If you’re currently running MU, when you upgrade you’ll notice a few labels changing, but upgrading should be as painless as usual. If you’re going to set up a new WordPress installation, you’ll be asked as part of the setup if you want one site or multiple sites, so that’s pretty simple. If you want to turn your single install into one that supports multiple sites, we’ll have a tool for you to use to do that, too.

So if you’ve been worried about the merge, have a cup of chamomile tea and relax; it will all be fine. ”

original source: Menus, the Merge, and a Patch Sprint! – GRATBLOG LAGI.

Right now there is a worm making its way around old, unpatched versions of WordPress….”

“…Upgrading is a known quantity of work, and one that the WordPress community has tried its darndest to make as easy as possible with one-click upgrades. Fixing a hacked blog, on the other hand, is quite hard. Upgrading is taking your vitamins; fixing a hack is open heart surgery. (This is true of cost, as well.)…”

Read entire article at: WordPress › Blog » How to Keep WordPress Secure.

Posted September 5, 2009 by Matt. Filed under Development, Security.

WordPress 2.8.4: Security Release

Posted August 12, 2009 by Matt. Filed under Releases, Security.

Yesterday a vulnerability was discovered: a specially crafted URL could be requested that would allow an attacker to bypass a security check to verify a user requested a password reset. As a result, the first account without a key in the database (usually the admin account) would have its password reset and a new password would be emailed to the account owner. This doesn’t allow remote access, but it is very annoying.

We fixed this problem last night and have been testing the fixes and looking for other problems since then. Version 2.8.4 which fixes all known problems is now available for download and is highly recommended for all users of WordPress.

Related posts:

1. WordPress 3.3.1 Security and Maintenance Release
2. WordPress 2.8.6 Security Release
3. WordPress 3.1.4 (and 3.2 Release Candidate 3)

Here are some WordPress plugins you will likely find useful…

My Page Order – Easy drag and drop ordering of your pages – Access under Pages > Page Order

Cleaner Gallery – Makes it easy to integrate the Worpress built in photo gallery feature with Shadowbox (or other lightbox scripts) – or just simply removes the styles that wordpress injects natively, so you can use your own more easily

ShadowboxJS - Activates overlay lightbox-style effects for your Image links.  Also works with Iframes, HTML content, Videos, SWF, etc.  Super frikkin cool!  Check out what it can do at:http://mjijackson.com/shadowbox – The wordpress plugin install will give you immediate access to all the functionality.

WP-SIFR – Change Page titles (h1,h2, etc) into Flash-Rendered Text, using the SIFR font of your choice (find em on google) – Degrades gracefully and doesn’t affect accessibility at all

CFORMSII – get the latest version – Stop coding forms, auto-verification, Captcha support etc.  YEAH!

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Also, for front end Javascript fancy FX – Check out JQuery http://jquery.com/

There are frameworks (prototype, mootools) but I like Jquery so far – the syntax is easy, and there are lots of plugins around.  Downside, sometimes can get heavy on load times if you get too many plugins involved.

AND, Jquery is already bundled in WordPress which makes the install easy as pie!

To activate and use the core in your WordPress theme, just do the following:

In your theme’s functions.php file, include the following function call:

That will load the Jquery 1.2.6 base file in your wp_head, and put the script into your page’s head section automagically.

Then, copy the following into your template’s header.php file,  AFTER <?php wp_head(); ?> and after all your stylesheets and CSS:

There, with the snippet above you will see that an alert pops up on page load, showing that Jquery is up and working.

Have fun!!!!
T

Related posts:

1. Create WordPress Plugins with OOP Techniques
2. Wanted – JQuery/CSS Ninja
3. What you Should be Excited About in jQuery UI 1.9