/dev/random » WordPress

WordPress & WPMU don’t mix

mike — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 02:04:44 +0000

If you’re running a WPMU site, *never* attempt to ‘update’ it to the latest version of WordPress (non-MU). Very Bad Things will happen. Plugins such as WP-Automatic-Update do exactly that and shouldn’t be used with WPMU. To recover from it, upload the current version of WPMU, get rid of the wp_options table in the database (WPMU uses wp_n_options for each blog), and run the upgrade script if needed.

WordPress for iPhone Source Code Released

mike — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:27:39 +0000

Wordpress.org has released the source code for their iPhone application. It’s great sample code that demonstrates some useful techniques such as XML parsing & network reachability testing. Of course this probably violates Apple’s FUCKING NDA, which really should have been lifted when the iPhone 3G shipped and the App Store opened.

WordPress for iphone is here

mike — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:10:46 +0000

WordPress for iphone has finally been released and is now available in the app store.

Software Upgrades

mike — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 01:40:43 +0000

I just upgraded this site to WordPress 2.6 and MacMegasite to Drupal 5.8. Both upgrades were quick & painless.

iCrapps

mike — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 06:22:41 +0000

After my last post, I decided to create an entire site dedicated to bad iPhone application reviews, done with humor. If you want to gripe about the iPhone crapplication you just bought, come to iCrapps.com. If you’d like to post your own application reviews, contact me and I’ll sign you up as a contributor.

My first victim is Go Figure Lite. Enjoy!

WordPress for iPhone!

mike — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 02:34:17 +0000

WordPress for iPhone is coming soon! I’m really looking forward to it after the pain of trying to get ShoZu to work with this blog.

WordPress 2.6 to disable client access by default

mike — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:29:16 +0000

Daniel Jaikut reports that WordPress 2.6 will disable the Atom & XMLRPC protocols by default. These APIs are used by applications such as MarsEdit to let you post from your desktop. If you want to use a desktop blogging app, you need to go into the settings and explicitly enable remote posting. Hopefully, upgrading an old WordPress site will keep it enabled.

The developers feel that those APIs “expose a potential to be a security risk“. As far as I know, none of the recent WordPress attacks have involved XMLRPC.

I almost never make a blog post through the web interface; I do all of my blogging with MarsEdit (which I’m now using to write this post). I’m sure the majority of serious bloggers use a desktop client such as MarsEdit or Ecto rather than the web interface, so this will be an inconvenience for all but the most casual users. Since many people will re-enable XMLRPC, any security improvement will be negated.

A better solution would be to require a client key, as Flickr does, which you need to explicitly allow before that client can post to your blog.

FriendFeed Comments

mike — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 02:20:30 +0000

I’ve added the FriendFeed Comments plugin, which shows activity on FriendFeed related to each post.

Theme Change

mike — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:55:57 +0000

I didn’t really like the modified Barthelme theme I was using, so I switched to Chris Pearson’s Cutline theme. I think this theme looks a lot cleaner and easier to read. The theme already supports random images, so I just enabled that feature and added 12 of my favorite photos for the header.

Theme Change

mike — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 02:01:27 +0000

I got bored with the plain text theme I was using, so I switched to a modified version of Barthelme theme, which maintains the minimalism of my old theme but adds a bit more color. I added a slight gradient to the sidebar to perk it up a little bit while still keeping a clean look.