Just a quick note to let everyone know that a new version of WordPress was released (WP 2.3.3) to address some urgent security related issues and it is highly recommend that you upgrade to it as soon as you can. So far I’ve upgraded one of my sites and the upgrade went very smoothly. When I have more time, I’ll report back on how the upgrades have gone on the remainder of my sites - including this one - like many people with large WP sites, I’m always scared when performing an upgrade b/c there have been times in the past where they’ve caused issues that resulted in my site being down for 1+ days while I researched in the support forums how to get my site back up and running — this is one of my main complaints about WordPress even though I love it in almost all other ways. This is also why for those who are not technically inclined, I really recommend using a hosted blog service like TypePad or WordPress.com (if you want to use javascript or adsense ads, you’ll have to go for TypePad, which costs money as opposed to the free WordPress.com)

I apologize that it has seemed like forever since I updated How To Blog.

I was ridiculously busy for months with planning my wedding, then I was on my honeymoon, and then I had the misfortune of sustaining a severe head injury which is only now finally fully healed so that I can finally get back on the computer.

As such, I’m crazy behind in all of my work and emails, so I’m playing catchup and look forward to being able to get back to blogging in the (hopefully) near future!! I do miss writing as well as keeping in touch with all of you guys!

Wish me luck in getting my business back in order sooner rather than later so I can start bringing you more blogging tips as soon as possible!

I’ve missed you all. Thanks for continuing to be loyal readers of How to Blog!!

Denis de Benardy (the creator of the Semiologic Pro theme and many of the amazing WordPress plug-ins used here on How To Blog) sent off the following warning to his mailing list and kindly allowed me to quote him here:

Hello all,

I’m getting a rather large number of emails related to WordPress 2.1, so I figured I’d send this short notice.

Subtle yet very real changes occurred in the Database schema. Anything that relies on a post’s status (page/post, draft/published), in particular, is subject to hard to spot bugs. e.g. post lists, comment lists, etc.

A couple of options also disappeared with almost zero notice. Plugins that rely on them (and many do) will invariably be broken. Again, this may or may not occur with obvious bugs.

In the end, do NOT upgrade WP 2.1 immediately! There is no rush, as in security issues in need of fixing. And this update can potentially break many blogs if not dealt with properly.

A Semiologic Pro update with WordPress 2.1 will occur next week or so. But not before I feel things are stable enough for a proper release.

Thanks for reading!

Denis

He gives good advice…

I’m sorry that, for personal reasons, it’s been just about forever since my last post. I hope to change that in the future.

In the meantime, a number of minor WordPress releases have come and gone - but today the next major revision of WordPress, version 2.1 (aka “Ella”), has been released. In addition to some 500+ bug fixes, it is purported to have more efficient database code which basically means “it’s faster” (a good thing!). On top of that, WordPress 2.1 also includes a bunch of new features and enhancements, including autosave, a tabbed editor for easy switching between WYSIWYG and coding, the ability to make pages private (or save them as drafts - finally!), search engine privacy options, spell checking and much more. Get the details over at wordpress.org.

They finally updated the upgrade instructions in the Codex to reflect the latest version — but you should probably wait before you upgrade to WordPress 2.1!

If you do updgrade, please let me know how smoothly it went for you. Thanks!

The last couple of times that I tried to update my wordpress theme list, when I click ‘Save’ (or Save and Continue Editing) there is a long wait after which I get presented with a blank page. Upon then checking the post it hasn’t been updated. This is driving me nuts as I have almost 100 new wordpress themes to add to the list! I am not using the TinyMCE editor, and instead using straight html code. When I try updating the post from blogjet, it comes back with an error message saying, “Error posting to blog: the xml-rpc server returned an empty resonse.”

What gives? I have no problem creating new posts. But the one post I need to edit the most frequently won’t let me update it!

Update: I found numerous posts about this problem in the wordpress support forums, but no real solutions. Of course, wordpress.org is currently taking another lunch break so I can’t link to them for ya at the moment. HOWEVER, on the plus side, I did finally get wordpress to allow me to update my theme list (made a few slight mods to the html for the page — really shouldn’t have made a difference and frankly I don’t know why it didn’t work and why it does now…I’m just glad its working finally!)