WordPress.org

Some enterprising individuals have noticed that the version number in the nightly builds has jumped from 1.3 to 1.5. I’ve heard a number of interesting ideas for why this is, including:

• Even numbers are soooo 2004
• 2 + 3 = 5 (who can argue with that?)
• They released 1.3 without telling us
• They’re switching to letters (WordPress XP, WordPress CS, WordPress MX)
• They’re switching to years (WordPress 2004, WordPress 2005…)

If you have your own theory then ping this entry. The funniest ping gets a free copy of WordPress 1.2005 XP edition.

(The real reason is we wanted the version to be indictative of the changes in the underlying codebase, and 1.5 has a lot. We’re still pretty conservative with version numbers though, if we were Microsoft we’d be on 10.0 already.)

Just a quick note to say the WordPress discussion lists will be down for a few more hours while we transition the archives and subscriptions from the old system to the new one. When everything is back to normal we’ll update this post.

I hope everyone is enjoying the holidays as much as we are. 🙂

If you load up your blog and see something like this:

Database error: [You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ',,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,]
SELECT DISTINCT ID, category_id, cat_name, category_nicename, category_description, category_parent FROM blog_categories, blog_post2cat, blog_posts WHERE category_id = cat_ID AND post_id = ID AND post_id IN (,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,)
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /path/to/wordpress/wp-blog-header.php on line 478


Don’t worry, nothing happened to your data or WordPress. Your host probably just upgraded PHP to version 4.3.10 and forgot to upgrade the Zend Optimizer. We already have a support thread about it. The PHP download page says:

Note: Due to an incompatibility between earlier versions of Zend Optimizer and PHP 4.3.10, it’s recommended to upgrade to the latest version.

So contact your host and let them know what’s happening, and they should be able to fix everything.

WordPress 1.2.2 is now officially available for download. This release fixes a few bugs and security issues and is recommended for all 1.2 users. There have only been minor changes since the last release, so if you’re upgrading from any 1.2 version you can follow the normal upgrade instructions.

Here’s a few of the things we’ve addressed in this release:

• Login problems
• A security fix for a specific IIS/PHP combination
• Last-modified header bug
• An issue with the way site moves were handled
• Email encoding issues

Sorry this took longer to get out than some people thought it should, a couple of issues came up at the same time and we wanted to roll everything into one release so you wouldn’t have to upgrade multiple times. If you have any problems please let us know in the support forums.

Update: Wondering what files changed? Here’s a list.

Comment spam is a problem that hits many blog systems, but fortunately on WordPress there are some very robust ways to deal with this scourge. We’re building some important protections into 1.3 but in the meantime you should take action to protect yourself. Our own Podz has put together a great resource on the Codex on how to Combat Comment Spam that has dozens of excellent methods, and here are some of the highlights:

Spaminator

Kitten’s Spaminator has protections against floods of comments and assigns score values to different characteristics of comments. It also has code included to give a delayed response to known spammers, which slows down their bot networks.

Spam Karma

Dr Dave’s Spam Karma takes a multi-faceted approach that uses literally dozens of characteristics of the comment, from the age of the post to how quickly the comment was posted, to decide a score or “karma” for a comment, much like the Spaminator. It also allows people to increase the karma of their comment if they’re on the edge by verifying an image or an email.

Stay up to date

Again these are just two of dozens of plugins available, so watch the Combat Comment Spam page and the WordPress Planet for the latest and greatest. You can also read Jay Allen’s Comment Spam Clearinghouse blog for some background of the comment spam fight and his efforts on the Movable Type side of things.

The generation of the nightly builds has now been automated, so from now on we will have one nightly build each night. This should make it easier for folks involved in testing and debugging to grab the latest, bleeding-edge code. We do not recommend nightly builds for regular usage, so please do not use a nightly to power your main blog.

In other news, the version has been bumped up to 1.3-alpha-5, to reflect some of the improvements made in the past few days, which include lots of bug fixes, and some fine tuning of some of the administration related aspects, themes and the plugin API.

Kai, the maintainer of the WordPress debian package has come out with a debian package for WordPress 1.2.1. If you are a debian user please consider helping by testing the upgraded package as requested in the hackers mail linked to above.

Now there is one blog to cover them all. Planet WordPress is an aggregation of mostly WordPress related posts from the blogs of the WordPress developers, and a few other blogs that belong to WordPress hackers and trackers.

You will find posts from the following blogs at the WordPress Planet:

• Alex King (feed)
• Blogging Pro (feed)
• Dev Blog (feed)
• Donncha (feed)
• Dougal Campbell (feed)
• Kitten’s Project Blog (feed)
• Matt Mullenweg (feed)
• Matthew Thomas (feed)
• Michel Valdrighi (feed)
• Mike Little (feed)
• Ping-O-Matic (feed)
• Ryan Boren (feed)
• Scripty Goddess (feed)
• Weblog Tools Collection (feed)
• Wordlog (feed)

Planet WordPress is powered by Planet, much like Planet Apache and Planet Mozilla.

Now you know where to get your WordPress development fix when this dev blog is silent.

Have fun!