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 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:

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.

WordPress MU 1.3.2 has been released and is a critical update including a “security update that brings together the fixes in WordPress 2.3.2 and a number of critical WordPress MU specific security problems”.

This release should be seen as an urgent upgrade.

Donncha states in his blog post that the “details of the fixes will be posted to the WordPress MU forum next week to give administrators time to upgrade”.

Before upgrading, check this post in the MU Forum if you are using any plugins in your current installation that uses options.php to save it’s options. You must now whitelist those options using the new add_option_update_handler() API.

Download WordPress MU HERE

(read this forum post for the best instructions on how to upgrade your WordPress MU installation.)

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.

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.

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

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:

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. [↩]

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.

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.

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”