The Visual Editor function in the current versions of AWSOM News Announcement and AWSOM Pixgallery do not function entirely properly with WordPress 2.5.1. The new version of WordPress added in a new version of tinyMCE (updated from 2.x to 3.x) and as a result broke the code that I use to add the editor to my plugins. The Visual Editor still works fine for versions of WordPress previous to 2.5.1, but I’m working to get it to work properly in the current version. The most obvious issues are with missing language text for some of the functions, and improper relative URL paths being created when attempting to add images using the editor. Keep checking back and I hope to get this fixed soon.

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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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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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As I expected, the Wordpress.org forums are filled with issues in regard to upgrading and using Wordpress 2.5. I would highly suggest most people wait a bit on upgrading until the issues with plugins and themes are dealt with by either new versions of the plugins becoming available, or a new version of Wordpress comes out that handles memory a bit better. I’m definitely seeing many people having issues with the “Server 500″ error which I believe has much to do with the 8mb php default memory limit. So unless you have to upgrade, you might want to wait awhile.

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Anyone who is getting an internal server error 500 when trying to activate or use plugins in Wordpress 2.5: This is likely due to a memory issue in PHP. I’m not sure why, but I’ve noticed that the new version of Wordpress seems to push much harder on the memory of a server, especially during plugin activation. It appears that this internal error 500 situation may be related to a PHP setting that by default limits PHP to using only 8MB per instance. The way to resolve this issue is to up the amount of memory usable by PHP to 16MB in the php.ini config file. In most cases you won’t be able to do this yourself but will need to request your server admin do this for you.

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