Sunday, May 20, 2012

Dev Blog: WordPress 2.9.1

After over a million downloads of WordPress 2.9 and lots of feedback from all of you, we’re releasing WordPress  2.9.1.  This release addresses a handful of minor issues as well as a rather annoying problem where scheduled posts and pingbacks are not processed correctly due to incompatibilities with some hosts.  If any of these issues affect you, give 2.9.1 a try.  Download 2.9.1 or upgrade automatically from the Tools->Upgrade menu in your blog’s admin area.

Dev Blog: WordPress 2.9.1 Release Candidate 1

Thanks to everyone who tested 2.9.1 Beta 1.  We’re following that up with Release Candidate 1.  RC1 contains a few more fixes, bringing the number of fixed tickets up to 23.  If you are already running Beta 1, visit Tools->Upgrade in your blog’s admin to get RC1.  You can also  download the RC1 package and install manually.  If all goes well, 2.9.1 will be here soon.

Dev Blog: WordPress 2.9.1 Beta 1

Unfortunately, the recent 2.9 release triggered a bug in certain versions of PHP’s curl extension.  With these versions of curl, scheduled posts and pingbacks are not processed correctly.  To fix this problem as well as a handful of other, lesser issues, we are quickly releasing 2.9.1, the first maintenance release of the 2.9 line.  Help us get 2.9.1 ready to go by testing 2.9.1 Beta 1.  The easiest way to test Beta 1 is to install the WordPress Beta Tester plugin, elect to get on the point release development track, and then perform an automatic upgrade via the Tools->Upgrade menu.  You can also download the Beta 1 package and install manually.  Fourteen tickets have been fixed in 2.9.1 Beta 1.  Since the curl problem and a couple of other problems are dependent on specific hosting configurations, any and all testing help is greatly appreciated.

WordPress 2.8.3 Security Release

Unfortunately, I missed some places when fixing the privilege escalation issues for 2.8.1.  Luckily, the entire WordPress community has our backs.  Several folks in the community dug deeper and discovered areas that were overlooked.  With their help, the remaining issues are fixed in 2.8.3.  Since this is a security release, upgrading is highly recommended.  Download 2.8.3, or upgrade automatically from your admin.

WordPress 2.8.2

WordPress 2.8.2 fixes an XSS vulnerability. Comment author URLs were not fully sanitized when displayed in the admin. This could be exploited to redirect you away from the admin to another site.  Download 2.8.2 or automatically upgrade from the Tools->Upgrade page of your blog’s admin.

WordPress 2.8.1

WordPress 2.8.1 fixes many bugs and tightens security for plugin administration pages. Core Security Technologies notified us that admin pages added by certain plugins could be viewed by unprivileged users, resulting in information being leaked. Not all plugins are vulnerable to this problem, but we advise upgrading to 2.8.1 to be safe.

What else is new since 2.8?  Read through the highlights below, or  view all changes since 2.8

  • Certain themes were calling get_categories() in such a way that it would fail in 2.8. 2.8.1 works around this so these themes won’t have to change.
  • Dashboard memory usage is reduced.  Some people were running out of memory when loading the dashboard, resulting in an incomplete page.
  • The automatic upgrade no longer accidentally deletes files when cleaning up from a failed upgrade.
  • A problem where the rich text editor wasn’t being loaded due to compression issues has been worked around.
  • Extra security has been put in place to better protect you from plugins that do not do explicit permission checks.
  • Translation of role names fixed.
  • wp_page_menu() defaults to sorting by the user specified menu order rather than the page title.
  • Upload error messages are now correctly reported.
  • Autosave error experienced by some IE users is fixed.
  • Styling glitch in the plugin editor fixed.
  • SSH2 filesystem requirements updated.
  • Switched back to curl as the default transport.
  • Updated the translation library to avoid a problem with mbstring.func_overload.
  • Stricter inline style sanitization.
  • Stricter menu security.
  • Disabled code highlighting due to browser incompatibilities.
  • RTL layout fixes.

WordPress 2.8.1 Release Candidate 1

2.8.1 is nigh.  Release Candidate 1 is our last stop before the final release.  Please download RC1, review the changes made since beta 2, and have a look at all of the tickets fixed in 2.8.1.  Thanks for testing WordPress.