Donncha: WP Super Cache 0.9.9.7

WP Super Cache is a full page caching plugin for WordPress that makes your website run much faster!

I’ve just released a new version and the biggest change in this one is the addition of Content Delivery Network (CDN) support thanks to Mark Kubacki who allowed me to integrate his OSSDL CDN Off Linker plugin. (Please go visit his blog and say thank you if you use this feature!)

The CDN support simply rewrites images, CSS and Javascript files so they point at a different hostname. That hostname can be another virtual host on your own server (aka “Poor Man’s CDN”) pointing at your WordPress install or a fully fledged CDN. If your CDN supports “origin pull” then all the files on your server will be copied there as they are requested by visitors. Otherwise you’ll have to transfer the files over manually.

Apart from that, bugs have been fixed, a few features have been tweaked including the uninstall script which has been streamlined somewhat.

I also added links (on the “Easy” settngs page) to some plugins and tools you may find useful in making your site run faster.

Problems? Go to the forum and someone may already have had that problem and solved it. If not, post there and you’ll get a reply.

Related Posts

• WP Super Cache 0.8.4, the garbage collector
• WP Super Cache 0.8.7
• WP Super Cache 0.9.9

WordPress 3.0.2

WordPress 3.0.2 is available and is a mandatory security update for all previous WordPress versions. Haiku has become traditional:

Fixed on day zero
One-click update makes you safe
This used to be hard

This maintenance release fixes a moderate security issue that could allow a malicious Author-level user to gain further access to the site, addresses a handful of bugs, and provides some additional security enhancements. Big thanks to Vladimir Kolesnikov for detailed and responsible disclosure of the security issue!

Download 3.0.2 or update automatically from the Dashboard > Updates menu in your site’s admin area. You should update immediately even if you do not have untrusted users.

WordPress 3.1 Beta 1

It’s that time in the release cycle again, when all the features are basically done, and we’re just squashing bugs. To the brave of heart and giving of soul: Won’t you help us test the new version of WordPress? As always, this is software still in development and we don’t recommend that you run it on your normal live site — set up a test site just to play with the new version. If you break it (find a bug), report it, and if you’re a developer, try to help us fix it. (Especially you U.S. types who are taking a long weekend for Thanksgiving! )

If all goes well, we hope to release WordPress 3.1 to the world at large by the end of the year, though that is (as always) subject to change/dependent on how the beta period goes. The more help we get with testing and fixing bugs, the sooner we will be able to release the final version.

If you want to be a beta tester, you should check out the Codex article on how to report bugs. Some of the new features to check out include:

• Post Formats (#14746)
• Theme Search (#14936)
• Internal Linking (#11420)
• Admin Bar (#14772)
• Ajaxified Admin (#14579)
• Updated Tiny MCE (#12574)
• Multi-taxonomy Queries (#12891)
• Custom Post Type Index Pages (#13818)
• Admin CSS Cleanup (#14770)
• User Admin (#14696)
• Network Admin (#14435)
• Password Reset Redux (#5919)

There are also some known issues: things that aren’t *quite* finished, but that weren’t worth holding up the beta release. They will be fixed before 3.1 is released for general use. Note that as things get fixed, the beta release will update nightly. What you should know:

• Fatal error: Call to a member function is_page() on a non-object in /wp-includes/query.php. is_page() may be any conditional tag. This issue occurs when a theme or plugin is doing something wrong. Some code is checking the value of a conditional tag before we actually set up the Query, which means they don’t work yet. In 3.0, they silently failed and always returned false. In 3.1 Beta 1, this is throwing a fatal error. This will be handled in the final release, so use this opportunity to fix your plugins. (#14729)
• All known issues slated for fixing before launch are listed in Trac. Please check this list to see if a bug is already on the list before reporting it.

Remember, if you find something you think is a bug, report it! You can bring it up in the alpha/beta forum, you can email it to the wp-testers list, or if you’ve confirmed that other people are experiencing the same bug, you can report it on the WordPress Core Trac. (I recommend starting in the forum or on the mailing list.)

Theme and plugin authors, if you haven’t been following the 3.1, please start now so that you can update your themes and plugins to be compatible with the newest version of WordPress.

Note to developers: WordPress is built by the contributions of hundreds of developers. If you’d like to see this release come out on time, I encourage you to pitch in. Even if you don’t have time to do testing on the beta version, you could help us by contributing a fix for one of the many bugs we already know about.

To those of you in the U.S., have a lovely long holiday weekend, and if you’re looking for something to occupy your post-turkey hours, we hope you’ll take the beta for a spin!

Download WordPress 3.1 Beta 1

WordPress for iPhone/iPad v2.6 Released

Attention Apple-gadget-owning WordPress users! Have you been using the WordPress iOS app for iPhone and iPad? Or maybe you tried it a while back and thought it wasn’t for you? Either way, the new release — v2.6 — will knock your socks off. Why? A bunch of reasons:

• Video. Record, upload, attach, and play videos within the app. Yay for being able to catch your friends’ and co-workers’ most embarrassing shenanigans creative moments with iPhone video and publish them immediately for all the world to see on your WordPress site.
• A total rewrite of the way local drafts are handled, to prevent the unintentional loss of your pending posts.
• Autosave/post revisions. Bam! One of the “oh, thank goodness” features of the web app makes it into the iOS version.
• Easier setup. Faster and easier process for adding your sites to the app.
• Media Library. We’re gradually getting closer to the media management you’re used to in the web app.

There are also numerous bugfixes and performance enhancements in this release, so if you haven’t been using the app lately, you should consider giving it another try. I’m personally pretty excited to start using the iPhone version more often now that there are all these fixes and new features. Especially the video upload. You know, for those creative moments that make life fun.

You can read the full 2.6 release post on the WordPress for iOS blog, and can download v2.6 from iTunes/the app store. Happy mobile blogging!

* * *

Not an iPhone user? We’ve still got your on-the-go back! Check out the WordPress apps for Android, Blackberry, and Nokia (beta). They’re all 100% GPL, of course, and we’re always looking for contributors to the development projects, so check the blogs if you have mobile dev skills and want to get involved.

WordPress 3.0.1

After nearly 11 million downloads of WordPress 3.0 in just 42 days, we’re releasing WordPress 3.0.1. The requisite haiku:

Three dot oh dot one
Bug fixes to make you smile
Update your WordPress

This maintenance release addresses about 50 minor issues. The testing many of you contributed prior to the release of 3.0 helped make it one of the best and most stable releases we’ve had.

Download 3.0.1 or update automatically from the Dashboard > Updates menu in your site’s admin area.

Note: If you downloaded 3.0.1 in the first 20 minutes of release (before 2200 UTC), you’ll want to reinstall it, which you can do right from your Updates screen. Our bad.

Summer of WordCamp

It’s been summer for about a week now. Whether you’re on vacation or burning the midnight oil, attending a local/nearby WordCamp is a great way to spend a weekend. Meet other WordPress users, developers, designers & consultants, learn a little something, maybe share a little of your own experience and knowledge, and break bread (or raise a toast) with new friends and collaborators. Here are the WordCamps scheduled for this summer, along with what I know about them.

July 3: WordCamp Germany – Berlin, Germany. I love it that they’re using BuddyPress for their event site. They have multiple tracks, and what looks to be a nice variety of sessions. It’s only a few days away, so if you’re thinking of going, get your tickets now!

July 10: WordCamp Boulder – Boulder, Colorado, USA. This was WordCamp Denver last year, but the organizers have decided to mix it up and go back and forth between Denver and Boulder, which also has a thriving tech community. This year the venue is the Boulder Theater (so pretty!), and there will sessions for bloggers and devs alike, plus a Genius Bar to help people get their WordPress sites all fixed up. The speaker lineup looks good, and I hear they’re pumping up the wifi this year. I’ll be there, likely hunched over a notebook with Lisa Sabin-Wilson (author of WordPress for Dummies and BuddyPress for Dummies) to talk about the WordPress User Handbook project, and/or hunched over a sketchbook with Kevin Conboy (designed the new lighter “on” state for admin menus in WordPress 3.0) to work out a new default WordCamp.org theme (using BuddyPress). You can still get tickets!

July 17–18: WordCamp UK- Manchester, England, UK. The roving WordCamp UK will be in Manchester this year, and is probably the closest to BarCamp style of all the WordCamps, using a wiki to plan some speakers/sessions and organizing the rest ad-hoc on the first day of the event. I’ll be attending this one as well, and am looking forward to seeing WordPress lead developer Peter Westwood again. I’m also looking forward to meeting some core contributors for the first time in person, like Simon Wheatley and John O’Nolan. Mike Little, co-founder of WordPress, is on the organizing team of WordCamp UK. Tickets on sale now!

July 24: WordCamp Nigeria – Lagos, Nigeria. Their site seems to have a virus, so no link from here, but if you’re in Nigeria and interested in attending/getting involved, a quick Google search will get you to the organizers.

August 7: WordCamp Houston – Houston, TX, USA. Houston, Texas, birthplace of WordPress! Fittingly, Matt Mullenweg will be there to give the keynote. WordCamp Houston is running three tracks — Business, Blogger and Developer — in recognition of the fact that people who are interested in using WordPress for their business may not actually be bloggers or developers themselves. This used to get labeled as a “CMS” track at previous WordCamps (including NYC 2009), but with WordPress 3.0 supporting CMS functionality out of the box, “Business” is a much more appropriate label. Who wants to bet on if there will be BBQ for lunch?

August 7 : WordCamp Iowa – Des Moines, Iowa, USA. Another placeholder page. Happening, not happening? I’ve emailed the organizer and will update this post once I know more.

August 7–8: WordCamp New Zealand – Auckland, New Zealand. They haven’t announced this year’s speakers or topics, but they’ve been running polls to get community input into the program. Of note: in 2011 WordCamp New Zealand will be shifting seasons and will be in February instead, when the weather is nicer.

August 20–22: WordCamp Savannah – Savannah, Georgia, USA. Disclaimer: I am completely biased about Savannah, since I’m one of the organizers. This will be the first WordCamp in Savannah, and it’s being held at the Savannah College of Art and Design River Club, an awesome venue that used to be a cotton warehouse or something like that. Since Savannah doesn’t really have a cohesive WordPress community yet (though a fair number of people from Savannah attended WordCamp Atlanta earlier this year), this WordCamp is aimed squarely at building a local community. We’ll have a local meet-and-greet, regular sessions with visiting speakers (lots of core contributors coming to this one, plus Matt), and on Sunday it will be combination unconference/genius bar/collaborative workspace. Oh, and a potluck! We’ll also be running a pre-WordCamp workshop for people who have never used WordPress but want to get started, so that they’ll be able to follow the presentations and conversations littered with WordPress-specific vocabulary over the weekend. Ticket sales just opened, so get your tickets now.

For a schedule of all upcoming WordCamps, visit wordcamp.org. The autumn schedule is already packed! If you don’t see WordCamp in your area and are interested in organizing one, get more information and let us know.

nameserver IP Setup

Mod_rewrite no so good

Community links: Open source motivations edition

What’s more fun to do over the weekend then catch up on WordPress community links? Set up the Christmas tree? Clean out the gutters? Shovel the driveway?

Alright, if you have to. Chores are chores. But when you’re done, reward yourself with a hot coffee and a good dose of WordPress reading. We have a truckload of links for you, so settle in.

The full list of links is after the jump.

In blog posts this week:

• Alex King, a well known WordPress plugin developer and entrepreneur, posted his thoughts on what motivations exist for WordPress plugin developers today. Chris Olbekson followed up with his own thoughts, as did Joost de Valk. Jeff Chandler started up a commentary at WBTC as well.
• WooThemes posted a preview of the upcoming launch of WPBundle. They also shared a few thoughts on the increase in support time that’s required of them with so many themes released.
• Dev4Press redesigned their site.
• James Dalman at WP Design Coach is now accepting themes for review on his new blog.
• Jeff Chandler wrote up how anyone can contribute to the WordPress.org theme review process. He also started a discussion around the legacy that plugins leave behind when they are deactivated.
• ThemesForge has decided to post 24 theme tips throughout December. I love the attitude and initiative behind the posts so far.
• WP Plugins has an interview with plugin developer Jonathan O’Shea.
• Matt Mullenweg was on The Big Web Show with Jeffrey Zeldman.
• Dre on the Sucuri blog wrote up yet another WordPress security post. These posts are always good reminders to secure your WordPress site. While we’re on the topic, WPZine has a collection of WordPress security plugins this week too.
• Brandon Cox wrote a really interesting post on how one particular WordPress theme ad depicted developers.
• 9seeds’ plugin WP Event Ticketing seems to have a few issues with the popular WordPress theme Thesis. They’ve posted a fix that should take care of the problem, though.

There were a few WordPress resources posted fresh this week too:

• DBS>Interactive created and released the Template Tag Reference Guide this week.
• Sarah Gooding at WPMU.org listed myself and WPCandy in their list of 50 people to follow for WordPress news on Twitter. Thanks Sarah! They also put up a collection of plugins to use with Foursquare.
• Paul Andrew posted a collection of plugins for integrating Flickr into a WordPress blog.
• Jean-Baptiste Jung posted a solid roundup of WordPress code snippets.
• iThemes has released the video tutorials in their Builder Basics series for free online.

Finally, in WordPress tutorials this week:

• WPEngineer has been laying into the tutorials this week, with a custom login page tutorial and a walkthrough of the upcoming post formats feature.
• WPBeginner has a new tutorial up showing how to add the official LinkedIn share button to your WordPress blog. They also have a nice roundup of plugins for managing images with WordPress.
• Vladimir Prelovac posted about how to disable post revisions and delete them from your database.
• Scribu showed how to insert a banner between posts, without editing the theme files.
• Chris Coyier put together a tutorial showing how to make the WYSIWYG editor really WYSIWYG.
• Sumeet Chawla at Nettuts+ put together a tutorial showing how to create an FAQ page with custom post types.

Wow, that may be a record for number of WordPress related links in a roundup post (for us). Who gets the plaque?

That’s it for links this week. If you run across something link worthy, don’t hesitate to let us know about it. If it’s worth a story we’ll jump on it, and if it’s best suited for a community news post it will show up in this space next week.

WPCandy in Review: November 2010

Is it December already? Time flies when you’re having fun, I suppose. That means it’s time to take a look back at November, in a feature we lovingly call WPCandy in Review.

We want to give you some insight into how the gears are turning at WPCandy, what direction we’re headed, and what worked and didn’t work for us.

This was another positive month. Let’s take a look.

November 2010 statistics

Our numbers aren’t what matters most to us, not by a long shot. But we have a few numbers to share, so let’s do that! The follow table shows October’s numbers first, then November’s numbers, so you can see the change month-over-month.

We’re happy to see an increase, primarily in new people checking out the site.

Our analytics graph for November 2010.

A look at last month’s goals

As a reminder, our goals last month were:

• We plan to cross 50,000 unique visitors next month.
• We plan to cross 7,000 RSS subscribers next month.
• We plan to reach 750 themes in Theme Finder.

We reached the first goal, which was a growth in traffic by about 20%. We didn’t quite cross the RSS goal (see the chart above) but we’re getting closer. And Theme Finder is floating around 600 themes, so that one we didn’t quite hit either.

But we did do some other really neat stuff this last month:

• We launched the WPCandy iPhone app.
• We increased the rate of WPCandy theme and plugin reviews.
• Our community interaction increased, from around 200 reader comments in October to over 500 in November.

I’d say WPCandy is growing!

New goals this month

So where do we go next? A few new ones this month:

• We plan to cross 60,000 unique visitors in December.
• We plan to cross 7,000 RSS subscribers (but really this month).
• We plan to reach 700 themes in Theme Finder.
• We plan to see 600 or more reader comments, increasing reader engagement.

Can we do it? We shall see. Should we have other goals as well? You tell us.

How you can help

But we want your help too. We have a couple of projects going on right now that you can jump in on and help with.

We have the WPCandy iPhone app with its reverse launch deal right now. Anyone who purchases the app now will definitely show their support of this site.

We are also running the WordPress Users Survey right now (just started December 1st) and would love your help spreading the word on that. If you haven’t taken that survey yet, you definitely should!

Finally, how do you think we can improve WPCandy this month?