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FeedWordPress / 0.95
FeedWordPress v0.95
trunk 0.8 0.9 0.91 0.95 0.96 0.97 0.98 0.981 0.99 0.991 0.992 0.993 2008.1030 2008.1101 2008.1105 2008.1214 2009.0612 2009.0613 2009.0618 2009.0707 2009.1111 2009.1112 2010.0127 2010.0528 All 65 releases
← All changes | ChangeLog.text +78 -745 2008.11050.95 View file →
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1 -FeedWordPress Change Log
2 -========================
1 +Change Log
2 +==========
3 3
4 -Changes from 2008.1101 to 2008.1105
5 -
6 -* INTERFACE RESTRUCTURING AND SYNDICATION --> AUTHORS PAGE: As a first
7 - step towards modularizing and better organizing the user interface, a
8 - new "Authors" subpage has been created under the Syndication menu, which
9 - controls settings for syndicated authors, both at the global default
10 - level and at level of individual syndicated feeds.
11 -
12 -* BUG RELATED TO THE ATTRIBUTION OF POSTS TO THE WRONG AUTHOR FIXED: Some
13 - users encountered an issue in which posts by different authors on
14 - different blogs -- especially blogs generated by Blogger -- were
15 - mistakenly attributed to a single author. The problem was caused by the
16 - way in which FeedWordPress matches syndicated authors to user accounts
17 - in the WordPress database: normally, if two feeds each list an author
18 - with the same e-mail address, they are counted as being the same person.
19 - Normally this works well, but it creates an issue in cases where
20 - blogging software assigns a single anonymous e-mail address to users who
21 - do not want their real e-mail address published. This is, for example,
22 - what Blogger does (by giving all users a default e-mail address of
23 - <noreply@blogger.com> if they don't want their own e-mail address
24 - listed). FeedWordPress now allows the user to correct for this problem
25 - with a couple of new settings under **Syndication --> Authors**, which
26 - allow users to turn off e-mail based author matching for particular
27 - addresses, or, if desired, to turn it off entirely. By default, e-mail
28 - based author matching is still turned on, but disabled for a list of
29 - known generic e-mail addresses. Right now, the "list" consists entirely
30 - of <noreply@blogger.com>; if you know other addresses that should be
31 - added, please [contact me](http://radgeek.com/contact) to let me know.
32 -
33 - Please note that if you have already encountered this issue on your
34 - blog, upgrading FeedWordPress will prevent it from re-occurring in the
35 - future, but you still need to do two other things to fix the existing
36 - problem on your blog.
37 -
38 - First, for each feed where posts have been mis-attributed, you need to
39 - change the existing author mapping rules to re-map a a syndicated
40 - author's name to the proper target account. Go to **Syndication -->
41 - Authors**, select the feed you want to change from the drop-down list,
42 - and then change the settings under the "Syndicated Authors" section.
43 - (You will probably need to select "will be assigned to a new user..." to
44 - create a new user account with the appropriate name.)
45 -
46 - Second, for each feed where posts have been mis-attributed, you need to
47 - re-assign already-syndicated posts that were mis-attributed to the
48 - correct author. You can do that from **Syndication --> Authors** by
49 - using the author re-assignment feature, described below.
50 -
51 -* AUTHOR RE-ASSIGNMENT FOR A PARTICULAR FEED: The author settings page
52 - for each syndicated feed, under **Syndication --> Authors**, now
53 - includes an section titled "Fixing mis-matched authors," which provides
54 - an interface for re-assigning or deleting all posts attributed to a
55 - particular author on a particular feed.
56 -
57 -* SUPPORT FOR `<atom:source>` ELEMENT IN SYNDICATED FEEDS: Some feeds
58 - (for example, those produced by FeedWordPress) aggregate content from
59 - several different sources, and include information about the original
60 - source of the post in an `<atom:source>` element. A new setting under
61 - **Syndication --> Options** allows you to control what FeedWordPress
62 - will report as the source of posts syndicated from aggregator feeds in
63 - your templates and feeds: you can have FeedWordPress report that the
64 - source of a post is the aggregator feed itself, or you can have it
65 - report that the source of a post is the original source that the
66 - aggregator originally syndicated the post from.
67 -
68 - By default, FeedWordPress will report the aggregator, not the original
69 - source, as the source of a syndicated item.
70 -
71 -* LOAD BALANCING AND TIME LIMITING FEATURES FOR UPDATES: Some users have
72 - encountered issues due to running up against PHP execution time limits
73 - during the process of updating large syndicated feeds, or a very large
74 - set of syndicated feeds. FeedWordPress now has a feature that allows you
75 - to limit the total amount of time spent updating a feed, through the
76 - "Time limit on updates" setting under **Syndication --> Options**. By
77 - turning on this setting and adjusting the time limit to a low enough
78 - figure to avoid your PHP installation's time-out setting. (PHP execution
79 - time limits are usually in the vicinity of 30 seconds, so an update
80 - time limit of 25 seconds or so should provide plenty of time for updates
81 - while allowing a cushion of time for other, non-update-related functions
82 - to do their work.)
83 -
84 - If feed updates are interrupted by the time limit, FeedWordPress uses
85 - some simple load balancing features to make sure that updates to other
86 - feeds will not be blocked by the time-hogging feed, and will also make
87 - sure that when the interrupted update is resumed, FeedWordPress will
88 - skip ahead to resume processing items at the point at which it was
89 - interrupted last time, so that posts further down in the feed will
90 - eventually get processed, and not get blocked by the amount of time it
91 - takes to process the items higher up in the feed.
92 -
93 -* `guid` INDEX CREATION BUTTON: FeedWordPress frequently issues queries on
94 - the `guid` column of the WordPress posts database (since it uses post
95 - guid URIs to keep track of which posts it has syndicated). In very large
96 - FeedWordPress installations, you can often significantly improve
97 - performance by creating a database index on the `guid` column, but
98 - normally you would need to poke around with MySQL or a tool like
99 - phpMyAdmin to do this. FeedWordPress can now save you the trouble: to
100 - create an index on the `guid` column, just go to
101 - **Syndication --> Options**, and mash the button at the bottom of the
102 - "Back End" section.
103 -
104 -Changes from 2008.1030 to 2008.1101
105 -
106 -* INTERFACE BUG THAT PREVENTED ADDING NEW SITES FIXED: The UI reforms in
107 - FWP 2008.1030 unintentionally introduced a bug that prevents clean
108 - installations of FeedWordPress from providing an input box for adding
109 - new feeds to the list of syndicated feeds. This bug has been fixed.
110 -
111 -Changes from 0.993 to 2008.1030
112 -
113 -* WORDPRESS 2.6 COMPATIBILITY: FeedWordPress should now be compatible with
114 - WordPress 2.6, and should work more or less seamlessly with the new post
115 - revision system. A bug which caused multiple new revisions to be created
116 - for posts on certain feeds, regardless of whether or not the item had
117 - been updated, has been fixed.
118 -
119 -* INTERFACE IMPROVEMENTS: The user interface has been substantially
120 - restyled to fit in better with the visual style of WordPress 2.5 and
121 - 2.6.
122 -
123 -* YOUTUBE BUG FIXED: POSTS SYNDICATED THROUGH AN AUTOMATIC UPDATE ARE NO
124 - LONGER STRIPPED OF `<OBJECT>` TAGS AND CERTAIN OTHER HTML ELEMENTS: Due
125 - to the way that some versions of WordPress process posts that are
126 - inserted into the database when no user is logged in, many users
127 - experienced an issue where YouTube videos and other content using the
128 - HTML `<object>` tag would be stripped out of posts that were syndicated
129 - during an automatic update. (Posts that were syndicated through manual
130 - updates from within the WordPress Dashboard were not affected, because
131 - the issue does not arise when an update is executed under a logged-in
132 - administrator's credentials.) This bug has now been fixed; YouTube
133 - videos and other content using `<object>` tags should now appear
134 - properly in syndicated posts, regardless of the way in which the post
135 - was syndicated.
136 -
137 -* AJAX BUGS FIXED: Bugs which blocked the normal operation of WordPress
138 - 2.5's AJAX interface elements when FeedWordPress was activated have been
139 - fixed.
140 -
141 -* TAG SUPPORT: A couple of features have been introduced to take advantage
142 - of the tagging features in WordPress 2.3.x, 2.5.x, and 2.6.x. Now, when
143 - unfamiliar categories are encountered for posts on a feed, you can
144 - choose for FeedWordPress (1) to drop the category; (2) to drop the
145 - category and to filter out any post that does not match at least one
146 - familiar category; (3) to create a new category with that name, or,
147 - now, you can also have FeedWordPress (4) create a new *tag* with that
148 - name. This option can be set site-wide under Syndication --> Options,
149 - or it can be set on a feed-by-feed basis in a feed's Edit screen.
150 -
151 - In addition, you can now set particular tags to apply to all incoming
152 - syndicated posts, under Syndication --> Options, or you can set tags
153 - to apply to all incoming syndicated posts from a particular feed in that
154 - feed's Edit screen.
155 -
156 -* FORMATTING FILTERS: There is a new option available under Syndication ->
157 - Options which allows users to choose whether or not to expose syndicated
158 - posts to being altered by formatting filters. By default, FeedWordPress
159 - has always protected syndicated posts (which are already in display-ready
160 - HTML when they are syndicated) from being reformatted by formatting
161 - filters. However, this approach means that certain plugins which depend
162 - on formatting filters (for example, to add "Share This" bars or relevant
163 - links to the end of a post) are blocked from working on any syndicated
164 - posts. If you want to use one of these plugins together with
165 - FeedWordPress, you can now do so by changing the "Formatting Filters"
166 - setting from "Protect" to "Expose."
167 -
168 -* `<atom:source>` ELEMENTS NOW INCLUDED IN ATOM FEED: Atom 1.0 provides
169 - a standard method for aggregators to indicate information about the original source of
170 - a syndicated post, using the `<atom:source>` element. FeedWordPress now
171 - introduces standard `<atom:source>` elements including the title, homepage, and
172 - feed URI of the source from which a syndicated post was syndicated. Cf.
173 - <http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/syndication/atom-format-spec.php#element.source>
174 -
175 -* MODULARIZATION OF CODE: The code for different elements of FeedWordPress
176 - has been broken out into several modules for easier inspection,
177 - documentation, and maintenance of the code.
178 -
179 -* VERSIONING SCHEME CHANGED: FeedWordPress's feature set has proven stable
180 - enough that it can now be removed from beta status; a good thing, since
181 - I was very quickly running out of version numbers to use. New releases
182 - of FeedWordPress will have version numbers based on the date of their
183 - release.
184 -
185 -Changes from 0.992 to 0.993
186 -
187 -* WORDPRESS 2.5.1 COMPATIBILITY: FeedWordPress should now be compatible
188 - with WordPress 2.5.1.
189 -
190 -* WORDPRESS 2.5 INTERFACE IMPROVEMENTS: FeedWordPress's Dashboard
191 - interface has undergone several cosmetic changes that should help it
192 - integrate better with the WordPress Dashboard interface in WordPress
193 - version 2.5.x.
194 -
195 -* SYNDICATED POSTS CAN BE MARKED AS "PENDING REVIEW": WordPress 2.3 users
196 - can now take advantage of WordPress's new "Pending Review" features for
197 - incoming syndicated posts. Posts marked as "Pending Review" are not
198 - published immediately, but are marked as ready to be reviewed by an
199 - Administrator or Editor, who can then choose to publish the post or
200 - hold it back. If you want to review syndicated posts from a particular
201 - feed, or from all feeds, before they are posted, then use
202 - Syndication --> Syndicated Sites --> Edit or Syndication --> Options to
203 - change the settings for handling new posts.
204 -
205 -* AWARE OF NEW URI FOR del.icio.us FEEDS: Previous releases of
206 - FeedWordPress already automatically split del.icio.us tags up
207 - appropriately appropriately when generating categories. (del.icio.us
208 - feeds smoosh all the tags into a single `<dc:subject>` element,
209 - separated by spaces; FeedWordPress un-smooshes them into multiple
210 - categories by separating them at whitespace.) Unfortunately, del.icio.us
211 - recently broke the existing behavior by changing host names for their
212 - feeds from del.icio.us to feeds.delicious.com. Version 0.993 accounts
213 - for the new host name and un-breaks the tag splitting.
214 -
215 -Changes from 0.991 to 0.992
216 -* AUTHOR RE-MAPPING: FeedWordPress now offers considerable control over
217 - how author names on a feed are translated into usernames within the
218 - WordPress database. When a post by an unrecognized author comes in,
219 - Administrators can now specify any username as the default username to
220 - assign the post to by setting the option in Syndication --> Options
221 - (formerly FeedWordPress only allowed you to assign such posts to user
222 - #1, the site administrator). Administrators can also create re-mapping
223 - rules for particular feeds (under Syndication --> Syndicated Sites -->
224 - Edit), so that (for example) any posts attributed to "Administrator"
225 - on the feed <http://praxeology.net/blog/feed/> will be assigned to
226 - a user named "Roderick T. Long," rather than a user named
227 - "Administrator." These settings also allow administrators to filter out
228 - posts by particular users, and to control what will happen when
229 - FeedWordPress encounters a post by an unrecognized user on that
230 - particular feed.
231 -
232 -* BUG RELATED TO URIS CONTAINING AMPERSAND CHARACTERS FIXED: A bug in
233 - WordPress 2.x's handling of URIs in Blogroll links created problems for
234 - updating any feeds whose URIs included an ampersand character, such as
235 - Google News RSS feeds and other feeds that have multiple parameters
236 - passed through HTTP GET. If you experienced this bug, the most likely
237 - effect was that FeedWordPress simply would not import new posts from a
238 - feed when instructred to do so, returning a "0 new posts" response. In
239 - other cases, it might lead to unpredictable results from feed updates,
240 - such as importing posts which were not contained in the feed being
241 - syndicated, but which did appear elsewhere on the same website. This bug
242 - has, hopefully, been resolved, by correcting for the bug in WordPress.
243 -
244 -Changes from 0.99 to 0.991
245 -* WORDPRESS MU COMPATIBILITY: FeedWordPress should now be compatible with
246 - recent releases of WordPress MU. Once FeedWordPress is made available
247 - as a plugin, each individual blog can choose to activate FeedWordPress
248 - and syndicate content from its own set of contributors.
249 -
250 -* DISPLAY OF MAGPIE WARNINGS: A number of MagpieRSS warnings or error
251 - messages that were displayed when performing an automatic update are
252 - no longer displayed, unless debugging parameters have been explicitly
253 - enabled.
254 -
255 -* BUG RELATED TO INTERNATIONAL CHARACTERS IN AUTHOR NAMES FIXED: Due to a
256 - subtle incompatability between the way that FeedWordPress generated new
257 - user information, and the way that WordPress 2.0 and later added new
258 - authors to the database, FeedWordPress might end up creating duplicate
259 - authors, or throwing a critical error message, when it encountered
260 - authors whose names included international characters. This
261 - incompatability has now been fixed; hopefully, authors with
262 - international characters in their names should now be handled properly.
263 -
264 -* `<media:content>` BUG IN MAGPIERSS FIXED: A bug in MagpieRSS's handling
265 - of namespaced elements has been fixed. Among other things, this bug
266 - caused items containing a Yahoo MediaRSS `<media:content>` element (such
267 - as many of the feeds produced by wordpress.com) to be represented
268 - incorrectly, with only a capital "A" where the content of the post
269 - should have been. Feeds containing `<media:content>` elements should now
270 - be syndicated correctly.
271 -
272 -* update_feedwordpress PARAMETER: You can now use an HTTP GET parameter
273 - (`update_feedwordpress=1`) to request that FeedWordPress poll its feeds
274 - for updates. When used together with a crontab or other means of
275 - scheduling tasks, this means that you can keep your blog automatically
276 - updated on a regular schedule, even if you do not choose to use the
277 - cron-less automatic updates option.
278 -
279 -* Some minor interface-related bugs were also fixed.
280 -
281 -
282 -Changes from 0.981 to 0.99
283 -Version 0.99 adds several significant new features, fixes some bugs, and
284 -provides compatability with WordPress 2.2.x and 2.3.x.
285 -
286 -* WORDPRESS 2.2 AND 2.3 COMPATIBILITY: FeedWordPress should now be
287 - compatible with WordPress version 2.2 and the upcoming WordPress
288 - version 2.3. In particular, it has been tested extensively against
289 - WordPress 2.2.3 and WordPress 2.3 Release Candidate 1.
290 -
291 -* AUTOMATIC UPDATES WITHOUT CRON: FeedWordPress now allows you to
292 - automatically schedule checks for new posts without using external task
293 - scheduling tools such as cron. In order to enable automatic updates, go
294 - to **Syndication --> Options** and set "Check for new posts" to
295 - "automatically." For details, see "Automatic Feed Updates" in
296 - README.text.
297 -
298 - An important side-effect of the changes to the update system is that if
299 - you were previously using the cron job and the `update-feeds.php` script
300 - to schedule updates, you need to change your cron set-up. The old
301 - `update-feeds.php` script no longer exists. Instead, if you wish to use
302 - a cron job to guarantee updates on a particular schedule, you should
303 - have the cron job fetch the front page of your blog (for example, by
304 - using `curl http://www.zyx.com/blog/ > /dev/null`) instead of activating
305 - the `update-feeds.php` script. If automatic updates have been enabled,
306 - fetching the front page will automatically trigger the update process.
307 -
308 -* INTERFACE REORGANIZATION: All FeedWordPress functions are now located
309 - under a top-level "Syndication" menu in the WordPress Dashboard. To
310 - manage the list of syndicated sites, manually check for new posts on
311 - one or more feeds, or syndicate a new site, you should use the main page
312 - under **Syndication**. To change global settings for FeedWordPress,
313 - you should use **Syndication --> Options**.
314 -
315 -* FILE STRUCTURE REORGANIZATION: Due to a combination of changing styles
316 - for FeedWordPress plugins and lingering bugs in the FeedWordPress admin
317 - menu code, the code for FeedWordPress is now contained in two different
318 - PHP files, which should be installed together in a subdirectory of your
319 - plugins directory named `feedwordpress`. (See README.text for
320 - installation and upgrade instructions relating to the change.)
321 -
322 -* MULTIPLE CATEGORIES SETTING: Some feeds use non-standard methods to
323 - indicate multiple categories within a single category element. (The most
324 - popular site to do this is del.icio.us, which separates tags with a
325 - space.) FeedWordPress now allows you to set an optional setting, for any
326 - feed which does this, indicating the character or characters used to
327 - divide multiple categories, using a Perl-compatible regular expression.
328 - (In the case of del.icio.us feeds, FeedWordPress will automatically use
329 - \s for the pattern without your having to do any further configuration.)
330 - To turn this setting on, simply use the "Edit" link for the feed that
331 - you want to turn it on for.
332 -
333 -* REGULAR EXPRESSION BUG FIXED: Eliminated a minor bug in the regular
334 - expressions for e-mail addresses (used in parsing RSS `author`
335 - elements), which could produce unsightly error messages for some users
336 - parsing RSS 2.0 feeds.
337 -
338 -* DATE / UPDATE BUG FIXED: A bug in date handling was eliminated that may
339 - have caused problems if any of (1) WordPress, or (2) PHP, or (3) your
340 - web server, or (4) your MySQL server, has been set to use a different
341 - time zone from the one that any of the others is set to use. If
342 - FeedWordPress has not been properly updating updated posts, or has been
343 - updating posts when there shouldn't be any changes for the update, this
344 - release may solve that problem.
345 -
346 -* GOOGLE READER BUGS FIXED: A couple of bugs that made it difficult for
347 - FeedWordPress to interact with Google Reader public feeds have been
348 - fixed. Firstly, if you encountered an error message reading "There was a
349 - problem adding the newsfeed. [SQL: ]" when you tried to add the feed,
350 - the cause of this error has been fixed. Secondly, if you succeeded in
351 - getting FeedWordPress to check a Google Reader feed, only to find that
352 - the title of posts had junk squashed on to the end of them, that bug
353 - has been fixed too. To fix this bug, you must install the newest version
354 - of the optional MagpieRSS upgrade.
355 -
356 -* FILTER PARAMETERS: Due to an old, old bug in WordPress 1.5.0 (which was
357 - what was available back when I first wrote the filter interface),
358 - FeedWordPress has traditionally only passed one parameter to
359 - syndicated_item and syndicated_post filters functions -- an array
360 - containing either the Magpie representation of a syndicated item from
361 - the feed, or the database representation of a post about to be inserted
362 - into the WordPress database. If you needed information about the feed
363 - that the item came from, this was accessible only through a pair of
364 - global variables, $fwp_channel and $fwp_feedmeta.
365 -
366 - Since it's been a pretty long time since WordPress 1.5.0 was in
367 - widespread usage, I have gone ahead and added an optional second
368 - parameter to the invocation of the syndicated_item and syndicated_post
369 - filters. If you have written a filter for FeedWordPress that uses either
370 - of these hooks, you can now register that filter to accept 2 parameters.
371 - If you do so, the second parameter will be a SyndicatedPost object,
372 - which, among other things, allows you to access information about the
373 - feed from which an item is syndicated using the $post->feed and the
374 - $post->feedmeta elements (where $post is the name of the second
375 - parameter).
376 -
377 - NOTE THAT THE OLD GLOBAL VARIABLES ARE STILL AVAILABLE, for the time
378 - being at least, so existing filters will not break with the upgrade.
379 - They should be considered deprecated, however, and may be eliminated in
380 - the future.
381 -
382 -* FILTER CHANGE / BUGFIX: the array that is passed as the first argument
383 - syndicated_post filters no longer is no longer backslash-escaped for
384 - MySQL when filters are called. This was originally a bug, or an
385 - oversight; the contents of the array should only be escaped for the
386 - database *after* they have gone through all filters. IF YOU HAVE WRITTEN
387 - ANY syndicated_post FILTERS THAT PRESUME THE OLD BEHAVIOR OF PASSING IN
388 - STRINGS THAT ARE ALREADY BACKSLASH-ESCAPED, UPDATE YOUR FILTERS
389 - ACCORDINGLY.
390 -
391 -* OTHER MINOR BUGFIXES AND INTERNAL CHANGES: The internal architecture of
392 - FeedWordPress has been significantly changed to make the code more
393 - modular and clean; hopefully this should help reduce the number of
394 - compatibility updates that are needed, and make them easier and quicker
395 - when they are needed.
396 -
397 -Changes from 0.98 to 0.981
398 -Version 0.981 is a narrowly targeted bugfix and compatibility release, whose
399 -main purpose is to resolve a major outstanding problem: the incompatibility
400 -between version 0.98 of WordPress and the recently released WordPress 2.1.
401 -
402 -* WORDPRESS 2.1 COMPATIBILITY: FeedWordPress is now compatible with
403 - WordPress 2.1, as well as retaining its existing support for WordPress
404 - 2.0 and 1.5. Incompatibilities that resulted in database warnings, fatal
405 - errors, and which prevented FeedWordPress from syndicating new posts,
406 - have been eliminated.
407 -
408 -* RSS-FUNCTIONS.PHP RENAMED TO RSS.PHP: if you use the upgraded MagpieRSS
409 - replacement that's included with FeedWordPress, be sure to note that
410 - there are now *two* files to upload from the `OPTIONAL/wp-includes`
411 - subdirectory in order to carry out the upgrade: rss-functions.php and
412 - rss.php. **It is necessary to upload both files**, due to a change in
413 - the file naming scheme in WordPress 2.1, and it is necessary to do so
414 - whether you are using WordPress 2.1 or not. If you only upload the
415 - `rss-functions.php` file as in previous installations you will not have
416 - a working copy of MagpieRSS; the rss.php file contains the actual code.
417 -
418 -* DATE BUG AFFECTING SOME PHP INSTALLATIONS RESOLVED: due to a subtle bug
419 - in parse_w3cdtf(), some installations of PHP encountered problems with
420 - FeedWordPress's attempt to date posts, which would cause some new posts
421 - on Atom feeds to be dated as if they had apppeared in 1969 or 1970
422 - (thus, effectively, never appearing on front apge at all). This bug in
423 - the date handling should now be fixed.
424 -
425 -* PHP <?=...?> SHORT FORM ELIMINATED: some installations of PHP do not
426 - allow the <?=...?> short form for printing PHP values, which was used
427 - extensively in the FeedWordPress interface code. Since this could cause
428 - fatal errors for users with the wrong installation of PHP, the short
429 - form has been replaced with full PHP echo statements, and is no longer
430 - used in FeedWordPress.
431 -
432 -* BETTER USER INTERFACE INTEGRATION WITH WORDPRESS 2.x: Some minor changes
433 - have been made to help the FeedWordPress interface pages blend in better
434 - with the user interface when running under WordPress 2.x.
435 -
436 -* GLOBAL CATEGORIES BUG RESOLVED: a bug that prevented some users from
437 - setting one or more categories to apply to syndicated posts from all
438 - feeds (using the checkbox interface under Options --> Syndication) has
439 - been resolved.
440 -
441 -Changes from 0.97 to 0.98
442 -
443 -* WORDPRESS 2.0 COMPATIBILITY: This is a narrowly-targeted release to
444 - solve a major outstanding problem. FeedWordPress is now compatible with
445 - both WordPress 1.5 and WordPress 2.0. Incompatibilities that caused
446 - fatal SQL errors, and a more subtle bug with off-kilter counts of posts
447 - under a given category, have been resolved. FeedWordPress tests for
448 - database schema using the global $wp_db_version variable (if null, then
449 - we presume that we're dealing with WordPress 1.5).
450 -
451 - NOTE: I have **not** fully tested FeedWordPress with WordPress 2.0.
452 - Further testing may reveal more bugs. However, you should now be able
453 - to get at least basic FeedWordPress functionality up and running.
454 -
455 -* AUTHOR MATCHING: FeedWordPress tests several fields to see if it can
456 - identify the author of the post as a user already in the WordPress user
457 - database. In previous versions, it tested the user login, the nickname,
458 - and tested for "aliases" listed in the Profile (see documentation). FWP
459 - now also matches authors on the basis of e-mail address (*if* an e-mail
460 - address is present). This is particularly helpful for formats such as
461 - RSS 2.0, in which authors are primarily identified by e-mail addresses.
462 -
463 -Changes from 0.96 to 0.97
464 -
465 -* INSTALLATION PROCEDURE: Some of the changes between 0.96 and 0.97
466 - require upgrades to the meta-data stored by FeedWordPress to work
467 - properly. Thus, if you are upgrading from 0.96 or earlier to 0.97, most
468 - FeedWordPress operations (including updates and template functions)
469 - WILL BE DISABLED until you run the upgrade procedure. Fortunately,
470 - running the upgrade procedure is easy: just go to either Options -->
471 - Syndication or Links --> Syndicated in the WordPress Dashboard and press
472 - the button.
473 -
474 -* FEED FORMAT SUPPORT: Support has been added for the Atom 1.0 IETF
475 - standard. Several other elements are also newly supported
476 - (dcterms:created, dcterms:issued, dcterms:modified, dc:identifier,
477 - proper support for the RSS 2.0 guid element, the RSS 2.0 author element,
478 - the use of Atom author or Dublin Core dc:creator constructs at the feed
479 - level to identify the author of individual items, etc.)
480 -
481 - N.B.: full support of several Atom 1.0 features, such as categories
482 - and enclosures, requires you to install the optional rss-functions.php
483 - upgrade in your wp-includes directory.
484 -
485 -* BUG FIX: Running `update-feeds.php` from command line or crontab
486 - returned "I don't syndicate..." errors. It turns out that WordPress
487 - sometimes tramples on the internal PHP superglobals that I depended on
488 - to determine whether or not the script was being invoked from the
489 - command line. This has been fixed (the variables are now checked
490 - *before* WordPress can trample them). Note that `update-feeds.php` has
491 - been thoroughly overhauled anyway; see below for details.
492 -
493 -* BUG FIX: Duplicate categories or author names. Fixed two bugs that could
494 - create duplicate author and/or category names when the name contained
495 - either (a) certain international characters (causing a mismatch between
496 - MySQL and PHP's handling of lowercasing text), or (b) characters that
497 - have a special meaning in regular expressions (causing MySQL errors when
498 - looking for the author or category due to regexp syntax errors). These
499 - should now be fixed thanks to careful escaping of names that go into
500 - regular expressions and careful matching of lowercasing functions
501 - (comparing results from PHP only to other results from PHP, and results
502 - from MySQL only to other results from MySQL).
503 -
504 -* BUG FIX: Items dated Decembr 31, 1969 should appear less often. The
505 - function for parsing W3C date-time format dates that ships with
506 - MagpieRSS can only correctly parse fully-specified dates with a
507 - fully-specified time, but valid W3C date-time format dates may omit the
508 - time, the day of the month, or even the month. Some feeds in the wild
509 - date their items with coarse-grained dates, so the optional
510 - `rss-functions.php` upgrade now includes a more flexible parse_w3cdtf()
511 - function that will work with both coarse-grained and fully-specified
512 - dates. (If parts of the date or the time are omitted, they are filled in
513 - with values based on the current time, so '2005-09-10' will be dated to
514 - the current time on that day; '2004' will be dated to this day and time
515 - one year ago.
516 -
517 - N.B.: This fix is only available in the optional `rss-functions.php`
518 - upgrade.
519 -
520 -* BUG FIX: Evil use of HTTP GET has been undone. The WordPress interface
521 - is riddled with inappropriate (non-idempotent) uses of HTTP GET queries
522 - (ordinary links that make the server do something with significant
523 - side-effects, such as deleting a post or a link from the database).
524 - FeedWordPress did some of this too, especially in places where it aped
525 - the WordPress interface (e.g. the "Delete" links in Links -->
526 - Syndicated). That's bad business, though. I've changed the interface so
527 - that all the examples of improper side-effects that I can find now
528 - require an HTTP POST to take effect. I think I got pretty much
529 - everything; if there's anything that I missed, let me know.
530 -
531 - Further reading: [Sam Ruby 2005-05-06: This Stuff Matters] (http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/2005/05/06/This-Stuff-Matters)
532 -
533 -* BUG FIX: Categories applied by `cats` setting should no longer prevent
534 - category-based filtering from working. In FeedWordPress, you can (1)
535 - apply certain categories to all syndicated posts, or all posts from
536 - a particular feed; and (2) filter out all posts that don't match one
537 - of the categories that are already in the WordPress database (allowing
538 - for simple category-based filtering; just load up WordPress with the
539 - categories you want to accept, and then tell FeedWordPress not to create
540 - new ones). However, the way that (1) and (2) were implemented meant that
541 - you couldn't effectively use them together; once you applied a known
542 - category to all syndicated posts from a particular feed, it meant that
543 - they'd have at least one familiar category (the category or categories
544 - you were applying), and that would get all posts past the filter no
545 - matter what categories they were originally from.
546 -
547 - Well, no longer. You can still apply categories to all syndicated posts
548 - (using either Syndication --> Options, or the feed-level settings under
549 - Links --> Syndicated). But these categories are not applied to the post
550 - until *after* it has already passed by the "familiar categories" filter.
551 - So now, if you want, you can do category filtering and *then* apply as
552 - many categories as you please to all and only posts that pass the filter.
553 -
554 -* BUG FIX: Other minor typos and HTML gaffes were fixed along the way.
555 -
556 -* PERFORMANCE: get_feed_meta() no longer hits the database for information
557 - on every call; it now caches link data in memory, so FeedWordPress only
558 - goes to the database once for each syndicated link. This may
559 - substantially improve performance if your database server resources
560 - are tight and your templates make a lot of use of custom settings from
561 - get_feed_meta().
562 -
563 -* API CHANGE: Link ID numbers, rather than RSS URIs, are now used to
564 - identify the feed from which a post is syndicated when you use template
565 - functions such as get_feed_meta(). The practical upshot of this is you
566 - can switch feeds, or change the feed address for a particular syndicated
567 - site, without breaking your templates for all the posts that were
568 - syndicated from the earlier URI.
569 -
570 -* API CHANGE: if you have plugins or templates that make use of the
571 - get_feed_meta() function or the $fwp_feedmeta global, note that the
572 - data formerly located under the `uri` and `name` fields is now located
573 - under the `link/uri` field and the `link/name` field, respectively. Note
574 - also that you can access the link ID number for any given feed under the
575 - global $fwp_feedmeta['link/id'] (in plugins) or
576 - get_feed_meta('link/id') (in a template in post contexts).
577 -
578 -* FEATURE: the settings for individual feeds can now be edited using a
579 - humane interface (where formerly you had to tweak key-value pairs in the
580 - Link Notes section). To edit settings for a feed, pick the feed that you
581 - want under Links --> Syndicated and click the Edit link.
582 -
583 -* FEATURE: The "Unsubscribe" button (formerly "Delete") in Links -->
584 - Syndicated now offers three options for unsubscribing from a feed: (1)
585 - turning off the subscription without deleting the feed data or affecting
586 - posts that were syndicated from the feed (this works by setting the Link
587 - for the feed as "invisible"); (2) deleting the feed data and all of the
588 - posts that were syndicated from the feed; or (3) deleting the feed data
589 - and *keeping* the posts that were syndicated from the feed
590 - setting the Link to "Invisible" (meaning that it will not be displayed
591 - in lists of the site links on the front page, and it won't be checked
592 - for updates; (2) deleting the Link and all of the posts that were
593 - syndicated from its feed; or (3) deleting the feed data but keeping the
594 - posts that were syndicated (which will henceforward be treated as if
595 - they were local rather than syndicated posts). (Note that (1) is usually
596 - the best option for aggregator sites, unless you want to clean up the
597 - results of an error or a test.)
598 -
599 -* FEATURE / BUG FIX: If you have been receiving mysterious "I don't
600 - syndicate...", or "(local) HTTP status code was not 200", or "(local)
601 - transport error - could not open socket", or "parse error - not well
602 - formed" errors, then this update may solve your problems, and if it does
603 - *not* solve them, it will at least make the reasons for the problems
604 - easier to understand. That's because I've overhauled the way that
605 - FeedWordPress goes about updating feeds.
606 -
607 - If you use the command-line PHP scripting method to run scheduled
608 - updates, then not much should change for you, except for fewer
609 - mysterious errors. If you have done updates by sending periodic HTTP
610 - requests to <http://your-blog.com/path/wp-content/update-feeds.php>,
611 - then the details have changed somewhat; mostly in such a way as to make
612 - things easier on you. See the README file or online documentation on
613 - Staying Current for the details.
614 -
615 -* FEATURE: FeedWordPress now features a more sophisticated system for
616 - timed updates. Instead of polling *every* subscribed feed for updates
617 - *each* time `update-feeds.php` is run, FeedWordPress now keeps track of
618 - the last time it polled each feed, and only polls them again after a
619 - certain period of time has passed. The amount of time is normally set
620 - randomly for each feed, in a period between 30 minutes and 2 hours (so
621 - as to stagger updates over time rather than polling all of the feeds at once. However, the length of time between updates can also be set
622 - directly by the feed, which brings us to ...
623 -
624 -* FEATURE: FeedWordPress now respects the settings in the `ttl` and
625 - Syndication Module RSS elements. Feeds with these elements set will not
626 - be polled any more frequently than they indicate with these feeds unless
627 - the user manually forces FeedWordPress to poll the feed (see Links -->
628 - Syndicated --> Edit settings).
629 -
630 -Changes from 0.95 to 0.96
631 -
632 -* FEATURE: support has been added for enclosures in RSS 2.0 and Atom
633 - 0.6+ newsfeeds. WordPress already supports adding enclosures to an
634 - item; FeedWordPress merely gets the information on the enclosure
635 - from the feed it is syndicating and plugs that information directly
636 - into the WordPress database so that (among other things) that post
637 - will have its enclosure listed in your blog's RSS 2 newsfeed.
638 -
639 - Note that enclosure support requires using the optional MagpieRSS
640 - upgrade (i.e., replacing your `wp-includes/rss-functions.php` with
641 - `OPTIONAL/wp-includes/rss-functions.php` from the FWP archive)
642 -
643 -* FEATURE: for completeness's sake, there is now a feed setting,
644 - `hardcode url`, that allows you to set the URI for the front page
645 - of a contributor's website manually (that is, prevent it from being
646 - automatically updated from the feed channel link on each update). To
647 - set the URI manually, put a line like this in the Link Notes section
648 - of a feed:
649 -
650 - hardcode url: yes
651 -
652 - You can also instruct FeedWordPress to use hardcoded URIs by default
653 - on all feeds using Options --> Syndication
654 -
655 -* FEATURE: by default, when FeedWordPress finds new syndicated posts,
656 - it (1) publishes them immediately, (2) turns comments off, and (3)
657 - turns trackback / pingback pings off. You can now alter all three
658 - default behaviors (e.g., to allow pings on syndicated posts, or to
659 - send newly-syndicated posts to the draft pile for moderation) using
660 - Options --> Syndication
661 -
662 -
663 4 Changes from 0.91 to 0.95
664 5 -------------------------
665 6
666 -* BUG FIX: Fixed an obscure bug in the handling of categories:
667 - categories with trailing whitespace could cause categories with
668 - duplicate names to be created. This no longer happens. While I was
669 - at it I tightened up the operation of
670 - FeedWordPress::lookup_categories() a bit in general.
7 +* BUG FIX: Fixed an obscure bug in the handling of categories: categories
8 + with trailing whitespace could cause categories with duplicate names to
9 + be created. This no longer happens. While I was at it I tightened up the
10 + operation of FeedWordPress::lookup_categories() a bit in general.
671 11
672 12 * FEATURE DEPRECATED: the feed setting `hardcode categories` is now
673 - deprecated in favor of `unknown categories` (see below), which
674 - allows you to strip off any syndication categories not already in
675 - your database using `unknown categories: default` or `unknown
676 - categories: filter`. If you have `hardcode categories: yes` set on a
677 - feed, this will be treated as `unknown categories: default` (i.e.,
678 - no new categories will be added, but if a post doesn't match any of
679 - the categories it will be added in the default category--usually
680 - "Uncategorized" or "General").
13 + deprecated in favor of `unknown categories` (see below), which allows
14 + you to strip off any syndication categories not already in your database
15 + using `unknown categories: default` or `unknown categories: filter`. If
16 + you have `hardcode categories: yes` set on a feed, this will be treated
17 + as `unknown categories: default` (i.e., no new categories will be added,
18 + but if a post doesn't match any of the categories it will be added in
19 + the default category--usually "Uncategorized" or "General").
681 20
682 21 * FEATURE: You can now set global defaults as to whether or not
683 - FeedWordPress will update the Link Name and Link Description
684 - settings for feeds automatically from the feed title and feed
685 - tagline. (By default, it does, as it has in past versions.) Whether
686 - this behavior is turned on or off, you can still override the
687 - default behavior using feed settings of `hardcode name: yes`,
688 - `hardcode name: no`, `hardcode description: yes`, or `hardcode
689 - description: no`.
22 + FeedWordPress will update the Link Name and Link Description settings
23 + for feeds automatically from the feed title and feed tagline. (By
24 + default, it does, as it has in past versions.) Whether this behavior is
25 + turned on or off, you can still override the default behavior using
26 + feed settings of `hardcode name: yes`, `hardcode name: no`,
27 + `hardcode description: yes`, or `hardcode description: no`.
690 28
691 -* FEATURE: Users can now provide one or several "aliases" for an
692 - author, just as they can for a category. For example, to make
693 - FeedWordPress treat posts by "Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger" and "Pope
694 - Benedict XVI" as by the same author, edit the user profile for Pope
695 - Benedict XVI and add a line like this to the "User profile" field:
29 +* FEATURE: Users can now provide one or several "aliases" for an author,
30 + just as they can for a category. For example, to make FeedWordPress
31 + treat posts by "Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger" and "Pope Benedict XVI" as
32 + by the same author, edit the user profile for Pope Benedict XVI and add
33 + a line like this to the "User profile" field:
696 34
697 35 a.k.a.: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
698 36
699 - You can add several aliases, each on a line by itself. You can also
700 - add any other text you like to the Profile without interfering with
701 - the aliases.
37 + You can add several aliases, each on a line by itself. You can also add
38 + any other text you like to the Profile without interfering with the
39 + aliases.
702 40
703 -* FEATURE: Users can now choose how to handle syndicated posts that
704 - are in unfamiliar categories or by unfamiliar authors (i.e.,
705 - categories or authors whose names are not yet in the WordPress
706 - database). By default, FeedWordPress will (as before) create a new
707 - category (or new author) and use it for the current post and any
708 - future posts. This behavior can be changed, either for all feeds or
709 - for one or another particular feed.
41 +* FEATURE: Users can now choose how to handle syndicated posts that are
42 + in unfamiliar categories or by unfamiliar authors (i.e., categories or
43 + authors whose names are not yet in the WordPress database). By default,
44 + FeedWordPress will (as before) create a new category (or new author) and
45 + use it for the current post and any future posts. This behavior can be
46 + changed, either for all feeds or for one or another particular feed.
710 47
711 48 There are now three different options for an unfamiliar author: (1)
712 49 FeedWordPress can create a new author account and attribute the
713 - syndicated post to the new account; (2) FeedWordPress can attribute
714 - the post to an author if the author's name is familiar, and to a
715 - default author (currently, this means the Site Administrator
716 - account) if it is not; (3) FeedWordPress can drop posts by
717 - unfamiliar authors and syndicate only posts by authors who are
718 - already in the database.
50 + syndicated post to the new account; (2) FeedWordPress can attribute the
51 + post to an author if the author's name is familiar, and to a default
52 + author (currently, this means the Site Administrator account) if it is
53 + not; (3) FeedWordPress can drop posts by unfamiliar authors and
54 + syndicate only posts by authors who are already in the database.
719 55
720 - There are, similarly, two different options for an unfamiliar
721 - category: (1) FeedWordPress can create new categories and place the
722 - syndicated post in them; (2) FeedWordPress can drop the unfamiliar
723 - categories and place syndicated posts only in categories that it is
724 - already familiar with. In addition, FeedWordPress 0.95 lets you
725 - choose whether posts that are in *no* familiar categories should be
726 - syndicated (and placed in the default category for the blog) or
727 - simply dropped.
56 + There are, similarly, two different options for an unfamiliar category:
57 + (1) FeedWordPress can create new categories and place the syndicated
58 + post in them; (2) FeedWordPress can drop the unfamiliar categories and
59 + place syndicated posts only in categories that it is already familiar
60 + with. In addition, FeedWordPress 0.95 lets you choose whether posts that
61 + are in *no* familiar categories should be syndicated (and placed in the
62 + default category for the blog) or simply dropped.
728 63
729 - You can set the default behavior for both authors and categories
730 - using the settings in Options --> Syndication. You can also set
731 - different behavior for specific feeds by adding the `unfamiliar
732 - author` and / or `unfamiliar categories` settings to the Link Notes
733 - section of a feed:
64 + You can set the default behavior for both authors and categories using
65 + the settings in Options --> Syndication. You can also set different
66 + behavior for specific feeds by adding the `unfamiliar author` and / or
67 + `unfamiliar categories` settings to the Link Notes section of a feed:
734 68
735 69 unfamiliar author: (create|default|filter)
736 70 unfamiliar categories: (create|default|filter)
737 71
738 - A setting of `unfamiliar author: create` will make FeedWordPress
739 - create new authors to match unfamiliar author names *for this feed
740 - alone*. A setting of `unfamiliar author: default` will make it
741 - assign posts from unfamiliar authors to the default user account. A
742 - setting of `unfamiliar author: filter` will cause all posts (from
743 - this feed alone) to be dropped unless they are by an author already
744 - listed in the database. Similiarly, `unfamiliar categories: create`
745 - will make FeedWordPress create new categories to match unfamiliar
746 - category names *for this feed alone*; `unfamiliar categories:
747 - default` will cause it to drop any unfamiliar category names; and
72 + A setting of `unfamiliar author: create` will make FeedWordPress create
73 + new authors to match unfamiliar author names *for this feed alone*. A
74 + setting of `unfamiliar author: default` will make it assign posts from
75 + unfamiliar authors to the default user account. A setting of
76 + `unfamiliar author: filter` will cause all posts (from this feed alone)
77 + to be dropped unless they are by an author already listed in the
78 + database. Similiarly, `unfamiliar categories: create` will make
79 + FeedWordPress create new categories to match unfamiliar category names
80 + *for this feed alone*; `unfamiliar categories: default` will cause it
81 + to drop any unfamiliar category names; and
748 82 `unfamiliar categories: filter` will cause it to *both* drop any
749 - unfamiliar category names *and* to only syndicate posts that are
750 - placed in one or more familiar categories.
83 + unfamiliar category names *and* to only syndicate posts that are placed
84 + in one or more familiar categories.
751 85
752 - These two new features allow users to do some coarse-grained
753 - filtering without having to write a PHP filter. Specifically, they
754 - offer an easy way for you to filter feeds by category or by author.
755 - Suppose, for example, that you only wanted to syndicate posts that
756 - your contributors place in the "Llamas" category. You could do so by
757 - setting up your installation of WordPress so that the only category
758 - in the database is "Llamas," and then use Options --> Syndication to
759 - set "Unfamiliar categories" to "don't create new categories and
760 - don't syndicate posts unless they match at least one familiar
761 - category". Now, when you update, only posts in the "Llamas" category
762 - will be syndicated by FeedWordPress.
86 + These two new features allow users to do some coarse-grained filtering
87 + without having to write a PHP filter. Specifically, they offer an easy
88 + way for you to filter feeds by category or by author. Suppose, for
89 + example, that you only wanted to syndicate posts that your contributors
90 + place in the "Llamas" category. You could do so by setting up your
91 + installation of WordPress so that the only category in the database is
92 + "Llamas," and then use Options --> Syndication to set "Unfamiliar
93 + categories" to "don't create new categories and don't syndicate posts
94 + unless they match at least one familiar category". Now, when you update,
95 + only posts in the "Llamas" category will be syndicated by FeedWordPress.
763 96
764 97 Similarly, if you wanted to filter one particular feed so that only
765 98 posts by (for example) the author "Earl J. Llama" were syndicated to
766 - your site, you could do so by creating a user account for Earl J.
767 - Llama, then adding the following line to the settings for the feed
768 - in Link Notes:
99 + your site, you could do so by creating a user account for Earl J. Llama,
100 + then adding the following line to the settings for the feed in Link
101 + Notes:
769 102
770 103 unfamiliar author: filter
771 104
772 - This will cause any posts from this feed that are not authored by
773 - Earl J. Llama to be discarded, and only the posts by Earl J. Llama
774 - will be syndicated. (If the setting is used on one specific feed, it
775 - will not affect how posts from other feeds are syndicated.)
105 + This will cause any posts from this feed that are not authored by Earl
106 + J. Llama to be discarded, and only the posts by Earl J. Llama will be
107 + syndicated. (If the setting is used on one specific feed, it will not
108 + affect how posts from other feeds are syndicated.)
776 109