Simple Informations

Many Wordpress blogs including this one faced a major problem after upgrading to Wordpress 2.7 a few days back. Although the whole new look of Wordpress is extremely easy and well designed for some the tinyMCE editor (default post editor for Wordpress) was screwed up. This meant that no new post could be made or existing one edited with the current setup.

The most common problem was that the Visual editor tab was missing. When you click on the new post or edit buttons you go straight to the HTML editing mode. And if you click on the Visual tab the whole text as well as editor window is blank.

In my case if I selected the editor windows I can see the HTML highlighted ie the text was still there but was in white color and un-editable. From then on no buttons on the page including HTML mode, Preview, Save Draft, Publish etc worked.

After going through numerous threads on the wordpress forum finally I was able to sort out the problem. Many a peple at the forums had pointed out that the problem would naturally be with some plugin that modified the TinyMCE advanced. I tried deactivating the TinyMCE advanced plugin. But it still didn’t work. After sometime I found that websuccessdiva solved the problem by deactivating RB internal links plugin. The plugin allows you to link the text with already published posts inside the TinyMCE window itself.

Solution : Try deactivating the plugins that directyly affect the tinyMCE interface. for some this was RB internal links, for some this was Kimili Flash Embed. Although there was an opinion to install Wordpress 2.7 fresh instead of upgrading this seemed not so practical.

Does anybody notice the rising CPU usage of your browser when you are at the create post page (Tiny MCE) of your self hosted Wordpress blog? Previously when I was using Firefox the CPU usage rose to 50 percent and FF was running fast like a snail. I thought it was because of problems with FF. Last day when I was using Opera Process Explroer was open. I couldn’t believe that Opera too used very much CPU resources. It was then that I realised the culprit was the Wordpress Create Post page (A intersection B, lol).

I was amazed when a Google search provided me only one relevent result. The problem is actually with the Wordpress “autosave” feature. If autosave is enabled, then the “Save” “Publish” buttons on my post page used to blink. Everything will come to normal once you “Disable AutoSave” on your blog.

To disble AutoSave you need to comment out the function wp_enqueue_script(’autosave’); from the following file by adding “//” before them. Comment the line in the following files - /wp-admin/post.php  /wp-admin/page.php  /wp-admin/post-new.php  /wp-admin/page-new.php

After commenting the lines should look like - //wp_enqueue_script(’autosave’);

Upload these files back and you will have solved the problem. Remember that since SutoSave is disabled you must manually save changes while writing a post.

I didn’t notice the CPU usage while using Opera because Opera is better than Firefox at managing memory and CPU. Also the overall perfomance of the Opera was not affected by the presence of the post page. But in FireFox when the page ws open I couldn’t scroll through any of the pages or couldn’t switch tabs by cliking on them.

I found all these information from Richard Timothy’s blog. Thanks Thimothy ;).

Wordpress has released its new version 2.5.1 It has got many security fixes and some minor bug fixes. You may either replace the security fixed files or do a complete update. The files that were fixed with security issues were - wp-includes/pluggable.php, wp-admin/includes/media.php, and wp-admin/media.php. You can just replace your existing files with the above one.

This release of Wordpress also adds a new security key feature to the wp-config.php file that will let you randomize cookie encryption. You can visit this link we set up to get a unique secret key for your config file. (It’s unique and random on every page load.) Having this line in your config file helps secure your blog.

Windows has got the habit of saving almost anything you got your hands on, like recent run list, recent wallpaper, recent files etc.. Although some of these may be useful most of them are not. The recent RUN list, mentioned above, is saved in the Windows registry. (The recent Run list is useful but this is an example). If you take Start»RUN and type something you may perhaps note a drop down of the previous commands typed there.

These commands that were previously typed are saved in the Registry. Goto Registry Editor by typing regedit in RUN dialog. Navigate to the following folder HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Explorer\RunMRU

Here you will find some regWords with values of Run lists and name as a,b,c,d.. there will also be an MRU List which saves the order in which the Run list is to be shown. Delete all the keys except default . Now restart Windows Explorer (press ALT+CTRL+SHIFT and click CANCEL button on Shutdown dialog and start explorer again through Task Manager). Now take the RUN box and the recent commands will not appear any more.

The latest version of Wordpress - 2.3.3 is out now. It includes a major fix to the XML RPC file xmlrpc.php

A flaw was found in our XML-RPC implementation such that a specially crafted request would allow any valid user to edit posts of any other user on that blog. In addition to fixing this security flaw, 2.3.3 fixes a few minor bugs. If you are interested only in the security fix, download the fixed version of xmlrpc.php and copy it over your existing xmlrpc.php. Otherwise, you can get the entire release here.

Also, there is a vulnerability in the WP-Forum plugin that is being actively exploited right now. If you are using this plugin, please remove it until an update is available.

For more information about upgrading your Wordpress installation visit Wordpress Upgrade directions page at Wordpress Codex

Matt Cutts last day did a post on securing your Wordpress installation from hackers. He had some really nice tips which are highly useful. So I decided to do a reflection here. Here is the link to the original article by Matt Cutts.

What he means basically is that you should not allow the public to see what or plugins are installed and what version of Wordpress you are running. so you need to put a simple index.html file to all the folders of WP install directory that haven’t got one by default. For example visit the plugins directory of this blog . The wordpress version needs to be turned off because if you are using an older version that is prone to attack, it is better not to let the attacker know it directly.

** Caution : Be sure you are running the latest version of WP to avoid risks **