AWSOM.org = Artist Website Setup Options Markup » Critical!

AWSOM News Announcement updated to 1.4.6, WordPress 2.7 compatible

harknell — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:22:23 +0000

Hi Everyone, I’ve just updated the AWSOM News Announcement plugin to be WordPress 2.7 compatible. Please replace your current Plugin Files with the new version available from the AWSOM.org website. The biggest change is the new location for Managing your News Announcements–this is now under the “Posts” section of the Admin menu. This is now true for all versions of WordPress.

Please let me know if you run into any problems with the Plugin for any version of WordPress.

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Automattic: You’ve Just Got To Stop This Crap, Now!

harknell — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:29:47 +0000

Ok, I have to admit something. I’ve purposely been avoiding looking at WordPress 2.7. After all of the mess that’s been characterized by the last few releases of WordPress (and by mess I mean the constant interface changes, constant Plugin structure changes) I really didn’t want any more negative opinions about the direction things are going with WordPress.

But I went and downloaded the Beta 3 version today.

Goddammit, why do you have to go and do these things Automattic? The admin interface is a damn mess now. WHO THE HELL ARE YOU PAYING TO GIVE YOU THIS BAD ADVICE ON DESIGN?????

Seriously, is the intention to make it harder and more inconvenient to administer your site? Every update to the admin interface places things in more and more difficult places. The idea that you need to scroll vertically to get to things seems to be ingrained now. Guess what guys, most laptops now are WIDESCREEN, and a large percentage of your audience is using them primarily as their main computer. Placing links across the top of the screen makes way more sense that way down a page vertically.

And changing the jargon, terminology, and placement for sections every release is a plain crappy idea. What will we be calling Manage, Design, Appearance, etc. next release guys? Or will we actually have Manage again or now keep pages and posts separate?

Sure makes it real easy for us Plugin developers to maintain compatibility between releases guys–and yes, there are reasons why people don’t update fast or ever, and they aren’t all bad reasons.

I’m really tired of this mess. While I’m obviously capable of making the changes to the code needed for these constant interface changes, It’s becoming less and less worth it to me to do it for anything but my own sites and not bother updating general release Plugins like the ones I host here.

Here’s a clue: Plugin structure is meant to be a set up to allow people to reliably make additions to your basic system that will last over time. You don’t break this idea every release arbitrarily. If so, then that’s called a new version release, not a point release (so 3.0 is okay, but 2.7 is definitely not).

This is basic stuff. Please, let’s get with the program and not keep roiling users, Plugin creators, and Theme editors constantly, it’s getting a bit old now.

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WordPress 2.6 issues with AWSOM Pixgallery

harknell — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 17:53:48 +0000

I wanted to let everyone know that older versions of AWSOM Pixgallery will not work entirely correctly in WordPress 2.6 based on the changes that have happened in the way certain paths are determined in WordPress. The basic features of Pixgallery should work fine, but certain other features, most notably the automatic default gallery creation during plugin install, the automatic cache folder creation during plugin install, and the “clear the cache folder” function in the Pixgallery Captions admin menu may not work correctly.

The current projected date for release of WordPress 2.6 is July 14 2008, and i expect to have a new version of the Plugin available by that date that fixes these issues, but I just wanted to caution any early adopters to make sure that you know that there could be some issues.

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Wordpress 2.5.1 released, major security fix required

harknell — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 12:44:34 +0000

WordPress 2.5.1 has been released, and all 2.5 users should immediately upgrade to the new version. There is apparently some kind of security vulnerability fix in the new version, so this is a critical upgrade for all users. I suspect it’s probably related to the ongoing series of issues that are causing spam attacks on older versions of WordPress, so this is a pretty big reason to be constantly on the lookout for irregular things occurring on your sites and make sure you always have the most updated versions of plugins and such installed.

So far it looks like all of the AWSOM plugins are unaffected by the upgrade and still work properly. If you encounter any issues though please let me know.

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Spam Hack in Progress across Wordpress sites

harknell — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:54:23 +0000

There is currently a large scale spam attack on Wordpress sites that is ongoing and affects primarily Wordpress versions 2.1.x and 2.2.x (it’s not clear if 2.3.x or 2.0.x are affected, but it seems likely they aren’t). The attack results in a large number of spam listings injected into either posts or theme files which are then set to be hidden through css. Your will typically find that you’ve been affected when Google contacts you to say you are being de-listed due to a high number of spam links on your site. It is also typical for the attackers to delete all of your pages from your site for some reason, so if you load your site and all of your pages are gone you may have been hacked.

It’s not entirely clear what method the hackers are using to get admin access to the affected sites, but from my observation it may be a privilege escalation attack using the comment system. In some cases a random user account was created right before the attack. It was also noted that the comments.php theme file was altered to add in a console access applet which allowed for low level server access. If you get hacked make sure you check every theme file to make sure no malicious code was added–or better yet, reload your theme files from a backed up or fresh copy, and delete out any suspect user registrations.

Wordpress 2.5 is apparently not affected by this problem, so an upgrade should help. I have upgraded my sites to 2.5 and have managed to mostly get things working (though my archive page on this site is currently non-functional). It looks like this is the unfortunate little push that will force most people to upgrade, though I strongly suggest making sure first that there are updated plugins that work with 2.5.

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AWSOM Plugins updated for Wordpress 2.5 compatibility

harknell — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 12:48:06 +0000

I have just released new versions of the AWSOM Pixgallery(4.5.3), AWSOM News Announcement(1.4.2), and AWSOM Uninstaller (1.0.2) plugins for Wordpress that have been made specifically compatible with the upcoming Wordpress 2.5 release (the AWSOM Archive plugin was already fully 2.5 compatible with version 1.4.0). This means that they will install properly and work as they currently do. AWSOM plugin versions previous to these new releases will NOT install properly on Wordpress 2.5 due to a major change in their plugin protocol (though I believe that already installed plugins will not stop working, I can’t guarantee that–especially if you deactivate/reactivate them during the Wordpress upgrade process).

I will probably come out with another minor release of the plugins after Wordpress 2.5 is officially released that does some cosmetic changes to my admin pages for the plugins, but this will have to wait until they finalize the CSS they are using for their admin pages (right now they all look fine, but don’t really match the new look of the admin area in 2.5). For the moment though everything will work properly, so you at least have one less worry if you plan on upgrading to Wordpress 2.5 :)

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AWSOM Pixgallery 4.5.2 released

harknell — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 14:33:38 +0000

AWSOM Pixgallery version 4.5.2 has been released. This version of the image gallery plugin for Wordpress fixes a problematic bug related to the EXIF function, and finishes the Individual Comment system by displaying pre-existing comments on the main gallery level (as opposed to not showing them at all :) ). It also adds in a new debug mode for admins that will allow them to see extra information about their gallery set up to help fix display issues–it also displays the sort order number attached to an image or gallery in the thumbnail view to help in using the numerical sort option.

It is strongly suggested that all AWSOM Pixgallery users upgrade to this new version.

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AWSOM Pixgallery 4.5.1 released

harknell — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 19:29:18 +0000

AWSOM Pixgallery version 4.5.1 has been released and is now available for download from the AWSOM.org website. This version was released a bit early due to the discovery of a serious bug with the image caption edit function which prevented updating of numerical sort data. As a bonus you now have the ability to display EXIF data for your images.

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On the Same Track as Last Post

harknell — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 17:12:08 +0000

While it is always more convenient to place as many functions into one centralized site as possible, it is also generally more insecure and prone to problems. Case in point: Forum plugins for Wordpress. While I know the desire to have one centralized administration area for a forum and your blog site might seem like a good idea, it is not always in your best interest to have this as your set up. Apparently there is a bug in the current version of the WP-Forum plugin that allows malicious users to access your database information. Whenever you have a situation where you allow users to add content to your site, you create a potentially vulnerable area for someone to exploit. In the case of a forum, this can be especially difficult to program in a manner that eliminates this risk. (note how often most forums have security updates, it’s a lot). So you end up with a case where you now have 2 different site concepts taken out by the most vulnerable element. I almost exclusively suggest that people simply run 2 different sites with 2 different databases and simply match them using a common looking theme. It’s simply more secure to do things that way.

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Urgent Security Issue, Upgrade Wordpress to 2.3.3 Now!

harknell — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 17:03:48 +0000

There has been an unscheduled Wordpress Security release that upgrades Wordpress to version 2.3.3. This is a critical update that closes a vulnerability that would allow registered users to edit the posts of other users if they sent a specially formatted request. It is strongly suggested that all users on the 2.3.x branch upgrade their version as soon as possible.

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