New AWSOM Drop Down Archive Release Soon
I wanted to let everyone know that a new release of the AWSOM Drop Down Archive, version 1.2.0, should be out soon. The new version features extensive updates allowing CSS editing, custom location support, customizable archive options, custom archive naming, and more. I expect to be able to release the new version by this weekend.
AWSOM Pixgallery Pre-release 4.4.4 beta test version available
For those of you with WordPress who have had issues using AWSOM Pixgallery on your site because you use Fancy Permalinks and also have your site in a sub-folder, I have a pre-release version of 4.4.4 available for you to try out. This release is stable, but does not have all of the features of the full 4.4.4, but does have the fix in place for the Permalinks/sub-folder issue. If you want to try it out you can download it from http://www.awsom.org/filerepository/awsompixgallery444.zip
To enable the new fix go to the Pixgallery options area and enable the new setting for Absolute linking support in the AWSOM Options section.
I’d love to hear from anyone who had the issue previously if this version corrected your problem, and especially if it DOESN’T.
WordPress 2.2.3 released, Security update
WordPress 2.2.3 has been released and contains some small bug fixes and security updates. Anyone using the 2.2.x branch should update to this new version. (Please note: 2.2.3 is NOT 2.3 and is not the version of WordPress that will break many older plugins–this is just an update to the existing 2.2 branch–so don’t be afraid to update to this version).
WordPress 2.3 Upcoming Issues
The release of WordPress 2.3 is coming soon (at this time it’s scheduled for late September 2007), and you can expect trouble. While the transition of WordPress 2.0 to 2.1 had issues, and many thought the change from 2.1 to 2.2 was traumatic–that will be nothing compared to the change to 2.3. It turns out that the developers have decided to make some drastic changes to the structure of the database of WordPress, so many older plugins (like ones developed even this week) will probably fail. If a plugin has anything to do with categories it will almost certainly fail, since this area seems to have been hit the hardest with the change.
In their blog the developers have essentially said “if we’re going to make a change, we decided we might as well go for broke”. I don’t doubt that there are good reasons fro the changes, but they have essentially said that they expect things to break and have an “oh well, what to do?” attitude about it. Since most USERS of WordPress don’t follow along on developers discussions, there’s a good shot most of you guys will get caught totally unaware if you upgrade–and half your site stops working. So be careful and test your site offline first if you plan to upgrade to 2.3 when it’s released.
My plugins are mostly unaffected by the changes that are occurring, but I will be releasing an update to the AWSOM Drop Down Archive plugin soon to bring it more into compatibility with some other changes that have occurred.
Where’s All The Blogging News?
As Blogging gets more popular it’s becoming more and more difficult to figure out where to go to find good news on blogging itself. I wanted to point you all to a place that I’ve found that has a ton of great information for anyone interested in learning what works and doesn’t work for blogging, or for any type of website. Daily Blog Tips is exactly that, a daily updated site that has great articles about pretty much anything you can imagine in regard to making a successful website. I’m looking at tons of articles there to get ideas about the future of this site. Go, check it out, you never know what you might find there that can be beneficial.