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.

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.

I think my feed is messed up

I upgraded wordpress to 2.0.5 yesterday, then I upgraded all my plugins. After that I noticed my feed republished itself in bloglines. However the feed entries were missing the Related Posts info that are part of a plugin I use. So I copied back my old wp-rss2.php. Now if I preview the feed I see all the correct info, but bloglines hasn’t updated my feed since yesterday and I even had a new entry. I also checked google reader and that also was missing the most recent entry. Ugh!!

Update: Well my feeds look like they are updating in various places now, but I had to deactivate my Feedburner Feed Replacement plugin.

Some tweaking going on

I’ve been doing quite a bit of work on the backend side of the blog lately. Including, but not limited to, installing many new wordpress plugins, a new theme and style, and some overall code tweaking. One side effect I’ve noticed is that my feed has been showing items as new again even though they’ve been read. If you’ve noticed that too and it bugs you, I apologize. I’m still working with a new ‘tags’ plugin which may mess with the feed a few more times. So things will will return to normal.