Site Updates to Be Discontinued

As some of you may have realized, our WordPress book was not updated for version 2.5 as originally planned and is unlikely to be updated for any future version of WordPress. We’ve decided, therefore, to discontinue updating this book support site.

The posts that we’ve written and the comments that have been left on this site will remain as an archive. Although quite a bit of this information is out-of-date, there’s still enough useful information to keep it available. Comments for all posts, however, have been closed so no new comments can be posted.

Both of us continue to use, write about, and provide training material for WordPress. If you’re interested in getting up-to-date WordPress materials, we recommend that you visit us at our other Web sites.

For Maria Langer:

• Maria’s Guides (http://www.MariasGuides.com) provides how-to articles about topics covered in all of Maria’s Books and video training materials.
• An Eclectic Mind (http://www.MariaLanger.com) is Maria’s blog, where she sounds off on a wide variety of topics.
• Lynda.com (http://lynda.com) publishes Maria’s WordPress training videos.

For Miraz Jordan:

• The KnowIT bookstore is the home of a new series of practical ebooks for WordPress users. Currently available:
  • How to backup your WordPress website
  • How WordPress is put together
• KnowIT (http://knowit.co.nz) is where Miraz publishes a wide range of how-to articles for using WordPress and other software products.
• MacTips (http://mactips.info) provides a new practical Tip each week for users of Macs, iPods, iPhones and other Apple products.

We’d like to note that the demise of our book has nothing to do with the popularity of WordPress. It remains one of the most popular blogging platforms out there, with millions of bloggers using WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress installations. It continues to be updated regularly with new features and interface improvements. Both Maria and Miraz use WordPress for all of their blogging and CMS needs and highly recommend it to others.

If you bought our book, thanks so much for your support. We hope you’ll continue to let us help you get more out of WordPress — and your computer — by visiting us at any of the above-listed sites.

Upgrade WordPress Plugins Automatically

One of the challenges of keeping a WordPress blog running smoothly is making sure all installed plugins are updated promptly when new versions become available. WordPress 2.5 makes this easier than ever by adding an Automatic Upgrade feature.

As shown in the following illustration, the a note in the Plugin Management administration panel indicates that the Bad Behavior plugin (which I rely on to keep the spambots off my blogs) has been updated.

I have two options for bringing my blog up to date:

• Download version takes me to the Bad Behavior page on the WordPress.org’s Plugin Directory so I can read about and download the update. This functionality has been around for a while — at least since WordPress 2.3 — with all plugins that support it.
• Upgrade automatically takes the update process a step further. When I click this link, WordPress automatically downloads, uncompresses and installs the new version of the plugin for me. It displays its progress as it works, as shown here, and confirms that the upgrade has been successful.

I’ve been using this new feature for a few weeks now and it’s worked like a charm. It’s a heck of a lot easier than upgrading the old fashioned way.

WordPress users: update Bad Behavior / Bad Behaviour immediately

Thanks to Maria for alerting me to this:

All users should update to Bad Behavior 2.0.11 immediately to prevent being blocked from your own site.

Within the past two days users have found themselves blocked from their own sites while using recent versions of Bad Behavior. A third party blacklist which Bad Behavior queries recently began sending false positives for any IP address queried, causing everyone using Bad Behavior to be blocked. This issue is fixed in Bad Behavior 2.0.11.

[Via : Bad Behavior / Bad Behaviour: Bad Behavior 2.0.11.]

Customize WordPress: Pages and Posts

My latest WordPress article has been published at Peachpit: Web Design Reference Guide: Customizing WordPress: Pages and Posts:

While posts make the blog, pages can transform your WordPress site into a full-fledged content management system. This article explains how to use some fundamental features of posts and pages in WordPress.

…WordPress gives you so much power over pages that some people use WordPress not for blogging, but rather to create content management systems (CMS).

The next article should appear in about a month.

WordPress 2.3 Beta I Now Available

WordPress 2.3 Beta I is now available for testing. From the announcement post:

Some of the features of 2.3 include plugin and core update notification, built-in tags support, faster javascript, and SEO-friendly URL redirection….However all of the new functionality is still very rough, so only test the beta if you are comfortable troubleshooting PHP issues, filing tickets, and backing up your data religiously.

While cutting edge is nice, bleeding edge is not for me. I’ll wait until the final release. But if you’re the kind of person who likes to work with software still under development, go at it!

Peachpit Launches New Web Site

Just a quick note to pass along some info I got in e-mail from Peachpit Press, one of my publishers.

Over the last several months, you’ve been talking and now it’s our chance to show you that we’ve been listening. You told us you wanted better and faster searches for our books and content. You said you wanted more videos, better access to our authors, and more ways to get involved. After listening to everything you had to say, we’re proud to introduce the newly redesigned Peachpit.com.

They’ve added features to the site, including online video tutorials, access to blogs, and online reference guides. But the news that might interest you most is that they’re also offering a 40% discount on all books purchased on the site:

To thank you for your feedback and to celebrate our new site we would like to offer you a 40% discount on your purchases. Just order before September 15 and enter coupon code PPT-NEWSITE-EM01 during checkout!

Sounds like a good deal to me. I hope you’ll take advantage of it, perhaps to buy our book?