WordPress 3.7

After 2 betas and another 2 RCs, WordPress 3.7 is finally out!

This release features some of the most important architectural updates we’ve made to date. Here are the big ones:

  • Updates while you sleep: With WordPress 3.7, you don’t have to lift a finger to apply maintenance and security updates. Most sites are now able to automatically apply these updates in the background. The update process also has been made even more reliable and secure, with dozens of new checks and safeguards.
  • Stronger password recommendations: Your password is your site’s first line of defense. It’s best to create passwords that are complex, long, and unique. To that end, our password meter has been updated in WordPress 3.7 to recognize common mistakes that can weaken your password: dates, names, keyboard patterns (123456789), and even pop culture references.
  • Better global support: Localized versions of WordPress will receive faster and more complete translations. WordPress 3.7 adds support for automatically installing the right language files and keeping them up to date, a boon for the many millions who use WordPress in a language other than English.

For developers there are lots of options around how to control the new updates feature, including allowing it to handle major upgrades as well as minor ones, more sophisticated date query support, and multisite improvements. As always, if you’re hungry for more dive into the Codex or browse the over 400 closed tickets on Trac.

This release was led by Andrew Nacin, backed up by Dion Hulse and Jon Cave. This is our first release using the new plugin-first development process, with a much shorter timeframe than in the past. (3.6 was released in August.) The 3.8 release, due in December, will continue this plugin-led development cycle that gives much more autonomy to plugin leads and allows us to decouple feature development from a release.

Download: WordPress 3.7

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DO NOT Use Automatic Plugin Upgrade

I have received several feedback that the Automatic Plugin Upgrade feature in WordPress is causing problem with my plugins.

I want to say that ALL my plugins currently will not work with the Automatic Plugin Upgrade feature because there is a problem with the path. It is a little difficult for me to explain it here.

The new version of my plugins that I am going to release on 1st June 2008 will address this issue. In another words, if are using 1.30 or 2.30 beta of my plugins, the problem has been solved.

So in the mean time, DO NOT use the Automatic Plugin Upgrade feature for my plugin.

Source: WordPress.org Forums: wp-dbmanager is showing as an upgrade for wp-postViews Widget

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WordPress 2.5.1

WordPress 2.5.1 has been released. It includes a number of bug fixes, performance enhancements, and one very important security fix.

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
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Canonical URLs

Mark has posted a very detailed post containing this Canonical URLs, a new feature in WordPress 2.3 and personally I like this feature a lot because some of my users are complaining to me that when they are using my WP-PageNavi, when they access http://example.com/page/1/ they do not get redirected to http://example.com, but I told them it is a WordPress issue over here and finally, this “bug” is gone for good.

So, what’s the problem with this? The URLs are all showing the exact same content, so why should it matter? Well, search engines can’t assume that all of these alternative URLs represent the same resource. So they don’t automatically get condensed into a single resource. As a result, you can actually end up competing against yourself in search engine rankings. So to avoid confuse search engines and to consolidate your rankings for your content, there should only be one URL for a resource. We call this URL the canonical URL. Canonical means “standard” or “authoritative”. It’s the one that WordPress generates, and it’s the one that you want everyone to use.

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