WordPress weekly digest 31st December 2007 to 6th January 2008

It has been a busy week again for WordPress 2.4 2.5, the changes this week were:

• Separation of cookie generation from cookie setting by introduce wp_generate_auth_cookie() (#5367).
• Changes to allow filtering the view of available themes based on theme tags (#5545).
• Improvements in the WXR importer to defer post comment counting during importing (#5557).
• Allow translation of calendar caption (#5562).
• Introduction of a new xmlrpc method wp.getCommentCount() (#5463).
• New API for setting a posts “type” (#4844).
• Addition of a separator location argument to wp_title() to allow for changing the ordering of the output – effectively integrating the popular Optimal Title plugin (#4407).
• Removal of the file based persistence of the WordPress object cache (#5570).
• Introduction of auto-suggest for tag entering ([6542]).
• phpdoc for cache.php, comment.php, l10n.php and registration.php (#5511, #5578, #5590 and #4383,).
• File level phpdoc for a whole raft of files (#5572).
• Work on transitioning the admin autosave javascript over to using jQuery (#3842).
• Improvements to the javascript that enabled switching between Visual and Code editors so as to not mangle table markup (#5577).
• A new interface for selecting which widgets you want on which sidebar (#5583).
• Changes to the dual visual/code editors to remember which one you used last (#3978).

As you will have probably read elsewhere the next major WordPress version will v2.5 as is to be released in March.

For even more information on some of the other little changes that went in this week you can read the whole weekly trac timeline.

WordPress weekly digest 24th December to 30th December 2007

It has been a busy week again for WordPress 2.4, the changes this week were:

• Improvements and refactoring of the WXR importer including supporting zipped xml files (#5522).
• Changes to allow the salt used by WordPress in password generation and other areas to be overridden using a define ([6478]).
• Documentation for author-template.php, bookmark.php, bookmark-template.php, template-loader.php, compat.php, canonical.php, comment-template.php and file level phpdoc for some other files. (#4393, #5523, #5521, #5513, #5510, #5526, #5528, and #5527 ).
• Improved implementation of the javascript addLoadEvent function to speed up the execution of javascript on admin pages ([6482]).
• Changes to wp-mail.php to escape the error messages when displaying them to avoid a possible XSS attack (#5484).
• Changes to ensure that the post password is only exposed by the xmlrpc method metaWeblog.getRecentPosts to users with rights to edit a post (#5535).
• Changes to the information exposed the wp.getAuthors xmlrpc method to reduce the information exposed and add a capabilites check (#5534).
• Addition of extra capabilites checks to xmlrpc methods ([6504]).
• Addition of extra capabilites checks to APP server ([6508]).
• Changes to validate_file() to improve its traversal attempt detection when running on windows ([6521]).
• Changes to the magic number detection for gettext file loading for better support of 64bit systems (#3780).
• Fixes to the tag extraction code so as to not strip ‘s’ from either end (#5539).
• Updated javascript libraries -Prototype 1.6.0 and script.aculo.us 1.8.0 (#5543).
• Introduction of deprecated function and file use tracking functionality to allow for theme and plugin developers to easily identify what is deprecated. (#4361).
• Better documentation for the_author() and prep_atom_text_construct() ([6515], [6516]).
• Final deprecation of comments_rss() and create_user() ([6517]).
• A change to avoid variable expansion in the invalid $table_prefix error message (#5546).

This week the list of changes is quite long event though a lot of time was spent on the preparation and testing of the recent WordPress 2.3.2 maintenance release for which you can read a detailed list of the changes here – don’t forget to upgrade!

You can read more about the support for theme and plugin developers to help identify what deprecated functions or files they might be using in this post – “Tracking deprecated functions”

For even more information on some of the other little changes that went in this week you can read the whole weekly trac timeline.

WordPress weekly digest 17th December to 23rd December 2007

It has been a very busy week for WordPress 2.4, partly due to a mid week bug-hunt, the changes this week were:

• Introduction of a wp_set_password() pluggable function to allow it to be overridden easily (#2394).
• Changes to is_page() to allow for an array of pages to be specified (#5430).
• Faster rewrite rules for pages for some permalink structures (#3614).
• Escaping added to the POP3 error messages to avoid XSS attacks (#5484).
• Fixes to the valid element configuration of TinyMCE to allow for more valid combinations (#3826).
• Fixes to the tag entry field to avoid erroneous blank tags (#5412).
• Changes to sanitize_title() to allow ‘0’ to be a valid title (#5293).
• New get_search_feed_link() and get_search_comments_feed_link() template tags (#5442).
• Improvements to the relative links provided in atom comments feeds (#5435).
• Addition of an xmlrpc method for deleting categories (#4599).
• Custom field support for the xmlrpc interface (#5148).
• Addition of a password strength meter to the user profile page (#4470).
• Improvements to the strings used where a different message text is displayed for plurals (#4865).
• Add a link to the relevant post to the comment editing screen (#4345).
• Documentation for wp-settings.php (#5211).
• Fixes for some of the NOTICE errors visible when WP_DEBUG is enabled ([6435], [6436]).
• Improvements to the image metadata extraction functionality to ensure we only try and extra metadata from valid file types (#5397).
• Changes to ensure that PNG transparency and alpha channels are preserved during thumbnail generation (#2805).
• Addition of file level documentation to the third party libraries (#5443).
• Changes to the wpdb class to suppress database errors by default (#5473).
• Support for a custom database down page (#5500).
• Improvements to make_clickable() to have different rules for different uri types ([6449]).
• Improvements to the install process to check for valid database connection info (#5495).
• Addition of pages to the things searched (#5149).
• Addition of new actions import_done and xmlrpc_call ([6472], [6473]).

We have also seen the beginnings of the new admin design being checked in. Hopefully next week I will be able to bring you some screenshots!

For even more information on some of the other little changes that went in this week you can read the whole weekly trac timeline.

WordPress weekly digest 10th December to 16th December 2007

It has been a busy week again for WordPress 2.4, the changes this week were:

• Addition of a new filter for the attributes in the html link generated by comments_popup_link() (#5247, #5448).
• Support for Atom Threading Extensions (#5434).
• The addition of documentation for the deprecated functions (#5444).
• Layout and usability improvements to the comment moderation page ([6371]).
• Saving of tags when auto-saving (#5359).
• Completion of the documentation for the taxonomy api (#4742).
• Performance improvements for pages (#3614, #5303, #5458).
• Improvements to the wxr exporter and importer (#5456, #5454, #5466).
• Fixes to register_sidebars to allow multiple sidebars to be registered correctly (#5352).
• Addition of a new filter called the_content_export for the post content when exporting (#5456).
• Introduction of a pluggable function for random password generation (#5401).
• Changes to the login cookie format to make it more secure (#5367).
• Suppression of database error messages by default (#5473).

If you would like to read more about the new cookie format then Ryan has written an excellent post – “Secure Cookies and Passwords”

For even more information on some of the other little changes that went in this week you can read the whole weekly trac timeline.

WordPress weekly digest 3rd December to 9th December 2007

It has been a busy week again for WordPress 2.4, the changes this week were:

• A number of changes to remove unused variables (#5418).
• A change to allow plugins to handle admin page access failures (#5379).
• A change to ensure that wp-mail.php doesn’t issue a 500 error if no messages are available to post (#5420).
• Exposure of the post_status over xmlrpc to allow desktop blogging clients to be aware of things like private posts (#4982).
• Refactoring of next_post_link and previous_post_link (#5411).
• Optimisation and documentation improvements to the filter and action handling code(#5338).
• Improvements in the AJAX fade colours used with the admin pages to make them more consistent (#5423).
• Changes to update_option to remove unnecessary trimming of string options (#4781).

For even more information on some of the other little changes that went in this week you can read the whole weekly trac timeline.

WordPress weekly digest 26th November to 2nd December 2007

It has been a busier week for WordPress 2.4, the changes this week were:

• Use of ‘Log in’ instead of ‘Login’ for verb form (#5296).
• Modifications to the way in which the login process determines if it is handling a POST request (#5365).
• Addition of a get_user_by_email() function and clean up for the other get_user*() functions (#5392).
• Correct support for mt_allow_comments to cover all possible values (#5366).
• When posting by email, publish only if user has publish caps, otherwise set status to pending (#4642).
• Changes to the hashing function used when storing the users password in the database (#2394).

The last change means that the next time you login the value stored in the database will change – this means that if you do upgrade passed this point reverting back to an old version will invalidate all users passwords and they will need reseting. Therefore it is a good idea to backup up your users table before updating to the latest trunk.

For even more information on some of the other little changes that went in this week you can read the whole weekly trac timeline.