With all our major tickets closed, we are very close to a release candidate. In Beta 4 we’ve fixed a bunch of bugs, cleaned up the UI, added real text in some of the screens that still had placeholder text in Beta 3 (post-update screen, the Dashboard welcome area, new feature pointers), and generally tightened things up. We updated to jQuery 1.7.1 and addressed a LOT of bugs.

View: Full Changelog From Beta 3
Download: WordPress 3.3 Beta 4

This maintenance and security release fixes almost thirty issues in 3.1, including:

• Some security hardening to media uploads
• Performance improvements
• Fixes for IIS6 support
• Fixes for taxonomy and PATHINFO (/index.php/) permalinks
• Fixes for various query and taxonomy edge cases that caused some plugin compatibility issues

Version 3.1.1 also addresses three security issues discovered by WordPress core developers Jon Cave and Peter Westwood, of our security team. The first hardens CSRF prevention in the media uploader. The second avoids a PHP crash in certain environments when handling devilishly devised links in comments, and the third addresses an XSS flaw.

We suggest you update to 3.1.1 promptly. Download 3.1.1 or update automatically from the Dashboard ? Updates menu in your site’s admin area.

Changelog: WordPress 3.1.1
Download: WordPress 3.1.1
Download: Modified files since WordPress 3.1

During this period, http://forums.lesterchan.net will be in a read-only mode, meaning you can only search and read topics/replies. Registration of new account, replying to an existing topic and posting a new topic will be DISABLED.

Please make an effort to search or read through the respective forum for your answers. I am 90% sure that your problems had been addressed before.

I WILL NOT entertain any support questions that are sent to me via email during this period. If you urgently need support, you can try posting it in WordPress.org Support Forums.

This site is running the development versions of all my plugins, so it should work with WordPress 2.8. Please let me know if you encounter any bug.

Download: WordPress 2.8 Beta 1

• WP-Polls and WP-PostRatings uses JavaScript on the frontend as well as the backend
• WP-Email and WP-UserOnline uses JavaScript on the frontend only
• WP-ServerInfo uses JavaScript on the backend only

Unfortunately the changes require at least WordPress 2.8 onwards to make use of the JavaScript enhancements in WordPress 2.8. I have updated this site to WordPress 2.8 Bleeding Edge aka WordPress 2.8 Nightly in order to test the JavaScript changes on a live site.

If you view the HTML source of this page, you will notice that only the CSS files get loaded in the header and the JavaScript gets loaded in the footer.

If you are running WordPress 2.8 bleeding edge, perhaps you can help me test out the plugins. Thanks in advanced

During this period, http://forums.lesterchan.net will be in a read-only mode, meaning you can only search and read topics/replies. Registration of new account, replying to an existing topic and posting a new topic will be DISABLED.

I WILL NOT entertain any support questions that are sent to me via email during this period.

My efforts had paid off when my plugins undergo major cosmetic changes back in WordPress 2.5 to accommodate the new WordPress 2.5 design. It is because for WordPress 2.7, I need not do anything and the design just fits right in. I just need to add in the icon for the admin menu for WP-DBManager, WP-DownloadManager, WP-Email, WP-Polls and WP-PostRatings.

Here are the fixes to get WP-Email 2.31 and WP-Print 2.31 to work with WordPress 2.7. I will not update WP-Email 2.31 and WP-Print 2.31 with this fix, instead I will just leave the fix to be downloadeded on this site. Do note that the fix will make WP-Email and WP-Print work for WordPress 2.7 ONLY.

Here is the fix for WP-Email 2.31:

In wp-email.php:

Find (Line 106, Line 120, Line 134 & Line 147):

$rewrite_rules = array_slice($rewrite_rules, 4, 1);

Replace:

$rewrite_rules = array_slice($rewrite_rules, 5, 1);

Find (Line 758):

add_action('template_redirect', 'wp_email');

Replace:

add_action('template_redirect', 'wp_email', 5);

Alternatively you can download the fixed wp-email.php:

Here is the fix for WP-Print 2.31:

In wp-print.php:

Find (Line 79 & Line 95):

$rewrite_rules = array_slice($rewrite_rules, 4, 1);

Replace:

$rewrite_rules = array_slice($rewrite_rules, 5, 1);

Find (Line 395):

add_action('template_redirect', 'wp_print');

Replace:

add_action('template_redirect', 'wp_print', 5);

Alternatively you can download the fixed wp-print.php:

After uploading the fix, you need to regenerate permalink. Go to (WP-Admin -> Settings -> Permalinks -> Save Changes)

I have already committed these changes to WP-Email 2.40 and WP-Print 2.40 to the SVN.

Tentatively WP-DBManager, WP-DownloadManager, WP-Email, WP-Polls and WP-PostRatings will work for WordPress 2.7 only because of the new icon in the admin menu.

Stefan Esser recently warned developers of the dangers of SQL Column Truncation and the weakness of mt_rand(). With his help we worked around these problems and are now releasing WordPress 2.6.2. If you allow open registration on your blog, you should definitely upgrade. With open registration enabled, it is possible in WordPress versions 2.6.1 and earlier to craft a username such that it will allow resetting another user’s password to a randomly generated password. The randomly generated password is not disclosed to the attacker, so this problem by itself is annoying but not a security exploit. However, this attack coupled with a weakness in the random number seeding in mt_rand() could be used to predict the randomly generated password. Stefan Esser will release details of the complete attack shortly. The attack is difficult to accomplish, but its mere possibility means we recommend upgrading to 2.6.2.

Here is a list of bugs fixed:

• Can’t control where a user redirects to when they log in
• Bug in textpattern import
• include mysql version in version check query string
• RSS widget shouldn’t link if there isn’t a link
• get_post_meta fails to unserialize when $single=false
• typing error in wp-settings.php
• comment_max_links causes confusion when zero
• get_posts not working properly
• Insert image into post always inserts full size
• Filter news on templates cant work
• Typo in post revisions

Here is a list of changed files:

• wp-login.php
• wp-settings.php
• /wp-includes/formatting.php
• /wp-includes/pluggable.php
• /wp-includes/post.php
• /wp-includes/query.php
• /wp-includes/version.php
• /wp-includes/widgets.php
• /wp-admin/css/press-this-ie.css
• /wp-admin/import/textpattern.php
• /wp-admin/includes/image.php
• /wp-admin/includes/template.php

Download WordPress 2.6.2

2.6.1 offers several improvements for international users. Styling of the admin for right-to-left languages is much improved thanks to the efforts of the Farsi and Hebrew translation teams, and a mysterious gettext bug caused by certain PHP configurations is now fixed. For IIS users, 2.6.1 fixes several permalink problems. Image insertion problems in the Press This feature experienced by IE users are also fixed. Of note to everyone is a fix for a performance bug in the admin where those with a lot of plugins would experience slowness on some pages.

I am so looking forward to WordPress 2.7 as lots of features which are available as plugin will be built into the core.

Download WordPress 2.6.1

*UPDATE* I decided to upgrade to stopped the nagging upgrading message to appear.

I will release all my plugins updates tomorrow.

I had spent the whole night yesterday making my plugins work wells with WordPress 2.6 and perhaps even WordPress 2.7 while maintaining the backward compatibility with WordPress 2.5.

All my 15 plugins are available at the Downloads Page under Beta Scripts. It used to be 16 plugins, but I stopped developing WP-Wap and hence it became 15.

Do help me test it out either on WordPress 2.5 or WordPress 2.6 Beta. They should work just fine for both versions.

This site is running all 15 of them and it is based on WordPress 2.5. If you found any of my plugins that are not working well on this site, do let me know as well. I will update this site to WordPress 2.6 when RC1 comes out.

If everything goes fine, I will release the updates 2 days after WordPress 2.6 is being released.

PS: My mom always nag at me to get a job especially during my 3 months (summer holidays) from May to August. But I told her by developing plugins, I can get donations as well. If you really like my plugins and appreciate my effort that I have put into it, do drop me a donation. My Paypal email is lesterchan AT gmail DOT com. Thank You =)

Finally, I have gotten rid of .php and now the only two Javascript files in WP-PostRatings are in .js and best of all, they are packed using Dean Edward’s Packer. This will not only reduce the size of the Javascript file but also lessen the load on the server as .js files can be served as static files which requires no overhead in processing.

Changelog:

NEW: Renamed postratings-admin-js.php To postratings-admin-js.js and Move The Dynamic Javascript Variables To The PHP Pages
NEW: Renamed postratings-js.php To postratings-js.js and Move The Dynamic Javascript Variables To The PHP Pages
NEW: Uses postratings-js-packed.js And postratings-admin-js-packed.js

I need you guys to help me test WP-PostRatings 1.31 to ensure that it is working like normal as before.

Upgrading from WP-PostRatings 1.30 to WP-PostRatings 1.31 Beta 1 is very easy, just overwrite all the files will do. You do not need to run anything.

Thank You

PS: I have upgraded this site to WP-PostRatings 1.31 Beta 1, if there is any bug in the rating systems do let me know.

If you are interested in only the security fixes, just replaced the following files.

1. /wp-includes/pluggable.php
2. /wp-admin/includes/media.php
3. /wp-admin/media.php

There are more than 70 bugs and performance fixes in 2.5.1, here is an outline of it:

• Performance improvements for the Dashboard, Write Post, and Edit Comments pages.
• Better performance for those who have many categories
• Media Uploader fixes
• An upgrade to TinyMCE 3.0.7
• Widget Administration fixes
• Various usability improvements
• Layout fixes for IE

New User Features in WordPress 2.5

• Cleaner, faster, less cluttered dashboard
• Dashboard Widgets
• Multi-file upload with progress bar
• Bonus: EXIF extraction
• Search posts and pages
• Tag management
• Password strength meter
• Concurrent editing protection
• Few-click plugin upgrades
• Friendlier visual post editor
• Built-in galleries

New Developer Features in WordPress 2.5

• Salted passwords
• Secure cookies
• Easy taxonomy and URL creation
• Inline documentation
• Database optimization
• $wpdb->prepare()
• Media buttons
• Shortcode API

Download: WordPress 2.5

I have upgraded this site to WordPress 2.5.

Some features in WordPress 2.5 taken from WordPress.org:

A customizable dashboard, multi-file upload, built-in galleries, one-click plugin upgrades, tag management, built-in Gravatars, full text feeds, and faster load times.

Do take a look at WordPress.org’s blog – Sneak Peak on WordPress 2.5.

Download: WordPress 2.5 Release Candidate 1

*UPDATE* Just updated this site to WordPress 2.5 RC1, apparently all my plugins seems to be working fine. Just that some alignment and colour scheme maybe a little off. I will try to fix it latest during my summer holidays.

• gettext fails to determine byteorder on 64bit systems with php5.2.1
• some registration emails fail in 2.3.1 b/c of “callout verification”
• maybe_create_table call to config.php issue

5 files changed (Thanks to whooami):

• /wp-admin/install-helper.php
• /wp-includes/gettext.php
• /wp-includes/pluggable.php
• /wp-includes/version.php
• /xmlrpc.php

Get WordPress 2.3.3 now.