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Archive for the ‘[lang_de]Software[/lang_de][lang_en]Software[/lang_en]’ Category
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…)
For the topic of security
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.
Integration with WordPress
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.
3
Wissenswertes, Meinung, Software
Alex Günsche · March 16, 2007
The boys from Automattic have (finally!) extended the website wp-plugins.org to a standardized plattform for WordPress plugins.This will hopefully make plugin management a lot easier for users and developers.
By the way: Matt says: “[…] having all these plugins isn’t that useful if you’ve got no place to find them”, which is of course a bit misleading, because wp-plugins.net has always done a good job at least for me.
0
Wissenswertes, Software
Alex Günsche · March 11, 2007
InstantUpgrade is a plugin for WordPress, which will perform automatic upgrades of a WordPress installation with a single click. You can upgrade to the latest WordPress version, or you can upgrade to a version of your choice. The plugin downloads the chosen WordPress version, unpacks it, deletes the old files and inserts the new ones. All these actions don’t require funky PHP extensions — they are all handled by the InstantUpgrade plugin.
This plugin might be of special interest for you if you installed WordPress for a friend or a customer with no knowledge of FTP, PHP and MySQL. But of course, everybody else will surely also apprechiate easy and instant upgrades.
Documentation, screenshots and downloads are available at the InstantUpgrade homepage. Feedback is very apprechiated.
31
Software
Alex Günsche · March 8, 2007
There have been many requests for this, and now it happened: The AdvancedSearch plugin has got a little brother called “AdvancedSearch Lite”. This edition is developed for the people who always wanted the fulltext search with boolean operators, but wanted no or just a small search form. Of course, this edition also features multi-color search term highlighting.
“AdvancedSearch Lite” fulfills these requirements: As soon as you upload and activate it, the WordPress search will have a new engine. If you then want to replace the legacy sidebar searchform with a much neater and feature-richer one, you can also do this with very little efforts.
The “AdvancedSearch Lite” plugin also has its own page with downloads and comprehensive documentation. As always, we wish much fun with our work! By the way, translations, bug reports and feedback of any kind are always welcome.
7
Software
Alex Günsche · February 24, 2007
There is a new version of the AdvancedSearch plugin. It fixes some grave bugs with the WordPress 2.1 series:
- Paged searches now work with WP 2.1.x,
- Searching in static pages now also works again,
- A problem with search term highlighting and the o42_cleanumlauts plugin has been fixed (only relevant to German users),
Many thanks to everybody who supported the development with finding and fixing bugs; especially Ryan and Aza.
Furthermore, there is now a Czech translation of the plugin thanks to Martin Štěpán.
The plugin is as always available from its home page. Have fun with the new version and let me know how you like it. Also, please help out with translations, and report bugs as well as improvement ideas!
0
Software
Alex Günsche · January 23, 2007
Tonight, the long expected WordPress 2.1 was released. Unfortunately, the WP-Manage Upgrade module had some problem with the upgrade to 2.1. Therefore, there’s the new version 0.1-alpha2, which fixes the errors. In case you have tried to upgrade with the broken version, simply insert the new version (or only the file upgrade.php) and try again. We apologize for your inconvenience.
5
Software
Alex Günsche · January 20, 2007
WP-Manage is a management extension (not plugin) for WordPress, which will perform backups and upgrades each with a single click.
The Backup routine creates a MySQL dump of the WP tables, gathers all WP files and puts all this stuff into a nice zip file. The Upgrade routine downloads the latest WordPress, unpacks it, deletes the old files and inserts the new ones. All these actions don’t require funky PHP extensions — they are all handled by the WP-Manage package, together with some nice third-party-libs.
The backup and the upgrade routine are independent from each other, and it is to say that the upgrade feature might not be the right thing for every one. But e.g. if you installed WordPress for a friend or a customer with no knowledge of FTP, PHP and MySQL, you might find an ideal solution in this upgrade feature.
Documentation, screenshots and downloads are available at the WP-Manage homepage. Feedback is very apprechiated.
Update: There was an unfortunate error in the file upgrade.php: The latest WordPress was not downloaded from wordpress.org, but from zirona.com (this server). This is because I didn’t want to bomb wordpress.org with requests during the development. Unfortunately I forgot to replace the reference to my server with the original download source, so the WP-Manage version distributed until this evening (GMT) downloads from zirona.com. The error was corrected and the package was uploaded again. You can either download WP-Manage again or you change http://www.zirona.com/download/ to http://wordpress.org/ in upgrade.php l. 290. Sorry for the confusion and thanks to Fabrice Pascal for the hint.
0
Software
Alex Günsche · January 16, 2007
WordPress 2.0.7 has just been released. It fixes a security hole which allowed to read the WordPress database via the file wp-trackback.php. Although the threat depends on special circumstances and does not apply to all WordPress sites, it is highly recommended to update as soon as possible.
On a related note, there’s a new version of the Advanced Search plugin available. An error with category filtering on blogs with only one author reported by cj has been fixed in the new version. Also, there is now an Italian translation thanks to Andrea Barbieri.
The plugin is as always available from its home page. Have fun with the new version and let me know how you like it. Also, please help out with translations, and report bugs as well as improvement ideas!
Update: There was still another bug occuring on blogs with several authors of which only one actually has posts. The problem was fixed and the download for 0.5 was updated. Thanks to solemnchaos for the hint.
2
Software
Alex Günsche · January 15, 2007
There’s a new WordPress plugin developed by Zirona. It allows moving comments from one post (including pages) to another. It’s nothing special, it does what it says. You surely won’t need it often, but when you do, you will be glad it exists.
The plugin has an own homeplace and is looking forward to visitors, downloaders and feedbackers!
Update: There was a little mistake with a hardcoded URL, kindly discovered by Ingo. This error was fixed and the plugin uploaded again.
0
Software
Alex Günsche · January 12, 2007
The ServerSite project, which implemented a webserver with lots of additional features on a LiveCD, is discontinued.
The main reason for this is that I don’t have the time to manage the project in an appropriate manner. The intentions of ServerSite were to provide a stable and widely running LiveCD with very recent packages based on Gentoo Linux as well as providing special features such as saving settings and contents on a USB stick – and these intentions can not be satisfied with a too short time budget.
Whoever might be interested in the build scripts or other stuff created during the ServerSite development, is welcome to contact me.
0
Zirona-News, Software
