Plugin has now been live for more than a decade and still works running on the latest WordPress and PHP versions. I believe it was conceived back in the WP 2.x and PHP 3.x days!!

If you have any comments or cartoon requests please feel free to leave a comment

Why and Who Would Want to Disable Automatic Updates

On managed WordPress hosting, the host usually takes care of automatic updates for users. But now with WordPress 3.7 this functionality will be available to all WordPress users. The problem is that some of them may not be ready for it yet. Despite warnings many users make modifications to WordPress core which may not be compatible with automatic updates and could affect their WordPress sites.

There are also users who run WordPress for clients and have their own ways to update WordPress when a new version is available. Lastly, there are users who just want to do their updates manually and have more control over it. Please note that even though you can disable automatic updates, it is still highly recommended that you update your WordPress install to the latest version as soon as possible for better security.

Disabling WordPress Automatic Updates

Disabling automatic updates in WordPress is easy. Simply add this line of code in your wp-config.php file:

define( 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', false );

This will disable the WordPress automatic updater, and you will still get notified when there is a new version available, so you can update at your own convenience.

We hope that you found this tip useful. What are your thoughts automatic updates? Would you keep them enabled or use the above method to disable them? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

3.8 brings together several of the features as plugins projects and while this isn’t our first rodeo, expect this to be more beta than usual. The headline things to test out in this release are:

• The new admin design, especially the responsive aspect of it. Try it out on different devices and browsers, see how it goes, especially the more complex pages like widgets or seldom-looked-at-places like Press This. Color schemes, which you can change on your profile, have also been spruced up.
• The dashboard homepage has been refreshed, poke and prod it.
• Choosing themes under Appearance is completely different, try to break it however possible.
• There’s a new default theme, Twenty Fourteen.
• Over 250 issues closed already.

Given how many things in the admin have changed it’s extra super duper important to test as many plugins and themes with admin pages against the new stuff. Also if you’re a developer consider how you can make your admin interface fit the MP6 aesthetic better.

As always, if you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. Or, if you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on the WordPress Trac. There, you can also find a list of known bugs and everything we’ve fixed so far.

Download WordPress 3.8 Beta 1 (zip) or use the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want “bleeding edge nightlies”).

It may be that 1GB memory on the server (+ 2GB switch) just isn’t enough any more. Anyway, it appears that more people have been experiencing issues with Apache and multiple processes that in the end brings the server down.

If you’ve had similar experiences on your server I would be very grateful for any tips or ideas to what to do. Please either leave a comment or send an email through our contact form if you so prefer.

Many thanks

Now, on to update to WordPress 2.8.4 – which needs to be done manually because of security settings on the aforementioned server…

The latest release fixes 790 bugs and all parts should be faster and smoother (as always).

More release info is found here, and further insight for the curious here.

I’ll try to get it all done today – and with any luck the site will still be up and running. If you’ve already updated please let me know if you’ve encountered any strange happenings!

Update

Things look like they are working after upgrading – some bugs on the Dashboard but after refreshing it should go away (I hope).

If you encounter the following error under your “Incoming links”; Fatal error: Call to a member function get_link() on a non-object – please let me know and I’ll dive into it as it could be a bug…

Update 2

Bug fixed – well not really a bug to be honest, but problem solved at least…

Basically WordPress allows you to manipulate your configuration file so that when certain criterions are met you can override the default home and blog URI’s set in the database.

By doing so you can have more or less unlimited domains pulling the same files and data from one single WordPress installation.

Here’s how you do it

Open wp-config.php in your favourite editor (Notepad, Dreamweaver etc.) and add the following:

if (preg_match("/\bwww.example1.com\b/i", $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) || preg_match("/\bwww.example1.com\b/i", $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'])) {
define('WP_SITEURL', 'http://www.example1.com');
define('WP_HOME', 'http://www.example1.com');
}

If you need more domains just add more by repeating the above starting the next “block” with elseif.

Feel free to comment and/or suggest different ways of doing this.

Besides the giant improvement on the admin section I was also happy to see that all plugins were working fine. So for those of you that haven’t updated yet – do it!

The WordPress theme has also released a visual introduction to what 2.7 is:

As always I would really appreciate feedback should you notice anything out of the ordinary on this blog or in 2.7 in general. Thanks

Last, but certainly not least, this may be the last time you ever have to manually upgrade WordPress again. The WP theme have heard how tired you were of doing upgrades for yourself and your friends, so now WordPress includes a built-in upgrade that will automatically notify you of new releases, and when you’re ready it will download them, install them, and upgrade your blog with a single click. How great is that!!!

In the meanwhile you could update your Firefox browser (or install the latest) to version 3.0.1, which includes several security fixes amongst others.

Update: Everything seams to work properly. If you notice anything out of the ordinary or have had problems with your update please leave a comment.

More on the error/bug is posted here. I’ll do a follow-up shortly when I get around to update this blog as well…

Feel free to share below if you’ve encountered anything out of the ordinary when updating to WordPress 2.6.

Inspired by Alex King’s “Shortcut Macros” plugin I decided to make something similar that would convert any root URI references with a macro, ##root to be specific. To illustrate lets say your domain is http://www.example.com. So whenever you write or update a page/post the following will happen ;

http://www.example.com/link/to/page_or_post -> ##root/link/to/page_or_post

When viewing the page the plugin will automatically reconvert #root to your blogs URI as defined by get_option(‘home’). This way your internal links will always be uptodate wherever you move your blog.

Grab the code and instructions from the download page.

You can read all about what, where and how on the above mentioned pages. In short “all” you need to do is write a plugin that is:

1. Original (new) and useful
2. Well documented
3. Supported

I’d love to participate, but workload has been somewhat keeping me busy 9 days a week lately. If you’re joining please leave a comment so we can follow your work from here – and not to forget, Good Luck!!

However, one thing that annoys me a little is the empty space the blog title leaves in the admin header and also the font size of the “sub-menu”. Consequently I’ve made a few minor changes to the admin to address this “issue”.

In short I want to implement the following changes (click to enlarge):

All you need to do is modify 2 files as described below.

Open admin-header.php and replace this:

<div id="wphead">
<h1><?php bloginfo('name'); ?><span id="viewsite"><a href="<?php echo trailingslashit( get_option('home') ); ?>"><?php _e('Visit Site') ?></a></span></h1>
</div>
<div id="user_info"><p><?php printf(__('Howdy, <a href="%1$s">%2$s</a>!'), 'profile.php', $user_identity) ?> | <a href="<?php echo get_option('siteurl'); ?>/wp-login.php?action=logout" title="<?php _e('Log Out') ?>"><?php _e('Log Out'); ?></a> | <?php _e('<a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/">Help</a>') ?> | <?php _e('<a href="http://wordpress.org/support/">Forums</a>') ?></p></div>

With this:

<div id="wphead">
<h1>&nbsp;<!--<?php bloginfo('name'); ?><span id="viewsite"><a href="<?php echo trailingslashit( get_option('home') ); ?>"><?php _e('Visit Site') ?></a></span> --></h1>
</div>
<div id="user_info"><p><?php printf(__('Howdy, <a href="%1$s">%2$s</a>!'), 'profile.php', $user_identity) ?> | <a href="<?php echo trailingslashit( get_option('home') ); ?>"><?php _e('Visit') ?> <?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a> | <a href="<?php echo get_option('siteurl'); ?>/wp-login.php?action=logout" title="<?php _e('Log Out') ?>"><?php _e('Log Out'); ?></a> | <?php _e('<a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/">Help</a>') ?> | <?php _e('<a href="http://wordpress.org/support/">Forums</a>') ?></p></div>

Then open wp-admin.css and scroll down to line #592. Replace this:

#wphead h1 {
	font: normal 36px Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
	padding: 11px 170px 16px 12px;

With this:

#wphead h1 {
	font: normal 10px Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
	padding: 0;

Further down on line #772. Replace this:

#submenu li {
	font-size: 14px;

With this:

#submenu li {
	font-size: 12px;

That’s it!

For future WordPress updates I would also very much like to see some changes in the “Write” section. To avoid extensive scrolling I wish the following “blocks”; Tags, Categories, Comments & Pings and Post Author could be moved back to the right-side menu. Maybe embed them in a tabbed interface in order to take up even less space yet still be easily available.

Besides the above mentioned I’m really happy with all the changes in 2.5. It feels much more secure and I’m starting to get used to the new “media centre”. When that’s said I’m curious to what you all think about the recent changes. Anything that really irritates you (like the top-menu I just wrote about)? Anything else that you love in particular? Feel free to shout or applaud below…

Installation – current users

To install, download Wp-Slimstat v.1.0.1, deactivate plugin, overwrite old file in your plugins directory with the new one and activate.

Installation – new users

Grab the code (including instructions) from the author directly. Before activating follow the simple steps as outlined above. This ensures the plugin is 2.5 compatible before activation. However, new users need a few extra files which is not included with the update.

Install and use at your own risk. It worked for me and should for you as well (I hope).

I’ve been running this blog on WordPress 2.2.x for some time now, but after reading several warnings about Technorati (and possibly others) planned index exclusion of vulnerable blogs I’ve decided it’s time to upgrade. After a quick test on localhost I didn’t see any reason not to go ahead.

However, things might break and I would really appreciate feedback in case you discover something out of the ordinary.

More updates will follow I’m sure, and soon a new theme which I will share as always.