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| 1 | -Change Log | |
| 2 | -========== | |
| 1 | +FeedWordPress Change Log | |
| 2 | +======================== | |
| 3 | + | |
| 4 | +Changes from 0.98 to 0.981 | |
| 5 | +-------------------------- | |
| 6 | + | |
| 7 | +Version 0.981 is a narrowly targeted bugfix and compatibility release, whose | |
| 8 | +main purpose is to resolve a major outstanding problem: the incompatibility | |
| 9 | +between version 0.98 of WordPress and the recently released WordPress 2.1. | |
| 10 | + | |
| 11 | +* WORDPRESS 2.1 COMPATIBILITY: FeedWordPress is now compatible with | |
| 12 | + WordPress 2.1, as well as retaining its existing support for WordPress | |
| 13 | + 2.0 and 1.5. Incompatibilities that resulted in database warnings, fatal | |
| 14 | + errors, and which prevented FeedWordPress from syndicating new posts, | |
| 15 | + have been eliminated. | |
| 16 | + | |
| 17 | +* RSS-FUNCTIONS.PHP RENAMED TO RSS.PHP: if you use the upgraded MagpieRSS | |
| 18 | + replacement that's included with FeedWordPress, be sure to note that | |
| 19 | + there are now *two* files to upload from the `OPTIONAL/wp-includes` | |
| 20 | + subdirectory in order to carry out the upgrade: rss-functions.php and | |
| 21 | + rss.php. **It is necessary to upload both files**, due to a change in | |
| 22 | + the file naming scheme in WordPress 2.1, and it is necessary to do so | |
| 23 | + whether you are using WordPress 2.1 or not. If you only upload the | |
| 24 | + `rss-functions.php` file as in previous installations you will not have | |
| 25 | + a working copy of MagpieRSS; the rss.php file contains the actual code. | |
| 26 | + | |
| 27 | +* DATE BUG AFFECTING SOME PHP INSTALLATIONS RESOLVED: due to a subtle bug | |
| 28 | + in parse_w3cdtf(), some installations of PHP encountered problems with | |
| 29 | + FeedWordPress's attempt to date posts, which would cause some new posts | |
| 30 | + on Atom feeds to be dated as if they had apppeared in 1969 or 1970 | |
| 31 | + (thus, effectively, never appearing on front apge at all). This bug in | |
| 32 | + the date handling should now be fixed. | |
| 33 | + | |
| 34 | +* PHP <?=...?> SHORT FORM ELIMINATED: some installations of PHP do not | |
| 35 | + allow the <?=...?> short form for printing PHP values, which was used | |
| 36 | + extensively in the FeedWordPress interface code. Since this could cause | |
| 37 | + fatal errors for users with the wrong installation of PHP, the short | |
| 38 | + form has been replaced with full PHP echo statements, and is no longer | |
| 39 | + used in FeedWordPress. | |
| 40 | + | |
| 41 | +* BETTER USER INTERFACE INTEGRATION WITH WORDPRESS 2.x: Some minor changes | |
| 42 | + have been made to help the FeedWordPress interface pages blend in better | |
| 43 | + with the user interface when running under WordPress 2.x. | |
| 44 | + | |
| 45 | +* GLOBAL CATEGORIES BUG RESOLVED: a bug that prevented some users from | |
| 46 | + setting one or more categories to apply to syndicated posts from all | |
| 47 | + feeds (using the checkbox interface under Options --> Syndication) has | |
| 48 | + been resolved. | |
| 49 | + | |
| 50 | +Changes from 0.97 to 0.98 | |
| 51 | +-------------------------- | |
| 52 | + | |
| 53 | +* WORDPRESS 2.0 COMPATIBILITY: This is a narrowly-targeted release to | |
| 54 | + solve a major outstanding problem. FeedWordPress is now compatible with | |
| 55 | + both WordPress 1.5 and WordPress 2.0. Incompatibilities that caused | |
| 56 | + fatal SQL errors, and a more subtle bug with off-kilter counts of posts | |
| 57 | + under a given category, have been resolved. FeedWordPress tests for | |
| 58 | + database schema using the global $wp_db_version variable (if null, then | |
| 59 | + we presume that we're dealing with WordPress 1.5). | |
| 60 | + | |
| 61 | + NOTE: I have **not** fully tested FeedWordPress with WordPress 2.0. | |
| 62 | + Further testing may reveal more bugs. However, you should now be able | |
| 63 | + to get at least basic FeedWordPress functionality up and running. | |
| 64 | + | |
| 65 | +* AUTHOR MATCHING: FeedWordPress tests several fields to see if it can | |
| 66 | + identify the author of the post as a user already in the WordPress user | |
| 67 | + database. In previous versions, it tested the user login, the nickname, | |
| 68 | + and tested for "aliases" listed in the Profile (see documentation). FWP | |
| 69 | + now also matches authors on the basis of e-mail address (*if* an e-mail | |
| 70 | + address is present). This is particularly helpful for formats such as | |
| 71 | + RSS 2.0, in which authors are primarily identified by e-mail addresses. | |
| 72 | + | |
| 73 | +Changes from 0.96 to 0.97 | |
| 74 | +------------------------- | |
| 75 | + | |
| 76 | +* INSTALLATION PROCEDURE: Some of the changes between 0.96 and 0.97 | |
| 77 | + require upgrades to the meta-data stored by FeedWordPress to work | |
| 78 | + properly. Thus, if you are upgrading from 0.96 or earlier to 0.97, most | |
| 79 | + FeedWordPress operations (including updates and template functions) | |
| 80 | + WILL BE DISABLED until you run the upgrade procedure. Fortunately, | |
| 81 | + running the upgrade procedure is easy: just go to either Options --> | |
| 82 | + Syndication or Links --> Syndicated in the WordPress Dashboard and press | |
| 83 | + the button. | |
| 84 | + | |
| 85 | +* FEED FORMAT SUPPORT: Support has been added for the Atom 1.0 IETF | |
| 86 | + standard. Several other elements are also newly supported | |
| 87 | + (dcterms:created, dcterms:issued, dcterms:modified, dc:identifier, | |
| 88 | + proper support for the RSS 2.0 guid element, the RSS 2.0 author element, | |
| 89 | + the use of Atom author or Dublin Core dc:creator constructs at the feed | |
| 90 | + level to identify the author of individual items, etc.) | |
| 91 | + | |
| 92 | + N.B.: full support of several Atom 1.0 features, such as categories | |
| 93 | + and enclosures, requires you to install the optional rss-functions.php | |
| 94 | + upgrade in your wp-includes directory. | |
| 95 | + | |
| 96 | +* BUG FIX: Running `update-feeds.php` from command line or crontab | |
| 97 | + returned "I don't syndicate..." errors. It turns out that WordPress | |
| 98 | + sometimes tramples on the internal PHP superglobals that I depended on | |
| 99 | + to determine whether or not the script was being invoked from the | |
| 100 | + command line. This has been fixed (the variables are now checked | |
| 101 | + *before* WordPress can trample them). Note that `update-feeds.php` has | |
| 102 | + been thoroughly overhauled anyway; see below for details. | |
| 103 | + | |
| 104 | +* BUG FIX: Duplicate categories or author names. Fixed two bugs that could | |
| 105 | + create duplicate author and/or category names when the name contained | |
| 106 | + either (a) certain international characters (causing a mismatch between | |
| 107 | + MySQL and PHP's handling of lowercasing text), or (b) characters that | |
| 108 | + have a special meaning in regular expressions (causing MySQL errors when | |
| 109 | + looking for the author or category due to regexp syntax errors). These | |
| 110 | + should now be fixed thanks to careful escaping of names that go into | |
| 111 | + regular expressions and careful matching of lowercasing functions | |
| 112 | + (comparing results from PHP only to other results from PHP, and results | |
| 113 | + from MySQL only to other results from MySQL). | |
| 114 | + | |
| 115 | +* BUG FIX: Items dated Decembr 31, 1969 should appear less often. The | |
| 116 | + function for parsing W3C date-time format dates that ships with | |
| 117 | + MagpieRSS can only correctly parse fully-specified dates with a | |
| 118 | + fully-specified time, but valid W3C date-time format dates may omit the | |
| 119 | + time, the day of the month, or even the month. Some feeds in the wild | |
| 120 | + date their items with coarse-grained dates, so the optional | |
| 121 | + `rss-functions.php` upgrade now includes a more flexible parse_w3cdtf() | |
| 122 | + function that will work with both coarse-grained and fully-specified | |
| 123 | + dates. (If parts of the date or the time are omitted, they are filled in | |
| 124 | + with values based on the current time, so '2005-09-10' will be dated to | |
| 125 | + the current time on that day; '2004' will be dated to this day and time | |
| 126 | + one year ago. | |
| 127 | + | |
| 128 | + N.B.: This fix is only available in the optional `rss-functions.php` | |
| 129 | + upgrade. | |
| 130 | + | |
| 131 | +* BUG FIX: Evil use of HTTP GET has been undone. The WordPress interface | |
| 132 | + is riddled with inappropriate (non-idempotent) uses of HTTP GET queries | |
| 133 | + (ordinary links that make the server do something with significant | |
| 134 | + side-effects, such as deleting a post or a link from the database). | |
| 135 | + FeedWordPress did some of this too, especially in places where it aped | |
| 136 | + the WordPress interface (e.g. the "Delete" links in Links --> | |
| 137 | + Syndicated). That's bad business, though. I've changed the interface so | |
| 138 | + that all the examples of improper side-effects that I can find now | |
| 139 | + require an HTTP POST to take effect. I think I got pretty much | |
| 140 | + everything; if there's anything that I missed, let me know. | |
| 141 | + | |
| 142 | + Further reading: [Sam Ruby 2005-05-06: This Stuff Matters] (http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/2005/05/06/This-Stuff-Matters) | |
| 143 | + | |
| 144 | +* BUG FIX: Categories applied by `cats` setting should no longer prevent | |
| 145 | + category-based filtering from working. In FeedWordPress, you can (1) | |
| 146 | + apply certain categories to all syndicated posts, or all posts from | |
| 147 | + a particular feed; and (2) filter out all posts that don't match one | |
| 148 | + of the categories that are already in the WordPress database (allowing | |
| 149 | + for simple category-based filtering; just load up WordPress with the | |
| 150 | + categories you want to accept, and then tell FeedWordPress not to create | |
| 151 | + new ones). However, the way that (1) and (2) were implemented meant that | |
| 152 | + you couldn't effectively use them together; once you applied a known | |
| 153 | + category to all syndicated posts from a particular feed, it meant that | |
| 154 | + they'd have at least one familiar category (the category or categories | |
| 155 | + you were applying), and that would get all posts past the filter no | |
| 156 | + matter what categories they were originally from. | |
| 157 | + | |
| 158 | + Well, no longer. You can still apply categories to all syndicated posts | |
| 159 | + (using either Syndication --> Options, or the feed-level settings under | |
| 160 | + Links --> Syndicated). But these categories are not applied to the post | |
| 161 | + until *after* it has already passed by the "familiar categories" filter. | |
| 162 | + So now, if you want, you can do category filtering and *then* apply as | |
| 163 | + many categories as you please to all and only posts that pass the filter. | |
| 164 | + | |
| 165 | +* BUG FIX: Other minor typos and HTML gaffes were fixed along the way. | |
| 166 | + | |
| 167 | +* PERFORMANCE: get_feed_meta() no longer hits the database for information | |
| 168 | + on every call; it now caches link data in memory, so FeedWordPress only | |
| 169 | + goes to the database once for each syndicated link. This may | |
| 170 | + substantially improve performance if your database server resources | |
| 171 | + are tight and your templates make a lot of use of custom settings from | |
| 172 | + get_feed_meta(). | |
| 173 | + | |
| 174 | +* API CHANGE: Link ID numbers, rather than RSS URIs, are now used to | |
| 175 | + identify the feed from which a post is syndicated when you use template | |
| 176 | + functions such as get_feed_meta(). The practical upshot of this is you | |
| 177 | + can switch feeds, or change the feed address for a particular syndicated | |
| 178 | + site, without breaking your templates for all the posts that were | |
| 179 | + syndicated from the earlier URI. | |
| 180 | + | |
| 181 | +* API CHANGE: if you have plugins or templates that make use of the | |
| 182 | + get_feed_meta() function or the $fwp_feedmeta global, note that the | |
| 183 | + data formerly located under the `uri` and `name` fields is now located | |
| 184 | + under the `link/uri` field and the `link/name` field, respectively. Note | |
| 185 | + also that you can access the link ID number for any given feed under the | |
| 186 | + global $fwp_feedmeta['link/id'] (in plugins) or | |
| 187 | + get_feed_meta('link/id') (in a template in post contexts). | |
| 188 | + | |
| 189 | +* FEATURE: the settings for individual feeds can now be edited using a | |
| 190 | + humane interface (where formerly you had to tweak key-value pairs in the | |
| 191 | + Link Notes section). To edit settings for a feed, pick the feed that you | |
| 192 | + want under Links --> Syndicated and click the Edit link. | |
| 193 | + | |
| 194 | +* FEATURE: The "Unsubscribe" button (formerly "Delete") in Links --> | |
| 195 | + Syndicated now offers three options for unsubscribing from a feed: (1) | |
| 196 | + turning off the subscription without deleting the feed data or affecting | |
| 197 | + posts that were syndicated from the feed (this works by setting the Link | |
| 198 | + for the feed as "invisible"); (2) deleting the feed data and all of the | |
| 199 | + posts that were syndicated from the feed; or (3) deleting the feed data | |
| 200 | + and *keeping* the posts that were syndicated from the feed | |
| 201 | + setting the Link to "Invisible" (meaning that it will not be displayed | |
| 202 | + in lists of the site links on the front page, and it won't be checked | |
| 203 | + for updates; (2) deleting the Link and all of the posts that were | |
| 204 | + syndicated from its feed; or (3) deleting the feed data but keeping the | |
| 205 | + posts that were syndicated (which will henceforward be treated as if | |
| 206 | + they were local rather than syndicated posts). (Note that (1) is usually | |
| 207 | + the best option for aggregator sites, unless you want to clean up the | |
| 208 | + results of an error or a test.) | |
| 209 | + | |
| 210 | +* FEATURE / BUG FIX: If you have been receiving mysterious "I don't | |
| 211 | + syndicate...", or "(local) HTTP status code was not 200", or "(local) | |
| 212 | + transport error - could not open socket", or "parse error - not well | |
| 213 | + formed" errors, then this update may solve your problems, and if it does | |
| 214 | + *not* solve them, it will at least make the reasons for the problems | |
| 215 | + easier to understand. That's because I've overhauled the way that | |
| 216 | + FeedWordPress goes about updating feeds. | |
| 217 | + | |
| 218 | + If you use the command-line PHP scripting method to run scheduled | |
| 219 | + updates, then not much should change for you, except for fewer | |
| 220 | + mysterious errors. If you have done updates by sending periodic HTTP | |
| 221 | + requests to <http://your-blog.com/path/wp-content/update-feeds.php>, | |
| 222 | + then the details have changed somewhat; mostly in such a way as to make | |
| 223 | + things easier on you. See the README file or online documentation on | |
| 224 | + Staying Current for the details. | |
| 225 | + | |
| 226 | +* FEATURE: FeedWordPress now features a more sophisticated system for | |
| 227 | + timed updates. Instead of polling *every* subscribed feed for updates | |
| 228 | + *each* time `update-feeds.php` is run, FeedWordPress now keeps track of | |
| 229 | + the last time it polled each feed, and only polls them again after a | |
| 230 | + certain period of time has passed. The amount of time is normally set | |
| 231 | + randomly for each feed, in a period between 30 minutes and 2 hours (so | |
| 232 | + 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 | |
| 233 | + directly by the feed, which brings us to ... | |
| 234 | + | |
| 235 | +* FEATURE: FeedWordPress now respects the settings in the `ttl` and | |
| 236 | + Syndication Module RSS elements. Feeds with these elements set will not | |
| 237 | + be polled any more frequently than they indicate with these feeds unless | |
| 238 | + the user manually forces FeedWordPress to poll the feed (see Links --> | |
| 239 | + Syndicated --> Edit settings). | |
| 3 | 240 | |
| 4 | 241 | Changes from 0.95 to 0.96 |
| 5 | 242 | ------------------------- |
| 6 | 243 | |
