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. [↩]

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.

The 1.3 version of WordPress MU is finally released - much to the pleasure of MU users everywhere. On his blog, Donncha O Caoimh announced that this new version of WordPress MU includes:

• Better admin controls for the signup page. It can be disabled in various ways.
• Upload space functions have been fixed.
• The signup form is now hidden from search engines which will help avoid certain types of spamming.
• Profile page now allows you to select your primary blog.
• Database tables are now UTF-8 from the start.
• If you’re using virtual hosts, the main blog doesn’t live at /blog/ any more.
• The WordPress importer now assigns posts to other users on a blog.

I downloaded and installed version 1.3-RC for WordPress MU this week. Download it here, if you want - - or wait for the final release to be coming soon!

Changes:

The main blog of the site doesn’t have to live at /blog/ if you’re using virtual hosts. #409

WordPress importer can now assign posts to other users. #435

The importer shouldn’t error on the foreach() loop when there’s only one author now #405

Privacy mode of new blog is stored properly. #423

Various cleanup patches by ktlee and momo360modena.
momo360modena gave the wpmu-* admin pages a nice facelift!

XMLRPC posting and the signup page are now disabled by default. They can be activated in the wpmu-options.php page. It is possible to change the xmlrpc setting for a particular blog by editing it via the wpmu-blogs.php page.

Individual blog’s upload quota can be edited on the edit blog page too.

Please update now.

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.