WordPress 2.0.3 has just been released.  Matt posts that this is “the latest in the stable 2.0 series” and that it “is a bug fix and security release <that is> recommended for all users”.

“For the curious, this release includes:

• Small performance enhancements
• Movable Type / Typepad importer fix
• Enclosure (podcasting) fix
• The aforementioned security enhancements (nonces)

Upgrading is fairly simple, just overwrite your old files with the latest from the download. When you go to your admin it will give you a link to update your database.”

Here’s the link to download the newest WordPress.

I’ll report more once I’ve upgraded myself

I can’t believe how long its been since my last post. I apologize for my lack of updates to How to Blog and my being so behind in answering my emails - the reasons for which are two-fold.

Firstly, I’ve been in migraine hell again — its been really bad. I feel like a human guinea pig with all of the different medications that neurologist has given me and am extremely frustrated with how poorly they all work. There are two different kinds of medications that migraine sufferers take: a) a daily preventative medication and b) a medication to treat a migraine when you’re actually having it. The biggest zinger is that the preventative medications all have possible side effects of actually triggering more migraines (which has been my experience in 3 of the 4 preventative medications I’ve tried thus far, making things WORSE rather than better for the time being). To add insult to injury, the migraine medications that you take when you have a migraine are VERY expensive. $20-$25 a pill!!! And as if that weren’t frustrating enough, they don’t work. Every time I find something that works (Migranal, Axert, Maxalt, etc) it starts decreasing in its effectiveness so by the time I am on dose 5 or 6 it no longer works. I’m losing my mind a little bit here because when you have a migraine you can’t do anything - in addition to the pain you have sensitive to light, inability to concentrate or focus at all, you can’t even do anything to distract yourself from the pain like watch tv or read because that makes your head hurt worse - it is hell. And forget about trying to get any work done, never mind any blogging.

Which brings me to reason number two as to why I haven’t posted in forever: I’ve been busy on a contract job for the last two months, and every spare moment where I’ve been fortunate enough to not have a migraine and be able to think and use the computer I’ve had to devote to the contract job. While I’ll still have some contract work through June, it won’t be as much as over the past two months so I hope to have some more free time to devote to How to Blog. I have so many articles that I want to write and so much news that I want to report, but it is very time consuming and I need to earn a living so I can pay my mortgage, etc, so until blogging can help pay the bills it has to play second fiddle to my contract work (bummer).

On the plus side, I actually don’t have a headache today (which is VERY exciting!) and I have an appointment tomorrow to go to an acupuncturist to try an alternative method for preventing my migraines — I’ve had at least 4 different people suggest that I try acupuncture for my migraines b/c they know someone who was helped tremendously by it, and I found some studies on the internet that actually claim acupuncture is more effective than medication for preventing migraines, so keep your fingers crossed for me that this will finally be the thing that helps me with my migraines so I can get my life back again!!!! Wish me luck - I need it!!!!!

ArenaWP has officially closed the doors to new entrants to its theme competition and so the judging process has begun! Terry (the creater of ArenaWP) says that

I know everyone is anxious to see the new designs, and they’ll be available in two weeks for download after the judging panel has reviewed all the entries. A screenshot of each design will be available later this week for a sneak preview of the designs that have been entered. I’ll also complile a list of all the new partcipants and come up with a final number of theme entries within the next couple of days

As of April 17th, there were 34 Theme Participants listed and I’m sure that list has grown as the competition deadline drew nearer. A big thanks to everyone who participated, and best of luck to all of you in winning some of the great prizes being offered up!

Personally, I’m uber excited to see all the new WordPress 2.0 themes that have been created! I hope that some designers really went to town with incorporating WordPress 2.0’s new Theme Options, which allow wordpress bloggers to customize the theme without touching (or knowing) a single piece of code.

I also can’t wait to see how much larger my comprehensive wordpress theme list will grow once all of the themes that were submitted to the contest are made available to the public. We’ve recently crossed the 800 themes mark — think there’s a chance we can make it to 900??