Yearly Archives: 2009

Why the Whining About WordPress Updates?

Photo by ttkgeek.

Photo by ttkgeek.

It seems that whenever a new WordPress update is released people complain about it. They moan about it being a pain to put in a few minutes of maintenance time, and they whine about the updates coming too often.

You would think that the automatic updater introduced in 2.7 would put a stop to that, but no. Apparently it’s too hard to click a couple of buttons and wait 20-40 seconds for the server to transfer, unzip, and install the new version. The complaints seem to be fewer now, but they haven’t disappeared.

I don’t know about you, but I think the WordPress release schedule is good. They put out bug fixes quickly, and major releases aren’t too far apart. Why do people criticize WordPress for putting out releases too fast? I like my blogs to be secure and bug-free, and I like trying out new features when they are released.

If there were fewer WordPress updates, I would bet that people would complain that there weren’t enough, and that the developers weren’t doing enough to keep things secure and stable.

Quit complaining. If you’re not already on WordPress 2.7, install it. Then you can can forget all about updating until the little orange bar appears at the top of the screen every now and again. Then you can click it and install the update in under three minutes and get back to work.

WP_Redirect()

WordPress has a handy function, wp_redirect(), for sending a user to a different page. It’s an easier way to handle redirects than to invoce the header() function on your own. To do a 301 redirect, it’s as simple as this: wp_redirect('http://www.example.com/', 301); Just make…

Changes at Envato: Meet Tuts+

Envato, the ever-interesting network run by Collis and Cyan Ta’eed, has revamped their TUTS websites. NETTUTS, PSDTUTS, and their kin are now housed under the name of “Tuts+,” with a central website at Tutsplus.com. They’re the same sites, but more tightly-knit. Today across the…

WP125 1.3.0 Released

The WordPress 125×125 ad management plugin has just got better, with yet another release. Version 1.3.0 fixes a few bugs, and adds some useful new features. New features in 1.3.0: iCalendar subscription – Want to keep tabs on ad expirations better? Subscribe to them…

Google Canonical URLs

Finally, the solution for our duplicate content worries is over! Google now supports a new method to specify a canonical URL for your page. This “hint” suggests that Google use this page as the original, and ignore duplicates elsewhere on your domain. You simply…

PHP Serialize() Function

Arrays certainly are useful. If you’re dealing with associative data, there’s no better tool for the job. Sometimes, you’ll run into cases where it would be useful to store an entire array in a field in a database. It’s not something you want to…

BlogBuzz February 14, 2009

Yahoo Monetizes Yahoo BOSS

Yahoo is currently readying the next major update to it’s BOSS Search API. With it they will bring access to SearchMonkey data, optional longer abstracts, and greater flexibility for monetization. They will also be tracking API usage, and charging nominally for monthly usage greater…

PHP Str_Replace() Function

Have you ever wanted to take a string and replace every occurance of a substring with something else? Regular Expression voodoo is what first comes to mind for a lot of PHP developers. But there is an easier way that just happens to be…

Compete.com: Compare Your Site With the Competition

Have you ever wondered how your site stacks up against its competitors? Most people don’t make their traffic stats available to the general public, though doing so can attract advertisers… That’s what Compete.com is for. They use some secret methods to estimate site traffic,…