Question about automatically updating wordpress plugins

Is the server that is hosting my wordpress blog required to have an FTP server running in order to use the automatic update feature?

I recently moved this domain to a VPS with linode.com and one of the big things I want is ‘NO FTP SERVER’. I do all my transfers to and from the server using scp.

I refuse to add an ftp server for this one nice feature. Guess I need to find out if one is required, or if there are alternatives, or do I just have to upgrade my plugins the old fashion way.

Need to figure out why ScribeFire ‘Schedules’ posts instead of ‘Publishes’ them

Every time I write a post using the Firefox plugin, ScribeFire, it schedules the post instead of actually publishing the content, even though I tell it to publish. Then the real kicker is I can’t figure out how to get it to publish via the WordPress control. If I tell it to publish, it just goes back to ‘Scheduled’. This is irrating.

Update: Ok, I believe I figured out why ScribeFire schedules the post. ScribeFire has it’s own timestamping functionality and my computers time is two hours ahead of the servers time, so wordpress won’t publish the story until the timestamp is equal to or greater than the ScribeFire timestamp.

Is twitter killing the blog?

I’ve been wondering this question for quite awhile. It certainly seems in my little world that twitter has had an extremely profound impact on the use of this very blog. So much so, that this is the first post I’ve actually written since October 12th of last year. I’ve been relying on posting blurbs and snippets from other interesting sites and new del.icio.us bookmarks to add some content here every few days.

I don’t believe I am alone in this situation either. For the most part I follow all the same people on twitter whose blogs I follow in RSS feeds. And they don’t get the same amount of updates as they did in the past. That’s certainly not true for everyone, but I think it is overall.

For me, twitter is a great place to share an idea or thought. I’ve never been much of a writer, so it was great to make a simple post without a lot of unnecessary banter of creating a decent size post or having to give every post a title.

But at the same token, always being limited to 140 characters tends keep me from writing about some things, and I tend to forget that I still have this place as an option. Another downside of twitter is that the information moves so fast, that unless you are constantly reading through all your contacts past tweets, there is a good chance you might miss something interesting.

Like most of my posts, this doesn’t really have any point, it was just an observation. And maybe it will spark a little conversation or debate, as I’m really curious what others think of this.

Follow me on Twitter if your interested in more of what I have to say, since that is where I say the most.

A security update to the Feedburner Feedsmith WordPress plugin

Today I noticed a posting of a security vulnerability in the Feedburner Feedsmith plugin for wordpress. The authors have released an updated version. It’s very easy and recommended to update to the latest version.

How to update:

1. Download version 2.3 of the plugin.
2. Sign in to your WordPress admin control panel.
3. Under Plugins, locate the current FeedSmith plugin, and click “Deactivate.”
4. Copy the plugin file, FeedBurner_FeedSmith_Plugin.php into your default WordPress plugin directory, wp-content/plugins/
5. Reactivate the plugin by logging in to your WordPress administration area, clicking Plugins, then clicking Activate at the end of the “FeedBurner FeedSmith” row

Via: Feedburner Blog

Just found a bug in WordPress 2.2.2

I discovered this while posting on a different blog. I won’t post details until after figure out where to report it to the wordpress developers.

Update: I just tested it with this site and was able to recreate it.

Update 2: It’s either a bug with wordpress or Ultimate Tag Warrior. After further testing, the bug only shows up if I enter tags.

Update 3: Submitting bug reports on plugins is overly complicated, so I emailed the author directly. I wouldn’t call this a security issue, but could expose entries you have not published.