog’ on your main blog to post small snippets of info that don’t necessarily require a full-blown blog post. Good for announcements and such.

Post Notification - a plugin that sends out notifications to registered users of your blog whenever you update with a new post.

Smilies Themer - a fun plugin that allows you to use smilies (emoticons) themes (or packs) to replace the wordpress default ones.

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© Lisa Sabin-Wilson, 2008 - Author of WordPress for Dummies

Design Portfolio | Design Blog | Request a Custom Design | Lisa's Personal Blog | Lisa's Photoblog

Browse the archive of posts filed under WP Plugins.

Blue, orange and white - that is the color scheme of the new WordPress administration panel. Why are they changing the theme? No clue - from what I’ve seen, so far, it reminds me of an earlier Blogspot admin panel, for some reason. Maybe it’s the use of the orange that makes me think that. I quite like the current design of the administration panel in WordPress, though…I’m a little dissapointed that they aren’t staying with it and building from it, for congruency’s sake. That’s just me, though - there will be plenty who applaud this change and I’m sure I’ll embrace it as well - I’m just a damn creature of habit! Heh.

At this time, the two big changes in the top menu in the Administration Panel is:

• Presentation is now labeled “Design”
• Options is now labeled “Settings”

It looks, from this video, that there is a great deal more work to be done on the administration panel design - so it will be interesting to see how those changes evolve. Thanks to the folks at Tubetorial for providing this sneak peek!

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© Lisa Sabin-Wilson, 2008 - Author of WordPress for Dummies

Design Portfolio | Design Blog | Request a Custom Design | Lisa's Personal Blog | Lisa's Photoblog

Browse the archive of posts filed under Weekly WP Feature, WordPress.org.