Cocoa Crusty

Every time I log into my blog, obviously not to write anything, I am greeted with the latest release announcement from the WordPress team in my dashboard. I have been meaning to upgrade for a while, basically, ever since it was announced (3 weeks, 2 days, 1 hour, and 12 minutes ago) but just got around to doing so this evening. The upgrade went smooth, as always. I’m just dreading the upgrade on averageadmins.com (aa) (which is happening as I write this).

I have customized some of the core functions in the WordPress code on the aa site and they are always overwritten when I perform an upgrade. Then, I get to spend about 2 hours sifting through code trying to determine which functions do this, and which ones do that. You would think I would document these functions somewhere so I didn’t have to do all that searching every time WP upgrades their software… Oh, well… Such is life…

Until next time…

WordPress has released a security update for both the 2.1 and 2.0 branches of the WordPress software. The releases include fixes for several publicly known minor XSS issues, one major XML-RPC issue, and a proactive full sweep of the WordPress codebase to protect against future problems. The WordPress developers highly recommend you upgrade your blog as soon as possible to protect yourself against any possible breaches.

This release came out yesterday sometime and I updated my blog this morning without incident. Everything went smooth and as expected. Good luck with your WordPress upgrading and happy blogging!

Until next time!

I caught wind of this about 20 minutes ago but wanted to upgrade my blog before I posted about it. So, now my WordPress blog is running version 2.1.2 and I should be safe.

From reading the official post about this on the WordPress site, it appears that someone gaines user level access to the wordpress.org server and modified the 2.1.1 release of WordPress. The post states that some PHP code was added to some core WordPress files that would allow remote PHP execution about 3-4 days ago. Not good! However, I am glad that WordPress has made this public and has already corrected the issue and made an uncompromised version of the code available for WordPress users to download and upgrade.

If you’re running WordPress version 2.1.1, UPGRADE NOW!!!

Until next time…

I have been following the Gravatar Blog and haven’t noticed anything new, other than user comments constantly complaining that the service doesn’t work, since February 15th. I paid my $10 to become a premium member and to have the ability to use multiple e-mail addresses and gravatars (Globally Recognized Avatars) but I haven’t been able to do anything with them since the version 2.0 launched.

I posted earlier about the Gravatar 2.0 launch and how it quickly plummeted after the fact. I had hoped that the service would once again become available. Of course, I have a vested interest in the service coming back online as I have paid a measly $10 dollars, but I paid that measly $10 for a service I am not receiving from Gravatar.com. If you review the comments in the Gravatar Blog, including the SPAM comments containing profanity and derogatory comments about Tom Werner, you’ll see that I am not the only one who is disappointed about this service, or lack thereof.

Anyway, I disabled my WordPress plugin to access and display the gravatars. I think I am going to write off my $10 investment and call Gravatar.com done. Eject! Eject! Abort! Abort!

Until next time…

I added a WordPress plugin to the blog this evening that displays a screenshot of any external links I post in my blog entries. The feature is powered by Snap.com and is extremely cool in my opinion.

The service is free and is easy to sign up for. Just visit this URL and you can quickly and easily customize the pop-up window with a logo, choose different colors for the pop-up window’s background color, and choose whether or not you want a search box displayed under the screenshot (which I opted not to have), if you want external links to have screenshots and/or if you want internal links to have screenshots. I chose to only have external links display the screenshot pop-up window.

Once you’ve customized the way your pop-up window is going to be displayed, you input the URL of your web site, your e-mail address, a CAPTCHA code, and agree to their terms of service agreement. Once you click submit, they immediately start indexing your site and gathering all the links you have on your web pages. They then create screenshots for those links and you’re good to go almost as soon as you click the submit/continue button.

After that you just copy and paste some HTML/JavaScript code into your web site just above the tag in your web pages or, if you’re running a WordPress blog like cocoacrusty.com, you can install and use the Snap Preview Anywhere™ Plugin by Ajay.

The Snap.com service is free due to the fact that they keep their URL on the pop-up window and have some targeted links in the “Options” section of the pop-up. You really can’t beat that though for a nifty little eye-candy plugin for your blog or web site. Hover your mouse pointer over any external links in this entry for a demo of what this service/plugin does.

Until next time…