Author Archive for Yellow Swordfish

Following the recent update to our 4.2 series (WordPress 2.9) we have now released the promised update to 4.3.1 for WordPress version 3. This too contains important security changes and we recommend our users update their system as soon as they can.

Along with the security changes we have taken the opportunity to address some issues raised by users over the last couple of weeks. The main items of note are:

• Including the forum Group Name in the breadcrumbs now displays correctly
• The WP Registration Form should no longer error when other registration plugins are also in use
• The Word Wrap feature has been extended to cover more post content items
• If the Registration link is turned off then registration no longer appears on the inline login form
• Smileys with certain ‘html’ characters in their code should no longer get corrupted
• The Add Topic and New Post forms have been revised to try and stop them leaking into sidebars
• The search for topics members have posted in has been corrected
• Signature images should now obey the image size settings
• The ‘wp_list_pages()’ bug has been improved to work with default permalinks
• The problem with Profile saving and uploading avatars under some themes should now be fixed
• A variety of minor cleanups to display

Also – we have continued in our drive to load javascript in the footer. This can be turned on and off on the WP Integration panel. Please note that for this feature to work your theme MUST contain the mandatory wp_footer() call which, sadly, so many theme authors leave out.

As always we would like to especially thank those of our users who provided time, assistance and testing of some of the bug fixes without you, some of those bugs would still be unresolved.

We have today released a small update to Simple:Press version 4.2.2 and recommend that all users of 4.2.2 or lower – which means those using WordPress 2.9.0 to 2.9.2 – grab this update. This is an important security release. It adds no new features but does update a couple of areas that were proven to be potentially insecure.

An update to our 4.3 family will be forthcoming very soon. We would like to thank those that helped us track these vulnerable areas down – the help and advice has been very much appreciated.

For those savvy users that know their way around the file system – the included Read Me document lists the files that have changed.

We are today releasing our first update to our 4.3 version – 4.3.1 for WordPress 3.0.

This update includes some important security enhancements and is recommended for all users. It also contains a number of bug fixes raised against 4.3.0. For a full list of items covered in 4.3.1 please visit our bug and development tracker.

One important item to note is that in line with more recent WordPress developments, we have moved most of our Javascript to be loaded in the footer (on the front end – not Admin). This should NOT result in any problems for our users and should, in fact, aid general performance. Sadly, we know from experience that there are a lot of plugins that do not abide by WordPress guidelines or use the supplied functions and load their scripts – often duplicate copies – all over the place. For a small handful of users this move may result in some teething problems which we will help with wherever we can.

If you tried to access the site yesterday then you would have noticed it wasn’t there. We seem to have been down for around 24 hours all due, if I understand it correctly, to a thunderstorm in Chicago that took out the data centre where our site is hosted.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the servers containing backups were inaccessible for some hours and when they did finally become available there were problems there as well. This means the forum, while back on line, has a lost few days worth of topics and posts. If you are effected by that then we apologise. Hopefully we can catch up and get back to normal quickly.

Why are we embarrassed? The simple answer to that is backups. Seems we hadn’t selected the right options to ensure we had a good backup regime in place and considering we preach the backup mantra then I call that embarrassing. Chastised? You bet.

It is going to take a few days to get things back as they should be. If you use SVN to download the latest builds as I know some people do then we strongly suggest waiting a week as we probably have some rebuilding to do on that front.

And if you started a topic that hasn’t yet been resolved which has not vanished from sight – please bear with us. If we are slow responding it can’t be helped.

Today, we have released the Beta 3 version of SPF 4.3. With the delay of WP 3.0, we decided to add a few more features. This beta now includes a code syntax highlighter and improved RTL support as well as a few bug fixes.

Please remember that this version of Simple:Press (as will the final) requires WP 3.0… – itself available in Beta. Head on over to our downloads page and grab it and help test the next version before its formal release.

We would love to get a few more multisite testers playing with this version and WP 3.0 and to hear about your experience – good or bad!