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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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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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

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

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

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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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Further, what if that particular person doesn’t want all the blogrolls to appear in the same spot, listed one after another? Using the Links Widget, you have no choice really – at least not at this time. You place the Blogroll Widget in your sidebar and all your link lists appear in the same spot.

So, say you run a tech blog and you have a Blogroll category for Windows and another category for Macintosh. And you want to display the Windows blogroll in the left sidebar, and want to display the Macintosh category in the right sidebar. You can’t split the widget (unless you have the coding know-how to edit the actual widgets.php file)!

You can, however, insert a template tag in your sidebar.php template to display the blogroll categories wherever you want them to display:

<?php wp_list_bookmarks('category=1'); ?>

Where the 1 equals the category ID number (which you can find listed to the left of the bookmark category in your WP administration panel under Blogroll / Categories. Just change the ID number to match the category of links you’d like to display.

Likewise, you can list the blogrolls by category name by using:

<?php wp_list_bookmarks('category_name=category'); ?>

Having to insert the code into the template kind of defeats the purpose of using Sidebar Widgets in the first place, but until WordPress updates the Links Widget – there’s no real getting around having to do it this way in order to split up those Blogroll Categories.

Or - to make it MUCH easier – you can use Breukies Links Widget by widget author Arnold Breukhoven – a WordPress links widget, to replace the standard links widget by Automattic. This widget displays links using the wp_list_bookmarks function, utilizes most available parameters for wp_list_bookmarks. You can also set up to 9 intances of this widget in your sidebar(s).

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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, WordPress.org.

You can display all sorts of things:

• Current mood
• Currently reading
• Currently listening to
• Todays weather

These small tid bits of information can be added to the bottom of each post easily through the use of Custom Fields.

But first – where do you find custom fields?

In your WordPress administration panel, click “Write” then scroll down, beneath the text box where you write your post and you will see a blue bar with the words “Custom Fields”…. click the plus sign in the top right-hand corner of that blue bar and you see the following:

You see two fields there that you can fill out:

• Key: this is the name of the custom field
• Value: this is the information that appears in the custom field

It sounds simple enough – - but why use it.. and how??

Let’s use a very simple example. Since I’m a big music fan – I can add a “Listening To” bit at the bottom of each post using Custom Fields. This is what I would do if I wanted to do that:

1. Click the Write tab in the top menu of my WordPress Administration Panel
2. Write my post as I usually would
3. Scroll down to the Custom Fields section (shown above)
4. Type the following in box labeled “Key”: Listening To:
5. Type the name of the song in the box labeled “Value”
6. Click the button labeled “Add Custom Field”
7. Publish my post

As long as I have the correct template tag in my template, then my “Listening To” data will appear on my post, wherever I’ve coded it to appear. The information stored in custom fields is considered meta-data and can be displayed on your blog by the use of this simple template tag:

<?php the_meta(); ?>

On this blog – at the bottom of this very post, and on the single post only – you should see the following: “Listening To: Metallica: The Black Album”.

Now, you can style that information any way you’d like using CSS. The source code for my particular custom field looks like this:

<p><ul class='post-meta'>
<li><span class='post-meta-key'>Listening To::</span> Metallica: The Black Album</li>

</ul>

It’s important to note that you only need to add a Key once. That is: one time for keys.

In the future, if I want to add a “Listening To” to any of my posts.. the key will always be there in the drop down menu that says Select (see the Custom Fields screenshot above.) I just need to select the key I wish to use in that drop down menu and type my value into the “Value” box. There is no need to add the same key over and over again.

Here’s a cute use for podcasters. Say you don’t publish a podcast in every single blog post that you do – - but in the posts that you have published a podcast, you want to start out the post with a cute podcasty-type icon or image to set it apart from the rest. Going further – - you want that podcasty-type icon or image to appear in the post excerpt on your archives and search results page. (Just using this template tag: the_excerpt – will not accomplish this for you since the excerpt tag strips out those images you upload and stick into your blog posts).

You can create a Custom Field for your Podcast posts by following these simple steps:

1. First, upload your image. To make it easy – let’s make that image 100 pixels wide and 100 pixels in height.
2. Visit the Custom Fields area of the Write page in your WordPress administration panel
3. Creat a new key by typing “podcast” in the Key box (without the quote marks)
4. Type the path the the uploaded imade in the Value box (i.e. http://yourdomain.com/wp-content/uploads/image.gif)
5. Click Add Custom Field
6. Create a second key by typing “thumb-class” in the Key box (without the quotes)
7. Type ‘thumb-class’ in the Value box (again, without the quotes)
8. Click the Add Custom Field button

Following the above steps, you have created two keys: 1.) podcast key that contains the podcast image and 2.) the thumb-class key that will allow you to style the podcast image in your CSS using the ‘thumb-class’ value.

Now when you make a post with a podcast broadcast in it – - you can add the ‘podcast’ and ‘thumb-class’ custom fields to just that post and you will insert the cute little podcasty-icon that you created JUST for your podcast posts.

But WAIT! Of course, there is more . . in order for it to appear in your posts, you will need to add some code bits to your template. (in your index.php, single.php, category.php and/or archive.php (wherever you want this icon shown in the posts):

After this code bit¹ :

if(have_posts()) : while(have_posts()) : the_post();

Add this code bit:

// check for podcast
$podcast= get_post_meta($post->ID, 'podcast', $single = true);
// check for thumb-class
$thumb-class = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'thumb-class', $single = true);

This code bit simply retreives the custom field keys and values and assigns them to the . To display it in your post, you’ll need this code bit and you will need to place it before the_content or the_excerpt in order for the image to display before your post:

<?php // if this is a podcast
if($podcast!== '') { ?>
	<p>
	<img src="<?php echo $podcast; ?>"
	class="<?php if($thumb-class !== '') { echo $thumb-class; } else { echo "alignleft"; } ?>"
	/>
	</p>
<?php } // end if statement

// if this is not a podcast
else { echo ''; } ?>

This code bit inserts the podcasty-type image/icon right before your post content, or excerpt. With this example, you can go further to style the output of that image by opening your Stylesheet file (click Presentations –> Theme Editor in your WordPress administration menu, then click the Stylesheet link to open the editor for this file)…and style the CSS however you’d like:

.alignleft {float: left; margin: 0 10px 0 0;}

.thumb-class {float: left; width: 100px; height: 100px; margin: 0 10px 0 0; padding: 4px; background-color: white; border: 1px solid silver; }

Each time you make that podcast post – you will have to remember to insert the path to the podcast image in the Value field, after choosing the ‘podcast’ key in the drop down menu (remember – you only have to create custom fields ONCE). This also gives you the ability to change out the podcasty-type icon/image you use… for instance, if you create podcasts on different topics (i.e. sports, tech, current evenings, celebrity gossip.. the possibilities are endless!)

You can, of course, use this concept for anything outside of podcasts. Say you’re a sports blogger and you blog about different types of sports – - using this Post Images with Custom Fields concept – you can create keys for Baseball, Football and Basketball and use corresponding images in the values for those keys.

Or a cooking blog? Icons for seafood, vegetarian, vegan, deserts..etc..etc.

Hopefully this little blurb on custom fields gives you a good introduction on the possibilities of their use. You can read more about the use of custom fields in the WordPress Codex: Using Custom Fields.

There have been some good plugins developed around the concept of custom fields, as well:

Field Layout Manager – lets you display your custom fields in a sorted html table. FML also lets you group fields and give them custom names.

Get Custom Field Values – Easily retrieve and control the display of any custom field values/meta data for posts, inside or outside “the loop”. The power of custom fields gives this plugin the potential to be dozens of plugins all rolled into one.

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1. The Loop

© Lisa Sabin-Wilson, 2007 - Author of WordPress for Dummies

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

With WordPress templates, you can create all sorts of different templates for different custom displays. However, to accomplish the title idea – you really only need one single template and a handful of conditional tags.

Create a template and name it: archive.php

That template should contain all the template tags necessary to display your posts and content the way you want them displayed.

To give that page a title, depending on what type of page is being displayed – you just need to add conditional tags at the top, and ABOVE the Loop¹ . Here’s a sample of the conditional tags I use on my archive.php template:

<?php if ( is_day() ) : ?>
<h2 class="page-title"><?php printf(__('Daily Archives: <span>%s</span>'), get_the_time('F jS, Y')) ?></h2>

<?php elseif ( is_month() ) : ?>
<h2 class="page-title"><?php printf(__('Monthly Archives: <span>%s</span>'), get_the_time('F Y')) ?></h2>

<?php elseif ( is_year() ) : ?>
<h2 class="page-title"><?php printf(__('Yearly Archives: <span>%s</span>'), get_the_time('Y')) ?></h2>

<?php elseif ( isset($_GET['paged']) && !empty($_GET['paged']) ) : ?>
<h2 class="page-title"><?php _e('Blog Archives') ?></h2>

<?php elseif ( is_tag() ) : ?>
<h2 class="page-title"><?php single_tag_title('Posts Tagged With: '); ?></h2>

<?php endif; ?>

Take a quick look at the very last conditional tag in my code bits above:

<?php elseif ( is_tag() ) : ?>
<h2 class="page-title"><?php single_tag_title('Posts Tagged With: '); ?></h2>

The first line poses a question: Is this a tag page?

If the answer is yes.. then the title displayed at the top says “Posts Tagged With: TAGNAME”.

It’s a small gesture – but much appreciated by browsers of your site content.

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1. the loop starts with: if(have_posts(…

© Lisa Sabin-Wilson, 2007 - Author of WordPress for Dummies

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What am I speaking of?? The version update feature that is packaged in the new 2.3.+ version of WordPress. I heard about it in the buzz about the new version in the weeks prior to it being released. Now that WordPress 2.3.1 is out – I’m seeing it in my WordPress Dashboard and it looks like this:

This nifty feature tells you when your WordPress software is out of date and a new version has been released. This is really nice, especially for those who don’t keep updated on such information on a regular basis.

Now, there are some folks who are concerned about the privacy issues surrounding this particular feature. In order for this feature to work – there is a bit of code in the core WordPress files that need to ‘call home’ to the WordPress servers. It makes sense – in order for your WordPress Dashboard to notify you that you’re out of date with your version – there needs to be a call to a central server at WordPress.org – - it sends information like your version, your domain and your blog name – and returns the message back that you’re out of date.

Likewise, there is another update notification system in place for your WordPress plugins. It’s a nice feature you’ll see under the Plugins tab that will tell you if you are using an old version of a particular plugin – - it’s really nice to know if there is a new version of your favorite plugin, isn’t it? That notifcation looks something like this:

Same type of call home – - same privacy concerns, for some.

Due to privacy concerns surrounding this (some people just aren’t comfortable with that call back to WordPress.org) – there have been some plugins developed to disable this feature. Just know – if you use any of these plugins, you will need to keep yourself informed about WordPress update releases as they come out! Here’s a few plugins to disable the software and plugin update notification feature in WordPress:

Disable WordPress Core Update by John Blackbourn

Disable WordPress Plugin Updates by John Blackbourn

Anonymous WordPress Plugin Updates by Hannes Hofmann (this plugin allows the updates but anonymizes the plugin update checking system)

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© Lisa Sabin-Wilson, 2007 - Author of WordPress for Dummies

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• Tagging support for Windows Live Writer
• Fixes for a login bug that affected those with a Blog Address different than their WordPress Address
• Faster taxonomy database queries, especially tag intersection queries
• Link importer fixes

Unfortunately, some security issues were found in 2.3. Specifically, an XSS problem that can be exploited if your php setup has register_globals enabled. For this reason, upgrading to 2.3.1 is advised.

See a full set of changes between 2.3 and 2.3.1 here on the Trac

Download the new version and upgrade your current copy.

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© Lisa Sabin-Wilson, 2007 - 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 WordPress News, WordPress.org.