vBulletin Tagging

We’ve been working our asses off and finally have a beta to share.  Download, test, and enjoy the pretty visuals.  The word most people use when first seeing it is “sexy”.   This is a great design, and I’m very pleased with how it has turned out.  When the visuals are complete and the new icons are in, 2.7 will be a very good looking release.

Try this exercise.  Load up the Write Post page in 2.6 and in 2.7.   Compare the location of the title field between the two.  Notice the vertical distance.  That’s one of my favorite 2.7 features.

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Some plugins are causing grief for those upgrading to 2.8.

HyperDB needs to be updated to the latest version, otherwise tags won’t save.
DB Cache also prevents tags from being saved. I haven’t seen an update for it yet.
Plugins that load old versions of jQuery for all admin pages will break all kinds of stuff.  Plugins should use the version of jQuery that ships with WP.  If a plugin must use a particular version of jQuery, that version should be queued only for the plugin’s own pages.
Themes that call get_categories() from functions.php before the init action fires will fail. …

WP’s automatic upgrade can be used to automatically upgrade to betas and nightly builds for the development branch or the latest stable branch.  To get onto a development upgrade path you must first make a small change to wp-includes/version.php.

The current release of WP is 2.8.  If you peek in the version.php file, you will see this:

$wp_version = ‘2.8′;

If you would like to try out the latest development builds for the upcoming 2.8.1 release, change that line to this:

$wp_version = ‘2.8.1-dev’;

“dev” can be any string. The presence of a suffix on the version tells the automatic upgrade to put you on…

Finally, at last, it’s here.  And now, on to 2.8.  There were several areas that we didn’t have time to re-design for 2.7.  2.8 will focus on making the media and widgets UI as good as the rest of WP.  There will be a few new features as well.  Theme browsing and one-click theme install is a likely one.  After a short rest to recover from 2.7, we’ll start brainstorming new features and put the results on the 2.8 codex page.

We’ll likely do the usual .1 release in a month to address any bugs that slipped through the 2.7 beta…

2.7.1 is out, improving upon a solid 2.7 release.

The next version of the iPhone app is almost out and features comment moderation.

2.8 is well underway.  So far there have been lots of script loading and DB performance improvements.  The first cut of the theme installer is in, and the redesign of the Widgets admin UI is beginning.  Custom tag taxonomies now have some built-in admin UI,  and proper timezone and DST support is available if you are running PHP 5.

The interwebs are abuzz with concerns about WordPress security this weekend. If you use WordPress, you should always make sure you are running to the latest version.

Because of these concerns, the WordPress HelpCenter is open for special weekend hours (9am-5pm Central), and will be as responsive as possible to voice mail and email (help@wphelpcenter.com) received outside of those hours.

If you need help with your upgrade, think you’ve been hacked, or need any other WordPress help, give the HelpCenter a call at 512-788-9236.

You may have already heard that sites running out-of-date versions of WordPress have been under attack (Lorelle, Weblog Tools Collection, WordPress Dev Blog). Of course, sites running the latest version of the software seem to be safe, which once again takes us back to what I said over a year ago: Upgrade or else! I haven’t seen complete details yet about how this new worm works, but reports say that part of the hack is to create a new Administrator level account, and then try to hide the existence of that account (via javascript) when you view your list of…

A stitch in time saves nine. I couldn’t sew my way out of a bag, but it’s true advice for bloggers as well — a little bit of work on an upgrade now saves a lot of work fixing something later.

Right now there is a worm making its way around old, unpatched versions of WordPress. This particular worm, like many before it, is clever: it registers a user, uses a security bug (fixed earlier in the year) to allow evaluated code to be executed through the permalink structure, makes itself an admin, then uses JavaScript to hide itself when you…

The vBSEO team is proud to announce its latest release!

Don’t miss out on the 72 hr vBSEO End of Summer Sale!

<div id="cd-container">End Of Summer Sale ends in:<script src="http://www.vbseo.com/countdown.php?timezone=US/Eastern&amp;countto=2009-09-07 20:00:00&amp;do=t&amp;data=0"></script></div>
vBSEO End of Summer Sale Details

vBSEO 3.3.1 is now available in your Downloads area. 3.3.1 is primarily a maintenance release, but does include some new features as outlined below. This update is available for all non-expired licenses. [Check License Status]

Bug Fixes:
FIX: Invalid argument in functions_vbseo.php on some server instances
FIX: Virtual HTML breaks W3 validation
FIX: vBSEO Acronym expansion for Guests
FIX: Acronyms – Ajax edit
FIX: Missing 301 redirect for member profiles applied
FIX: Social Groups – Discussion title caused invalid…

Old WordPress Versions Under Attack: Older version of WordPress are being attacked and characters are being added to the permalinks. Sure signs of the attack include strange characters in your permalinks (single posts do not work) and an extra administrator account in the users control panel which you cannot see. Look for the administrator count in brackets at the top. Is the number there what you would expect on your blog?

Please upgrade your WordPress blog to the latest version ASAP. Our own PluginBlog was vulnerable and was compromised (shame on me for not having upgraded from a really old version).…

Otto42 of OttoDestruct, a key WordPress developer and supporter, reports that there is an “attack” on older versions of WordPress right now. The number of sites hit by this is growing every hour. Protect your WordPress blog now: UPDATE NOW!!!

Update your WordPress blog before you continue reading this post. That’s how critical this issue is.

Things You Need to Know Now

Here is what you need to know right now, constantly updated with news as we get it.

UPDATE NOW! Reports are that this attack impacts ALL versions of WordPress up to 2.8.3 and 2.8.4, the most recent release.
Report from WordPress…

We are in need of beta testers for the upcoming WordPress iPhone application release version 1.4!  If you’d like to be part of the fun and excitement and test the latest release on your device, please go and fill out a brief survey! (See update below.)

Please note that this release only supports OS 3.0 and higher, and we have limited spots as Apple restricts these beta tests to a max of 100 people. We’ll be picking the beta testers at random — and if chosen, you’ll receive an email with instructions.

Why do a beta test ? We would like to…

We’ve decided to standardize the WordPress For iPhone application on the new OS 3.0 going forward.  We’ve seen a large percentage of users upgrading to 3.0, as have other apps, and there are new features we want to focus on which are OS 3.0 specific.  Overall, it seems like a good time to make the switch.

For those of you who wish to stay on an earlier version of the OS, be sure to grab a copy of the current version in the app store (1.3) and you’ll be able to continue using that version on early OS versions for you…

vBulletin.com Announcement: vB4 Alpha Update
Author: Steve Machol
Published: 08-28-2009 09:45 PM

I just wanted to provide a quick update on the status of the vB4 Alpha testing program.

We have already released Alpha 2 to the test team. As you would expect this version provided a number of bug fixes and incorporated some of the very useful suggestions coming from the testers.

To date most of the reported bugs have to do with relatively easy-to-fix template issues. However as with any Alpha version there have been a number of code bugs uncovered. To that end we have set up a bug-scrubbing…

I just wanted to provide a quick update on the status of the vB4 Alpha testing program.

We have already released Alpha 2 to the test team. As you would expect this version provided a number of bug fixes and incorporated some of the very useful suggestions coming from the testers.

To date most of the reported bugs have to do with relatively easy-to-fix template issues. However as with any Alpha version there have been a number of code bugs uncovered. To that end we have set up a bug-scrubbing operation to help identify, prioritize and streamline the debugging process.…