As soon as possible!

When a new WordPress release, it normally fixes a plethora of bugs and security holes (WordPress 2.6 patches a round total of 196), in addition to adding useful new features.

One of the biggest reasons people wait to upgrade is plugin compatibility. The best thing to do is to check to see if plugins are compatible with the new release before upgrading. If a mission-critical plugin doesn’t work, let the developer know, and give him or her a couple of weeks to make necessary changes.

That’s also a reason you should upgrade as soon as possible. Plugins. With every release, new features are added that developers may want to take advantage of, and existing functions are changed. It’s a real pain to keep support for older versions for too long. I’m sure there are still people on WordPress 2.2…and they’re pretty much out of luck plugin-wise. If it’s pre-2.3, I’m not going to make sure my plugins work on them. They probably do work, but if they don’t you’re pretty much out of luck. WP upgrades are free, there’s no real reason to support older versions of WordPress that really shouldn’t still be in use.

Of course you have security to. If you have WordPress 2.4 still, your blog is at risk. The same certainly goes for older versions as well. I can’t say this too many times: Your blog is probably at risk if you’e using an outdated version of WordPress.

Sure, wait until your favorite plugins are available for the latest release, then upgrade. But don’t wait longer than a month. Outdated versions of WordPress are a big target for “hackers” (for want of a better word).

DBS>Interactive has put together a comprehensive template tag list for WordPress users. The easy to navigate list features expandable JavaScript boxes that display examples and instructions for the tags, as well as a complete list of parameters for the function.

While it has exactly the same content as the WordPress Codex, some may find it easier and quicker to navigate.

I went ahead and bookmarked it for quick reference in the future.

Email obfuscation is a useful technique to use to stop spammers from finding your email address (as opposed to the more common “munging” where you write “me [at] blah [dot] com”). An obfuscated email address is unreadable to humans and most robots in the source code, but is rendered correctly in a browser, and will function correctly in a mailto link. I’ve found it works well…but it’s a pain in the arse to do by hand. There are free online tools that will obfuscate an email address for you, but what if you want an automatic solution.

I didn’t know this until WordPress Garage pointed it out, but it seems that WordPress has a built-in obfuscation function. It’s called antispambot().

The function antispambot() above parses the e-mail address passed by get_the_author_email() (this is the same as the_author_email(), except it returns rather than displays the author’s e-mail address). Use of the echo command displays the output of antispambot(). An interesting feature is it encodes only portions of an address, and does so randomly so the letters encoded are different each time the page loads, adding a little more firepower to the spam protection arsenal.

The wiki page on WordPress.org has an example on how to use the function.

After a few months of planning and work, I’ve finally released my new WordPress plugin. I’d had the idea sine around the time I started selling 125×125 ads on Webmaster-Source. I thought it was a bit of a pain to hard-code ads in and manually take them down after their run was over. And I don’t like figuring out end dates by counting ahead on a calendar either. That’s why I put together WP125, a WordPress plugin for easy 125×125 ad management.

I built the plugin to simplfy the management of 125×125 ads, and lower the barrier to get started selling them a little. Some of the features include

• Custom ad layout options.
• A widget to drop into your sidebar to make it easier to set the plugin up. Or you can use a template tag if you’re pro-code like me.
• Click tracking.
• Ads are automatically taken down on their end date.
• The plugin can figure out an ad’s expiration date automatically, based off how many days you say the ad should run for (no more counting forward on your calendar!). It took a bit of time and effort to get this feature working, but it was certainly worth it.

Try the plugin out, and tell me what you think. It’s a first release (1.0.0), and it’s barely been out tweleve hours, so it may have some bugs or interface oddities that need fixing. (It’s not on Wordpress plugin site quite yet either, but I’m working on that…) Tell me what you like, what needs fixing, etc.

I think WP125 is off to a good start, but I had to shave off a couple features I’d originally planned in order to get it out the door in time for the WLTC WordPress Plugin Competition. Sadly, that means I’m unable to use it on Webmaster-Source to manage my ads. I built the plugin to work the way I figured most people woud prefer, and pushed my preferences to the side for now. I handle my ads a little differently than other people, and it would have taken too much extra time and work to build support for that into the plugin. Hopefully I’ll have the time to include the settings I’d like at a later date.

Enjoy the plugin, and send your feedback along!

Planet Ozh has a new post up by the name of What Plugin Coders Must Know About WordPress 2.6. Ozh put out a similar post back when 2.5 was in development, and I found it very useful. This time around, there’s even more to worry about, er, be aware of.

It seems that users will be able to move their /wp-content directory wherever they want when the new release is out. That means you can’t rely on it being located at /wp-content anymore. A user could have it at /stuff/w-content or ../lib/wp-content, or anywhere, really.

Luckily, Ozh explains how to programmatically find the /wp-content URL or path.

WordPress 2.6 is currently in beta, and will “ship” later this year. It will probably bring some bug fixes and security updates as usual, but what about the fun part? What new features will we get?

Technosailor’s 10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.6 addresses just that.

Some noteable inclusions are

• Post versioning
• The return of PressThis
• Google Gears support

I won’t spoil the post by including too many. Check out the Technosailor post for the full details.

This month’s featured WordPress theme is StudioPress by DailyBlogTips.com. Note: Though the original blue coloration is shown here, there are three aditional color schemes available.

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The default comments template included in the Kubrick theme, and by extension a lot of other freely available themes, isn’t very interesting. It suits the theme, but it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution, ready for use in any theme. If you go through the trouble of finding or creating a more unique theme, shouldn’t the comments be styled differently as well? It surprises me how many blog themes have pretty much the same comment style as Kubrick.

Whether you’re putting together your own theme from scratch, or customizing an existing one, don’t neglect the comments. After all, you want to draw readers to them, don’t you?

Here are a couple places to read-up on the comment template:

• Styling Your Wordpress Comments
• Unraveling the Secrets of WordPress’ Comments.php File

Also, be sure to add Gravatar support!

June 2008’s featured WordPress theme is DarkZen, by Daily Blog Tips.

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In WP 2.5 the WordPress developers tweaked the WP dashboard, making it a bit more usable, looking sort of like Netvibes or iGoogle. Unfortunately, they haven’t seen fit to provide the ability to customize the dashboard “widgets” yet. So what’s the point? Well, it looks better…

Jason of Pressography.com has provided a solution, since the WordPress devs haven’t yet. The Widgetized Admin Dashboard plugin does just what it’s name says. It removes the WordPress Development News and WordPress Planet boxes, and adds a new sidebar to the Widgets screen called “WordPress Dashboard.” You can then put whatever you want on the Dashboard, and re-order the widgets at will. You could even use your themes’s functions.php file to write your own custom widgets, if WordPress and your plugins don’t provide one you would like.