Alex Günsche · December 19, 2007
Usually, plugins are my business, but now I’ve also released a WordPress theme. Of course, it’s not the first WordPress theme I’ve developed, but it’s the first that I have revised to release it as generic theme. More information and download at codelog.net.
Alex Günsche · November 14, 2007
Unbelievable – it took more than one year from version 0.1 to the 1.0, which we released yesterday. But I have dedicated the last 24 hours to proceed coding on the Advanced Search, and so much has been changed that a jump to 2.0 seems justified – even if only a single day has passed since the last major release.
What exactly has been changed? Well, I was working on the upgrade of Advanced Search Lite which was actually a quick’n'dirty ripoff from Advanced Search. I started again to rip the code from the new AS to make the new AS Lite, when I realised I could as well merge them and have two plugins in one. For me this would mean less duplicate code to care after, for the user it means that they have more choice along with a slimer code base.
And so I merged Advanced Search and Advanced Search into one plugin download. They appear in the Plugin panel as two separate plugins. One can use either one or the other or even both at the same time. Also, there were even more features added: Blog visitors can now switch between searching strings or words(!), WP’s internal search can be transparently replaced with the FULLTEXT (i.e. word) search, and Advanced Search Lite can now also be used as a widget.
What do you think, is a 2.0 ok for this? I definitely think so, and I even dare to say that this is the bestest search plugin for WordPress evar, which everybody should have on their blogs. You heard me! 
So, what are you waiting for? Visit the Advanced Search page, download it and enjoy searching 2.0 (no beta!).
Alex Günsche · November 13, 2007
Good news everybody! I’m happy to announce Advanced Search version 1.0! Not only is this version finally compatible with WordPress 2.3.x, but it also has been profoundly revised and cleaned up, a good number of bugs have been fixed, and it has a couple of shiny new features.
The most interesting feature is that you can now use the search form in a truly modular fashion without digging in the code: In the new config file settings.php, you can turn each section on or off. For example, if you have many categories and you don’t want people bothering with switching categories (not to talk of long loading times), you can simply turn this section off.
So, grab the new version and install it. And: don’t forget to spread the word! (Many people have requested a new version, not all are subscribed to this blog.)
Unfortunately, there are bad news, too: As a side effect of the cleanup, the plugin doesn’t work with the legacy series 2.0.x of WordPress anymore (on which this site runs, too). But version 0.6 should still do the job for us, and it will stay available for download.
By the way, the new version of Advanced Search Lite is in the making.
Update: Within a mere day, there was a version jump to 2.0!
Alex Günsche · October 27, 2007
Dear users of my plugins,
I know I haven’t updated my plugins for a while, even though some of them desperately need updates and although I have some very cool features on my TODO list. The reason is that I’m currently involved in a very big project, and this one really consumes pretty much all of my time and coding energy. That project will be finished by mid of November, and I promise that I will then start working on my plugins again and release a bunch of new versions. I hope you understand that, and I hope you’ll have some more patience. Thank you very much (in advance)!
By the way, my site seems to have a PR of 6 now, and I owe it all to the nice people who are writing nice comments about my plugins on their blogs. Thank you very much (again)! 
Alex Günsche · July 16, 2007
ContactNG is a new generation of contact forms. You can display it in the sidebar or on a page. There are different skins which can be selected via the admin panel. Furthermore, the plugin features some intelligent antispam techniques. Tutorial, further information and downloads are available via the plugin’s homepage. Have fun! Feedback and improvement ideas are as always very welcome.
Alex Günsche · June 26, 2007
The contactNG plugin was pre-released today with an announcement in the Plugin Competition Blog.
I will work on the plugin a bit more in the next days and enhance the features based on the feedback.
Please download the plugin, install it, and let me know what you think.
Alex Günsche · May 30, 2007
The InstantUpgrade plugin has gained very much attention and positive feedback during the last weeks. Now it’s time for a new era: I’ve created a version of the plugin that will make the installation and usage significantly easier. While with 0.x versions it was neccessary to change tons of permissions on most hosts, the new version offers file transfer via FTP with the users credentials, so no permissions must be changed at all!
However, the new features, especially the FTP transfer, need very much testing before we can release it to the general public. Therefore I’d ask everybody to install the new version in their test environments and review the plugin extensively. Note: Please don’t use this version in productive environments yet.
Usage is as follows:
instantupgrade to your plugin directoryIf you encounter errors during the installation which you think are errors of the plugin, please report them. After installation, please check your WordPress installation, and if you notice errors, please report them, too.
You can report bugs as comments below this post (please not at the plugin’s home page), or you can use our bugtracker. Any notice of what could be improved is welcome, same goes for questions, feature requests, etc. Please do also provide information about your testing environment.
Everybody who provides substantial feedback will be named (w/ link) in the final release announcement, so I hope you all get a piece of the fame.
Update (31.05, 14:28): The author of the FTP library, Alexey Dotsenko, has said he will put his work under the GNU LGPL.
Alex Günsche · May 11, 2007
WordPress 2.2 is soon to be released, and WordPress 2.3 also approaches. As functionality keeps on changing, I decided to test the InstantUpgrade-Plugin with the new versions. Result: works fine — with WP 2.2-RC1 as well as with WP 2.3-alpha (SVN Rev. 5451).
By the way, I finished moving, and I’m back at work with full power.
Alex Günsche · April 6, 2007
There’s a new version of the InstantUpgrade plugin. Actually, I had big plans and wanted to implement some new features for the upcoming version. But there were some issues which wanted to be addressed in the meantime.
The new version is as always available from the plugin’s page.
Alex Günsche · March 22, 2007
The InstantUpgrade plugin has received quite some attention during the last two weeks since its initial release. At the moment, the plugin package has been downloaded about 1100 times. But it has also raised a couple of questions which were asked here at zirona.com or discussed in other places. I want to say a few words and try to summarize the feedback a bit.
In general, the plugin received very positive feedback. Many people wrote me that they were astonished how quick and easy the upgrade was indeed. I have to admit that I myself am surprized how good it seems to work for the vaste majority of users. However, some people did encounter problems, in fact due to certain safe mode configurations. (This is why the plugin’s next version won’t work in safe mode at all.) However, as far as I know, everybody was able to restore his/her WordPress installation, so there was no grave damage so far. (phew…)
We all know that making files writable by the webserver is potentially dangerous. For InstantUpgrade, you must make very many files writable. There is no way around that, because FTP user (you) and Webserver are different system users on the server in most cases. But that’s ok in this case, because with the first run, all those files will be owned by the webserver and have proper permissions again.
However, the WordPress base folder will remain world writable. This might allow the webserver or other users to create files there — if they come to access this area at all. If you want to avoid this very unlikely possibility under any circumstances, you must not use the InstantUpgrade plugin. However, if you have your .htaccess or your theme/plugin files world writable, or you use plugins that execute inline PHP, don’t you come to me whining about security.
Apart from this, there is — in my opinion — no reason to consider this plugin insecure. But if you believe to have identified another issue, please let me know.
Another thing I’ve read a couple of times are statements like “If it’s so good, why isn’t it in the WordPress core?” or “I hope they will soon integrate this with the WP core.” Although I feel honoured when hearing thes proposals, I’m afraid, they’re a bit unrealistic. The installation of the plugin requires some steps that (a) might ask too much from novice WP users, and (b) can turn out to be impossible on some hosts.
I would however appreciate, if — with time — there could be a better cooperation with the WordPress developers. The InstantUpgrade plugin must be as future proof as possible, and I am afraid that most people won’t upgrade the plugin itself too often. So if there’s a change in WordPress for which the plugin is not laid out, there might be errors during upgrade. Of course I monitor the development of WordPress, so I pretty much get the idea what expects us with new releases, and you can be sure that I will bring out a new version of InstandUpgrade soon enough before the WordPress upgrade.
I have also received some ideas for upcoming versions. Some are things I had considered myself, and had rejected for various reasons. Others are good inspirations for improvements. So if you have an idea what could be a feature of an auto-upgrade plugin, please let me know.