| @@ -1,7 +1,682 @@ | ||
| 1 | -Change Log | |
| 2 | -========== | |
| 1 | +FeedWordPress Change Log | |
| 2 | +======================== | |
| 3 | 3 | |
| 4 | +Changes from 2008.1105 to 2008.1214 | |
| 5 | +----------------------------------- | |
| 6 | + | |
| 7 | +* WORDPRESS 2.7 COMPATIBILITY: FeedWordPress has been tested for | |
| 8 | + compatibility with the newly released WordPress 2.7. WordPress 2.7 has | |
| 9 | + deprecated the Snoopy library for HTTP requests, which caused a fatal | |
| 10 | + error for users who had not installed the MagpieRSS upgrade (or whose | |
| 11 | + installation of the MagpieRSS upgrade was overwritten by a recent update | |
| 12 | + of WordPress). FeedWordPress now handles things gracefully when Snoopy | |
| 13 | + is not immediately available. | |
| 14 | + | |
| 15 | +* INTERFACE SPIFFED UP: Interface elements have been updated so that | |
| 16 | + FeedWordPress's management interface fits in more naturally with the | |
| 17 | + WordPress 2.7 interface (including a new logo and a number of small | |
| 18 | + interface tweaks). | |
| 19 | + | |
| 20 | +* BUG WITH TAGS FOR SYNDICATED ARTICLES FIXED: Several users encountered a | |
| 21 | + bug with the option to add tags to all syndicated posts under | |
| 22 | + Syndication --> Settings -- if you told FeedWordPress to add more than | |
| 23 | + one tag to all syndicated posts, instead of doing so correctly, it would | |
| 24 | + add a *single* tag instead, whose name was composed of the names of all | |
| 25 | + the tags you asked it to add. This bug was the result of nothing more | |
| 26 | + dignified than a typographical error on my part. It has now been fixed. | |
| 27 | + | |
| 28 | +* MORE INFORMATION AVAILABLE WHEN FEEDWORDPRESS CAN'T FIND A FEED: When | |
| 29 | + you enter a URL for a new syndication source, FeedWordPress uses a | |
| 30 | + simple feed-finding algorithm (originally based on Mark Pilgrim's | |
| 31 | + Universal Feed Finder) to try to determine whether the URL is the URL | |
| 32 | + for a feed, or, if the URL points to an ordinary website rather than to | |
| 33 | + a feed, whether there is a feed for that website. All well and good, but | |
| 34 | + if FeedWordPress failed to find a feed, for whatever reason, it would | |
| 35 | + typically return nothing more than a nasty little note to the effect of | |
| 36 | + "no feed found," without any explanation of what went wrong. | |
| 37 | + FeedWordPress now keeps track of error conditions from the HTTP | |
| 38 | + requests that it uses in the course of looking for the feed, and so may | |
| 39 | + be able to give you a bit more information about the nature of the | |
| 40 | + problem if something goes wrong. | |
| 41 | + | |
| 42 | + | |
| 43 | +Changes from 2008.1101 to 2008.1105 | |
| 44 | +----------------------------------- | |
| 45 | + | |
| 46 | +* INTERFACE RESTRUCTURING AND SYNDICATION --> AUTHORS PAGE: As a first | |
| 47 | + step towards modularizing and better organizing the user interface, a | |
| 48 | + new "Authors" subpage has been created under the Syndication menu, which | |
| 49 | + controls settings for syndicated authors, both at the global default | |
| 50 | + level and at level of individual syndicated feeds. | |
| 51 | + | |
| 52 | +* BUG RELATED TO THE ATTRIBUTION OF POSTS TO THE WRONG AUTHOR FIXED: Some | |
| 53 | + users encountered an issue in which posts by different authors on | |
| 54 | + different blogs -- especially blogs generated by Blogger -- were | |
| 55 | + mistakenly attributed to a single author. The problem was caused by the | |
| 56 | + way in which FeedWordPress matches syndicated authors to user accounts | |
| 57 | + in the WordPress database: normally, if two feeds each list an author | |
| 58 | + with the same e-mail address, they are counted as being the same person. | |
| 59 | + Normally this works well, but it creates an issue in cases where | |
| 60 | + blogging software assigns a single anonymous e-mail address to users who | |
| 61 | + do not want their real e-mail address published. This is, for example, | |
| 62 | + what Blogger does (by giving all users a default e-mail address of | |
| 63 | + <noreply@blogger.com> if they don't want their own e-mail address | |
| 64 | + listed). FeedWordPress now allows the user to correct for this problem | |
| 65 | + with a couple of new settings under **Syndication --> Authors**, which | |
| 66 | + allow users to turn off e-mail based author matching for particular | |
| 67 | + addresses, or, if desired, to turn it off entirely. By default, e-mail | |
| 68 | + based author matching is still turned on, but disabled for a list of | |
| 69 | + known generic e-mail addresses. Right now, the "list" consists entirely | |
| 70 | + of <noreply@blogger.com>; if you know other addresses that should be | |
| 71 | + added, please [contact me](http://radgeek.com/contact) to let me know. | |
| 72 | + | |
| 73 | + Please note that if you have already encountered this issue on your | |
| 74 | + blog, upgrading FeedWordPress will prevent it from re-occurring in the | |
| 75 | + future, but you still need to do two other things to fix the existing | |
| 76 | + problem on your blog. | |
| 77 | + | |
| 78 | + First, for each feed where posts have been mis-attributed, you need to | |
| 79 | + change the existing author mapping rules to re-map a a syndicated | |
| 80 | + author's name to the proper target account. Go to **Syndication --> | |
| 81 | + Authors**, select the feed you want to change from the drop-down list, | |
| 82 | + and then change the settings under the "Syndicated Authors" section. | |
| 83 | + (You will probably need to select "will be assigned to a new user..." to | |
| 84 | + create a new user account with the appropriate name.) | |
| 85 | + | |
| 86 | + Second, for each feed where posts have been mis-attributed, you need to | |
| 87 | + re-assign already-syndicated posts that were mis-attributed to the | |
| 88 | + correct author. You can do that from **Syndication --> Authors** by | |
| 89 | + using the author re-assignment feature, described below. | |
| 90 | + | |
| 91 | +* AUTHOR RE-ASSIGNMENT FOR A PARTICULAR FEED: The author settings page | |
| 92 | + for each syndicated feed, under **Syndication --> Authors**, now | |
| 93 | + includes an section titled "Fixing mis-matched authors," which provides | |
| 94 | + an interface for re-assigning or deleting all posts attributed to a | |
| 95 | + particular author on a particular feed. | |
| 96 | + | |
| 97 | +* SUPPORT FOR `<atom:source>` ELEMENT IN SYNDICATED FEEDS: Some feeds | |
| 98 | + (for example, those produced by FeedWordPress) aggregate content from | |
| 99 | + several different sources, and include information about the original | |
| 100 | + source of the post in an `<atom:source>` element. A new setting under | |
| 101 | + **Syndication --> Options** allows you to control what FeedWordPress | |
| 102 | + will report as the source of posts syndicated from aggregator feeds in | |
| 103 | + your templates and feeds: you can have FeedWordPress report that the | |
| 104 | + source of a post is the aggregator feed itself, or you can have it | |
| 105 | + report that the source of a post is the original source that the | |
| 106 | + aggregator originally syndicated the post from. | |
| 107 | + | |
| 108 | + By default, FeedWordPress will report the aggregator, not the original | |
| 109 | + source, as the source of a syndicated item. | |
| 110 | + | |
| 111 | +* LOAD BALANCING AND TIME LIMITING FEATURES FOR UPDATES: Some users have | |
| 112 | + encountered issues due to running up against PHP execution time limits | |
| 113 | + during the process of updating large syndicated feeds, or a very large | |
| 114 | + set of syndicated feeds. FeedWordPress now has a feature that allows you | |
| 115 | + to limit the total amount of time spent updating a feed, through the | |
| 116 | + "Time limit on updates" setting under **Syndication --> Options**. By | |
| 117 | + turning on this setting and adjusting the time limit to a low enough | |
| 118 | + figure to avoid your PHP installation's time-out setting. (PHP execution | |
| 119 | + time limits are usually in the vicinity of 30 seconds, so an update | |
| 120 | + time limit of 25 seconds or so should provide plenty of time for updates | |
| 121 | + while allowing a cushion of time for other, non-update-related functions | |
| 122 | + to do their work.) | |
| 123 | + | |
| 124 | + If feed updates are interrupted by the time limit, FeedWordPress uses | |
| 125 | + some simple load balancing features to make sure that updates to other | |
| 126 | + feeds will not be blocked by the time-hogging feed, and will also make | |
| 127 | + sure that when the interrupted update is resumed, FeedWordPress will | |
| 128 | + skip ahead to resume processing items at the point at which it was | |
| 129 | + interrupted last time, so that posts further down in the feed will | |
| 130 | + eventually get processed, and not get blocked by the amount of time it | |
| 131 | + takes to process the items higher up in the feed. | |
| 132 | + | |
| 133 | +* `guid` INDEX CREATION BUTTON: FeedWordPress frequently issues queries on | |
| 134 | + the `guid` column of the WordPress posts database (since it uses post | |
| 135 | + guid URIs to keep track of which posts it has syndicated). In very large | |
| 136 | + FeedWordPress installations, you can often significantly improve | |
| 137 | + performance by creating a database index on the `guid` column, but | |
| 138 | + normally you would need to poke around with MySQL or a tool like | |
| 139 | + phpMyAdmin to do this. FeedWordPress can now save you the trouble: to | |
| 140 | + create an index on the `guid` column, just go to | |
| 141 | + **Syndication --> Options**, and mash the button at the bottom of the | |
| 142 | + "Back End" section. | |
| 143 | + | |
| 144 | +Changes from 2008.1030 to 2008.1101 | |
| 145 | +----------------------------------- | |
| 146 | + | |
| 147 | +* INTERFACE BUG THAT PREVENTED ADDING NEW SITES FIXED: The UI reforms in | |
| 148 | + FWP 2008.1030 unintentionally introduced a bug that prevents clean | |
| 149 | + installations of FeedWordPress from providing an input box for adding | |
| 150 | + new feeds to the list of syndicated feeds. This bug has been fixed. | |
| 151 | + | |
| 152 | +Changes from 0.993 to 2008.1030 | |
| 153 | +------------------------------- | |
| 154 | + | |
| 155 | +* WORDPRESS 2.6 COMPATIBILITY: FeedWordPress should now be compatible with | |
| 156 | + WordPress 2.6, and should work more or less seamlessly with the new post | |
| 157 | + revision system. A bug which caused multiple new revisions to be created | |
| 158 | + for posts on certain feeds, regardless of whether or not the item had | |
| 159 | + been updated, has been fixed. | |
| 160 | + | |
| 161 | +* INTERFACE IMPROVEMENTS: The user interface has been substantially | |
| 162 | + restyled to fit in better with the visual style of WordPress 2.5 and | |
| 163 | + 2.6. | |
| 164 | + | |
| 165 | +* YOUTUBE BUG FIXED: POSTS SYNDICATED THROUGH AN AUTOMATIC UPDATE ARE NO | |
| 166 | + LONGER STRIPPED OF `<OBJECT>` TAGS AND CERTAIN OTHER HTML ELEMENTS: Due | |
| 167 | + to the way that some versions of WordPress process posts that are | |
| 168 | + inserted into the database when no user is logged in, many users | |
| 169 | + experienced an issue where YouTube videos and other content using the | |
| 170 | + HTML `<object>` tag would be stripped out of posts that were syndicated | |
| 171 | + during an automatic update. (Posts that were syndicated through manual | |
| 172 | + updates from within the WordPress Dashboard were not affected, because | |
| 173 | + the issue does not arise when an update is executed under a logged-in | |
| 174 | + administrator's credentials.) This bug has now been fixed; YouTube | |
| 175 | + videos and other content using `<object>` tags should now appear | |
| 176 | + properly in syndicated posts, regardless of the way in which the post | |
| 177 | + was syndicated. | |
| 178 | + | |
| 179 | +* AJAX BUGS FIXED: Bugs which blocked the normal operation of WordPress | |
| 180 | + 2.5's AJAX interface elements when FeedWordPress was activated have been | |
| 181 | + fixed. | |
| 182 | + | |
| 183 | +* TAG SUPPORT: A couple of features have been introduced to take advantage | |
| 184 | + of the tagging features in WordPress 2.3.x, 2.5.x, and 2.6.x. Now, when | |
| 185 | + unfamiliar categories are encountered for posts on a feed, you can | |
| 186 | + choose for FeedWordPress (1) to drop the category; (2) to drop the | |
| 187 | + category and to filter out any post that does not match at least one | |
| 188 | + familiar category; (3) to create a new category with that name, or, | |
| 189 | + now, you can also have FeedWordPress (4) create a new *tag* with that | |
| 190 | + name. This option can be set site-wide under Syndication --> Options, | |
| 191 | + or it can be set on a feed-by-feed basis in a feed's Edit screen. | |
| 192 | + | |
| 193 | + In addition, you can now set particular tags to apply to all incoming | |
| 194 | + syndicated posts, under Syndication --> Options, or you can set tags | |
| 195 | + to apply to all incoming syndicated posts from a particular feed in that | |
| 196 | + feed's Edit screen. | |
| 197 | + | |
| 198 | +* FORMATTING FILTERS: There is a new option available under Syndication -> | |
| 199 | + Options which allows users to choose whether or not to expose syndicated | |
| 200 | + posts to being altered by formatting filters. By default, FeedWordPress | |
| 201 | + has always protected syndicated posts (which are already in display-ready | |
| 202 | + HTML when they are syndicated) from being reformatted by formatting | |
| 203 | + filters. However, this approach means that certain plugins which depend | |
| 204 | + on formatting filters (for example, to add "Share This" bars or relevant | |
| 205 | + links to the end of a post) are blocked from working on any syndicated | |
| 206 | + posts. If you want to use one of these plugins together with | |
| 207 | + FeedWordPress, you can now do so by changing the "Formatting Filters" | |
| 208 | + setting from "Protect" to "Expose." | |
| 209 | + | |
| 210 | +* `<atom:source>` ELEMENTS NOW INCLUDED IN ATOM FEED: Atom 1.0 provides | |
| 211 | + a standard method for aggregators to indicate information about the original source of | |
| 212 | + a syndicated post, using the `<atom:source>` element. FeedWordPress now | |
| 213 | + introduces standard `<atom:source>` elements including the title, homepage, and | |
| 214 | + feed URI of the source from which a syndicated post was syndicated. Cf. | |
| 215 | + <http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/syndication/atom-format-spec.php#element.source> | |
| 216 | + | |
| 217 | +* MODULARIZATION OF CODE: The code for different elements of FeedWordPress | |
| 218 | + has been broken out into several modules for easier inspection, | |
| 219 | + documentation, and maintenance of the code. | |
| 220 | + | |
| 221 | +* VERSIONING SCHEME CHANGED: FeedWordPress's feature set has proven stable | |
| 222 | + enough that it can now be removed from beta status; a good thing, since | |
| 223 | + I was very quickly running out of version numbers to use. New releases | |
| 224 | + of FeedWordPress will have version numbers based on the date of their | |
| 225 | + release. | |
| 226 | + | |
| 227 | +Changes from 0.992 to 0.993 | |
| 228 | +--------------------------- | |
| 229 | + | |
| 230 | +* WORDPRESS 2.5.1 COMPATIBILITY: FeedWordPress should now be compatible | |
| 231 | + with WordPress 2.5.1. | |
| 232 | + | |
| 233 | +* WORDPRESS 2.5 INTERFACE IMPROVEMENTS: FeedWordPress's Dashboard | |
| 234 | + interface has undergone several cosmetic changes that should help it | |
| 235 | + integrate better with the WordPress Dashboard interface in WordPress | |
| 236 | + version 2.5.x. | |
| 237 | + | |
| 238 | +* SYNDICATED POSTS CAN BE MARKED AS "PENDING REVIEW": WordPress 2.3 users | |
| 239 | + can now take advantage of WordPress's new "Pending Review" features for | |
| 240 | + incoming syndicated posts. Posts marked as "Pending Review" are not | |
| 241 | + published immediately, but are marked as ready to be reviewed by an | |
| 242 | + Administrator or Editor, who can then choose to publish the post or | |
| 243 | + hold it back. If you want to review syndicated posts from a particular | |
| 244 | + feed, or from all feeds, before they are posted, then use | |
| 245 | + Syndication --> Syndicated Sites --> Edit or Syndication --> Options to | |
| 246 | + change the settings for handling new posts. | |
| 247 | + | |
| 248 | +* AWARE OF NEW URI FOR del.icio.us FEEDS: Previous releases of | |
| 249 | + FeedWordPress already automatically split del.icio.us tags up | |
| 250 | + appropriately appropriately when generating categories. (del.icio.us | |
| 251 | + feeds smoosh all the tags into a single `<dc:subject>` element, | |
| 252 | + separated by spaces; FeedWordPress un-smooshes them into multiple | |
| 253 | + categories by separating them at whitespace.) Unfortunately, del.icio.us | |
| 254 | + recently broke the existing behavior by changing host names for their | |
| 255 | + feeds from del.icio.us to feeds.delicious.com. Version 0.993 accounts | |
| 256 | + for the new host name and un-breaks the tag splitting. | |
| 257 | + | |
| 258 | +Changes from 0.991 to 0.992 | |
| 259 | +--------------------------- | |
| 260 | +* AUTHOR RE-MAPPING: FeedWordPress now offers considerable control over | |
| 261 | + how author names on a feed are translated into usernames within the | |
| 262 | + WordPress database. When a post by an unrecognized author comes in, | |
| 263 | + Administrators can now specify any username as the default username to | |
| 264 | + assign the post to by setting the option in Syndication --> Options | |
| 265 | + (formerly FeedWordPress only allowed you to assign such posts to user | |
| 266 | + #1, the site administrator). Administrators can also create re-mapping | |
| 267 | + rules for particular feeds (under Syndication --> Syndicated Sites --> | |
| 268 | + Edit), so that (for example) any posts attributed to "Administrator" | |
| 269 | + on the feed <http://praxeology.net/blog/feed/> will be assigned to | |
| 270 | + a user named "Roderick T. Long," rather than a user named | |
| 271 | + "Administrator." These settings also allow administrators to filter out | |
| 272 | + posts by particular users, and to control what will happen when | |
| 273 | + FeedWordPress encounters a post by an unrecognized user on that | |
| 274 | + particular feed. | |
| 275 | + | |
| 276 | +* BUG RELATED TO URIS CONTAINING AMPERSAND CHARACTERS FIXED: A bug in | |
| 277 | + WordPress 2.x's handling of URIs in Blogroll links created problems for | |
| 278 | + updating any feeds whose URIs included an ampersand character, such as | |
| 279 | + Google News RSS feeds and other feeds that have multiple parameters | |
| 280 | + passed through HTTP GET. If you experienced this bug, the most likely | |
| 281 | + effect was that FeedWordPress simply would not import new posts from a | |
| 282 | + feed when instructred to do so, returning a "0 new posts" response. In | |
| 283 | + other cases, it might lead to unpredictable results from feed updates, | |
| 284 | + such as importing posts which were not contained in the feed being | |
| 285 | + syndicated, but which did appear elsewhere on the same website. This bug | |
| 286 | + has, hopefully, been resolved, by correcting for the bug in WordPress. | |
| 287 | + | |
| 288 | +Changes from 0.99 to 0.991 | |
| 289 | +-------------------------- | |
| 290 | +* WORDPRESS MU COMPATIBILITY: FeedWordPress should now be compatible with | |
| 291 | + recent releases of WordPress MU. Once FeedWordPress is made available | |
| 292 | + as a plugin, each individual blog can choose to activate FeedWordPress | |
| 293 | + and syndicate content from its own set of contributors. | |
| 294 | + | |
| 295 | +* DISPLAY OF MAGPIE WARNINGS: A number of MagpieRSS warnings or error | |
| 296 | + messages that were displayed when performing an automatic update are | |
| 297 | + no longer displayed, unless debugging parameters have been explicitly | |
| 298 | + enabled. | |
| 299 | + | |
| 300 | +* BUG RELATED TO INTERNATIONAL CHARACTERS IN AUTHOR NAMES FIXED: Due to a | |
| 301 | + subtle incompatability between the way that FeedWordPress generated new | |
| 302 | + user information, and the way that WordPress 2.0 and later added new | |
| 303 | + authors to the database, FeedWordPress might end up creating duplicate | |
| 304 | + authors, or throwing a critical error message, when it encountered | |
| 305 | + authors whose names included international characters. This | |
| 306 | + incompatability has now been fixed; hopefully, authors with | |
| 307 | + international characters in their names should now be handled properly. | |
| 308 | + | |
| 309 | +* `<media:content>` BUG IN MAGPIERSS FIXED: A bug in MagpieRSS's handling | |
| 310 | + of namespaced elements has been fixed. Among other things, this bug | |
| 311 | + caused items containing a Yahoo MediaRSS `<media:content>` element (such | |
| 312 | + as many of the feeds produced by wordpress.com) to be represented | |
| 313 | + incorrectly, with only a capital "A" where the content of the post | |
| 314 | + should have been. Feeds containing `<media:content>` elements should now | |
| 315 | + be syndicated correctly. | |
| 316 | + | |
| 317 | +* update_feedwordpress PARAMETER: You can now use an HTTP GET parameter | |
| 318 | + (`update_feedwordpress=1`) to request that FeedWordPress poll its feeds | |
| 319 | + for updates. When used together with a crontab or other means of | |
| 320 | + scheduling tasks, this means that you can keep your blog automatically | |
| 321 | + updated on a regular schedule, even if you do not choose to use the | |
| 322 | + cron-less automatic updates option. | |
| 323 | + | |
| 324 | +* Some minor interface-related bugs were also fixed. | |
| 325 | + | |
| 326 | + | |
| 327 | +Changes from 0.981 to 0.99 | |
| 328 | +-------------------------- | |
| 329 | +Version 0.99 adds several significant new features, fixes some bugs, and | |
| 330 | +provides compatability with WordPress 2.2.x and 2.3.x. | |
| 331 | + | |
| 332 | +* WORDPRESS 2.2 AND 2.3 COMPATIBILITY: FeedWordPress should now be | |
| 333 | + compatible with WordPress version 2.2 and the upcoming WordPress | |
| 334 | + version 2.3. In particular, it has been tested extensively against | |
| 335 | + WordPress 2.2.3 and WordPress 2.3 Release Candidate 1. | |
| 336 | + | |
| 337 | +* AUTOMATIC UPDATES WITHOUT CRON: FeedWordPress now allows you to | |
| 338 | + automatically schedule checks for new posts without using external task | |
| 339 | + scheduling tools such as cron. In order to enable automatic updates, go | |
| 340 | + to **Syndication --> Options** and set "Check for new posts" to | |
| 341 | + "automatically." For details, see "Automatic Feed Updates" in | |
| 342 | + README.text. | |
| 343 | + | |
| 344 | + An important side-effect of the changes to the update system is that if | |
| 345 | + you were previously using the cron job and the `update-feeds.php` script | |
| 346 | + to schedule updates, you need to change your cron set-up. The old | |
| 347 | + `update-feeds.php` script no longer exists. Instead, if you wish to use | |
| 348 | + a cron job to guarantee updates on a particular schedule, you should | |
| 349 | + have the cron job fetch the front page of your blog (for example, by | |
| 350 | + using `curl http://www.zyx.com/blog/ > /dev/null`) instead of activating | |
| 351 | + the `update-feeds.php` script. If automatic updates have been enabled, | |
| 352 | + fetching the front page will automatically trigger the update process. | |
| 353 | + | |
| 354 | +* INTERFACE REORGANIZATION: All FeedWordPress functions are now located | |
| 355 | + under a top-level "Syndication" menu in the WordPress Dashboard. To | |
| 356 | + manage the list of syndicated sites, manually check for new posts on | |
| 357 | + one or more feeds, or syndicate a new site, you should use the main page | |
| 358 | + under **Syndication**. To change global settings for FeedWordPress, | |
| 359 | + you should use **Syndication --> Options**. | |
| 360 | + | |
| 361 | +* FILE STRUCTURE REORGANIZATION: Due to a combination of changing styles | |
| 362 | + for FeedWordPress plugins and lingering bugs in the FeedWordPress admin | |
| 363 | + menu code, the code for FeedWordPress is now contained in two different | |
| 364 | + PHP files, which should be installed together in a subdirectory of your | |
| 365 | + plugins directory named `feedwordpress`. (See README.text for | |
| 366 | + installation and upgrade instructions relating to the change.) | |
| 367 | + | |
| 368 | +* MULTIPLE CATEGORIES SETTING: Some feeds use non-standard methods to | |
| 369 | + indicate multiple categories within a single category element. (The most | |
| 370 | + popular site to do this is del.icio.us, which separates tags with a | |
| 371 | + space.) FeedWordPress now allows you to set an optional setting, for any | |
| 372 | + feed which does this, indicating the character or characters used to | |
| 373 | + divide multiple categories, using a Perl-compatible regular expression. | |
| 374 | + (In the case of del.icio.us feeds, FeedWordPress will automatically use | |
| 375 | + \s for the pattern without your having to do any further configuration.) | |
| 376 | + To turn this setting on, simply use the "Edit" link for the feed that | |
| 377 | + you want to turn it on for. | |
| 378 | + | |
| 379 | +* REGULAR EXPRESSION BUG FIXED: Eliminated a minor bug in the regular | |
| 380 | + expressions for e-mail addresses (used in parsing RSS `author` | |
| 381 | + elements), which could produce unsightly error messages for some users | |
| 382 | + parsing RSS 2.0 feeds. | |
| 383 | + | |
| 384 | +* DATE / UPDATE BUG FIXED: A bug in date handling was eliminated that may | |
| 385 | + have caused problems if any of (1) WordPress, or (2) PHP, or (3) your | |
| 386 | + web server, or (4) your MySQL server, has been set to use a different | |
| 387 | + time zone from the one that any of the others is set to use. If | |
| 388 | + FeedWordPress has not been properly updating updated posts, or has been | |
| 389 | + updating posts when there shouldn't be any changes for the update, this | |
| 390 | + release may solve that problem. | |
| 391 | + | |
| 392 | +* GOOGLE READER BUGS FIXED: A couple of bugs that made it difficult for | |
| 393 | + FeedWordPress to interact with Google Reader public feeds have been | |
| 394 | + fixed. Firstly, if you encountered an error message reading "There was a | |
| 395 | + problem adding the newsfeed. [SQL: ]" when you tried to add the feed, | |
| 396 | + the cause of this error has been fixed. Secondly, if you succeeded in | |
| 397 | + getting FeedWordPress to check a Google Reader feed, only to find that | |
| 398 | + the title of posts had junk squashed on to the end of them, that bug | |
| 399 | + has been fixed too. To fix this bug, you must install the newest version | |
| 400 | + of the optional MagpieRSS upgrade. | |
| 401 | + | |
| 402 | +* FILTER PARAMETERS: Due to an old, old bug in WordPress 1.5.0 (which was | |
| 403 | + what was available back when I first wrote the filter interface), | |
| 404 | + FeedWordPress has traditionally only passed one parameter to | |
| 405 | + syndicated_item and syndicated_post filters functions -- an array | |
| 406 | + containing either the Magpie representation of a syndicated item from | |
| 407 | + the feed, or the database representation of a post about to be inserted | |
| 408 | + into the WordPress database. If you needed information about the feed | |
| 409 | + that the item came from, this was accessible only through a pair of | |
| 410 | + global variables, $fwp_channel and $fwp_feedmeta. | |
| 411 | + | |
| 412 | + Since it's been a pretty long time since WordPress 1.5.0 was in | |
| 413 | + widespread usage, I have gone ahead and added an optional second | |
| 414 | + parameter to the invocation of the syndicated_item and syndicated_post | |
| 415 | + filters. If you have written a filter for FeedWordPress that uses either | |
| 416 | + of these hooks, you can now register that filter to accept 2 parameters. | |
| 417 | + If you do so, the second parameter will be a SyndicatedPost object, | |
| 418 | + which, among other things, allows you to access information about the | |
| 419 | + feed from which an item is syndicated using the $post->feed and the | |
| 420 | + $post->feedmeta elements (where $post is the name of the second | |
| 421 | + parameter). | |
| 422 | + | |
| 423 | + NOTE THAT THE OLD GLOBAL VARIABLES ARE STILL AVAILABLE, for the time | |
| 424 | + being at least, so existing filters will not break with the upgrade. | |
| 425 | + They should be considered deprecated, however, and may be eliminated in | |
| 426 | + the future. | |
| 427 | + | |
| 428 | +* FILTER CHANGE / BUGFIX: the array that is passed as the first argument | |
| 429 | + syndicated_post filters no longer is no longer backslash-escaped for | |
| 430 | + MySQL when filters are called. This was originally a bug, or an | |
| 431 | + oversight; the contents of the array should only be escaped for the | |
| 432 | + database *after* they have gone through all filters. IF YOU HAVE WRITTEN | |
| 433 | + ANY syndicated_post FILTERS THAT PRESUME THE OLD BEHAVIOR OF PASSING IN | |
| 434 | + STRINGS THAT ARE ALREADY BACKSLASH-ESCAPED, UPDATE YOUR FILTERS | |
| 435 | + ACCORDINGLY. | |
| 436 | + | |
| 437 | +* OTHER MINOR BUGFIXES AND INTERNAL CHANGES: The internal architecture of | |
| 438 | + FeedWordPress has been significantly changed to make the code more | |
| 439 | + modular and clean; hopefully this should help reduce the number of | |
| 440 | + compatibility updates that are needed, and make them easier and quicker | |
| 441 | + when they are needed. | |
| 442 | + | |
| 443 | +Changes from 0.98 to 0.981 | |
| 444 | +-------------------------- | |
| 445 | +Version 0.981 is a narrowly targeted bugfix and compatibility release, whose | |
| 446 | +main purpose is to resolve a major outstanding problem: the incompatibility | |
| 447 | +between version 0.98 of WordPress and the recently released WordPress 2.1. | |
| 448 | + | |
| 449 | +* WORDPRESS 2.1 COMPATIBILITY: FeedWordPress is now compatible with | |
| 450 | + WordPress 2.1, as well as retaining its existing support for WordPress | |
| 451 | + 2.0 and 1.5. Incompatibilities that resulted in database warnings, fatal | |
| 452 | + errors, and which prevented FeedWordPress from syndicating new posts, | |
| 453 | + have been eliminated. | |
| 454 | + | |
| 455 | +* RSS-FUNCTIONS.PHP RENAMED TO RSS.PHP: if you use the upgraded MagpieRSS | |
| 456 | + replacement that's included with FeedWordPress, be sure to note that | |
| 457 | + there are now *two* files to upload from the `OPTIONAL/wp-includes` | |
| 458 | + subdirectory in order to carry out the upgrade: rss-functions.php and | |
| 459 | + rss.php. **It is necessary to upload both files**, due to a change in | |
| 460 | + the file naming scheme in WordPress 2.1, and it is necessary to do so | |
| 461 | + whether you are using WordPress 2.1 or not. If you only upload the | |
| 462 | + `rss-functions.php` file as in previous installations you will not have | |
| 463 | + a working copy of MagpieRSS; the rss.php file contains the actual code. | |
| 464 | + | |
| 465 | +* DATE BUG AFFECTING SOME PHP INSTALLATIONS RESOLVED: due to a subtle bug | |
| 466 | + in parse_w3cdtf(), some installations of PHP encountered problems with | |
| 467 | + FeedWordPress's attempt to date posts, which would cause some new posts | |
| 468 | + on Atom feeds to be dated as if they had apppeared in 1969 or 1970 | |
| 469 | + (thus, effectively, never appearing on front apge at all). This bug in | |
| 470 | + the date handling should now be fixed. | |
| 471 | + | |
| 472 | +* PHP <?=...?> SHORT FORM ELIMINATED: some installations of PHP do not | |
| 473 | + allow the <?=...?> short form for printing PHP values, which was used | |
| 474 | + extensively in the FeedWordPress interface code. Since this could cause | |
| 475 | + fatal errors for users with the wrong installation of PHP, the short | |
| 476 | + form has been replaced with full PHP echo statements, and is no longer | |
| 477 | + used in FeedWordPress. | |
| 478 | + | |
| 479 | +* BETTER USER INTERFACE INTEGRATION WITH WORDPRESS 2.x: Some minor changes | |
| 480 | + have been made to help the FeedWordPress interface pages blend in better | |
| 481 | + with the user interface when running under WordPress 2.x. | |
| 482 | + | |
| 483 | +* GLOBAL CATEGORIES BUG RESOLVED: a bug that prevented some users from | |
| 484 | + setting one or more categories to apply to syndicated posts from all | |
| 485 | + feeds (using the checkbox interface under Options --> Syndication) has | |
| 486 | + been resolved. | |
| 487 | + | |
| 488 | +Changes from 0.97 to 0.98 | |
| 489 | +-------------------------- | |
| 490 | + | |
| 491 | +* WORDPRESS 2.0 COMPATIBILITY: This is a narrowly-targeted release to | |
| 492 | + solve a major outstanding problem. FeedWordPress is now compatible with | |
| 493 | + both WordPress 1.5 and WordPress 2.0. Incompatibilities that caused | |
| 494 | + fatal SQL errors, and a more subtle bug with off-kilter counts of posts | |
| 495 | + under a given category, have been resolved. FeedWordPress tests for | |
| 496 | + database schema using the global $wp_db_version variable (if null, then | |
| 497 | + we presume that we're dealing with WordPress 1.5). | |
| 498 | + | |
| 499 | + NOTE: I have **not** fully tested FeedWordPress with WordPress 2.0. | |
| 500 | + Further testing may reveal more bugs. However, you should now be able | |
| 501 | + to get at least basic FeedWordPress functionality up and running. | |
| 502 | + | |
| 503 | +* AUTHOR MATCHING: FeedWordPress tests several fields to see if it can | |
| 504 | + identify the author of the post as a user already in the WordPress user | |
| 505 | + database. In previous versions, it tested the user login, the nickname, | |
| 506 | + and tested for "aliases" listed in the Profile (see documentation). FWP | |
| 507 | + now also matches authors on the basis of e-mail address (*if* an e-mail | |
| 508 | + address is present). This is particularly helpful for formats such as | |
| 509 | + RSS 2.0, in which authors are primarily identified by e-mail addresses. | |
| 510 | + | |
| 511 | +Changes from 0.96 to 0.97 | |
| 512 | +------------------------- | |
| 513 | + | |
| 514 | +* INSTALLATION PROCEDURE: Some of the changes between 0.96 and 0.97 | |
| 515 | + require upgrades to the meta-data stored by FeedWordPress to work | |
| 516 | + properly. Thus, if you are upgrading from 0.96 or earlier to 0.97, most | |
| 517 | + FeedWordPress operations (including updates and template functions) | |
| 518 | + WILL BE DISABLED until you run the upgrade procedure. Fortunately, | |
| 519 | + running the upgrade procedure is easy: just go to either Options --> | |
| 520 | + Syndication or Links --> Syndicated in the WordPress Dashboard and press | |
| 521 | + the button. | |
| 522 | + | |
| 523 | +* FEED FORMAT SUPPORT: Support has been added for the Atom 1.0 IETF | |
| 524 | + standard. Several other elements are also newly supported | |
| 525 | + (dcterms:created, dcterms:issued, dcterms:modified, dc:identifier, | |
| 526 | + proper support for the RSS 2.0 guid element, the RSS 2.0 author element, | |
| 527 | + the use of Atom author or Dublin Core dc:creator constructs at the feed | |
| 528 | + level to identify the author of individual items, etc.) | |
| 529 | + | |
| 530 | + N.B.: full support of several Atom 1.0 features, such as categories | |
| 531 | + and enclosures, requires you to install the optional rss-functions.php | |
| 532 | + upgrade in your wp-includes directory. | |
| 533 | + | |
| 534 | +* BUG FIX: Running `update-feeds.php` from command line or crontab | |
| 535 | + returned "I don't syndicate..." errors. It turns out that WordPress | |
| 536 | + sometimes tramples on the internal PHP superglobals that I depended on | |
| 537 | + to determine whether or not the script was being invoked from the | |
| 538 | + command line. This has been fixed (the variables are now checked | |
| 539 | + *before* WordPress can trample them). Note that `update-feeds.php` has | |
| 540 | + been thoroughly overhauled anyway; see below for details. | |
| 541 | + | |
| 542 | +* BUG FIX: Duplicate categories or author names. Fixed two bugs that could | |
| 543 | + create duplicate author and/or category names when the name contained | |
| 544 | + either (a) certain international characters (causing a mismatch between | |
| 545 | + MySQL and PHP's handling of lowercasing text), or (b) characters that | |
| 546 | + have a special meaning in regular expressions (causing MySQL errors when | |
| 547 | + looking for the author or category due to regexp syntax errors). These | |
| 548 | + should now be fixed thanks to careful escaping of names that go into | |
| 549 | + regular expressions and careful matching of lowercasing functions | |
| 550 | + (comparing results from PHP only to other results from PHP, and results | |
| 551 | + from MySQL only to other results from MySQL). | |
| 552 | + | |
| 553 | +* BUG FIX: Items dated Decembr 31, 1969 should appear less often. The | |
| 554 | + function for parsing W3C date-time format dates that ships with | |
| 555 | + MagpieRSS can only correctly parse fully-specified dates with a | |
| 556 | + fully-specified time, but valid W3C date-time format dates may omit the | |
| 557 | + time, the day of the month, or even the month. Some feeds in the wild | |
| 558 | + date their items with coarse-grained dates, so the optional | |
| 559 | + `rss-functions.php` upgrade now includes a more flexible parse_w3cdtf() | |
| 560 | + function that will work with both coarse-grained and fully-specified | |
| 561 | + dates. (If parts of the date or the time are omitted, they are filled in | |
| 562 | + with values based on the current time, so '2005-09-10' will be dated to | |
| 563 | + the current time on that day; '2004' will be dated to this day and time | |
| 564 | + one year ago. | |
| 565 | + | |
| 566 | + N.B.: This fix is only available in the optional `rss-functions.php` | |
| 567 | + upgrade. | |
| 568 | + | |
| 569 | +* BUG FIX: Evil use of HTTP GET has been undone. The WordPress interface | |
| 570 | + is riddled with inappropriate (non-idempotent) uses of HTTP GET queries | |
| 571 | + (ordinary links that make the server do something with significant | |
| 572 | + side-effects, such as deleting a post or a link from the database). | |
| 573 | + FeedWordPress did some of this too, especially in places where it aped | |
| 574 | + the WordPress interface (e.g. the "Delete" links in Links --> | |
| 575 | + Syndicated). That's bad business, though. I've changed the interface so | |
| 576 | + that all the examples of improper side-effects that I can find now | |
| 577 | + require an HTTP POST to take effect. I think I got pretty much | |
| 578 | + everything; if there's anything that I missed, let me know. | |
| 579 | + | |
| 580 | + Further reading: [Sam Ruby 2005-05-06: This Stuff Matters] (http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/2005/05/06/This-Stuff-Matters) | |
| 581 | + | |
| 582 | +* BUG FIX: Categories applied by `cats` setting should no longer prevent | |
| 583 | + category-based filtering from working. In FeedWordPress, you can (1) | |
| 584 | + apply certain categories to all syndicated posts, or all posts from | |
| 585 | + a particular feed; and (2) filter out all posts that don't match one | |
| 586 | + of the categories that are already in the WordPress database (allowing | |
| 587 | + for simple category-based filtering; just load up WordPress with the | |
| 588 | + categories you want to accept, and then tell FeedWordPress not to create | |
| 589 | + new ones). However, the way that (1) and (2) were implemented meant that | |
| 590 | + you couldn't effectively use them together; once you applied a known | |
| 591 | + category to all syndicated posts from a particular feed, it meant that | |
| 592 | + they'd have at least one familiar category (the category or categories | |
| 593 | + you were applying), and that would get all posts past the filter no | |
| 594 | + matter what categories they were originally from. | |
| 595 | + | |
| 596 | + Well, no longer. You can still apply categories to all syndicated posts | |
| 597 | + (using either Syndication --> Options, or the feed-level settings under | |
| 598 | + Links --> Syndicated). But these categories are not applied to the post | |
| 599 | + until *after* it has already passed by the "familiar categories" filter. | |
| 600 | + So now, if you want, you can do category filtering and *then* apply as | |
| 601 | + many categories as you please to all and only posts that pass the filter. | |
| 602 | + | |
| 603 | +* BUG FIX: Other minor typos and HTML gaffes were fixed along the way. | |
| 604 | + | |
| 605 | +* PERFORMANCE: get_feed_meta() no longer hits the database for information | |
| 606 | + on every call; it now caches link data in memory, so FeedWordPress only | |
| 607 | + goes to the database once for each syndicated link. This may | |
| 608 | + substantially improve performance if your database server resources | |
| 609 | + are tight and your templates make a lot of use of custom settings from | |
| 610 | + get_feed_meta(). | |
| 611 | + | |
| 612 | +* API CHANGE: Link ID numbers, rather than RSS URIs, are now used to | |
| 613 | + identify the feed from which a post is syndicated when you use template | |
| 614 | + functions such as get_feed_meta(). The practical upshot of this is you | |
| 615 | + can switch feeds, or change the feed address for a particular syndicated | |
| 616 | + site, without breaking your templates for all the posts that were | |
| 617 | + syndicated from the earlier URI. | |
| 618 | + | |
| 619 | +* API CHANGE: if you have plugins or templates that make use of the | |
| 620 | + get_feed_meta() function or the $fwp_feedmeta global, note that the | |
| 621 | + data formerly located under the `uri` and `name` fields is now located | |
| 622 | + under the `link/uri` field and the `link/name` field, respectively. Note | |
| 623 | + also that you can access the link ID number for any given feed under the | |
| 624 | + global $fwp_feedmeta['link/id'] (in plugins) or | |
| 625 | + get_feed_meta('link/id') (in a template in post contexts). | |
| 626 | + | |
| 627 | +* FEATURE: the settings for individual feeds can now be edited using a | |
| 628 | + humane interface (where formerly you had to tweak key-value pairs in the | |
| 629 | + Link Notes section). To edit settings for a feed, pick the feed that you | |
| 630 | + want under Links --> Syndicated and click the Edit link. | |
| 631 | + | |
| 632 | +* FEATURE: The "Unsubscribe" button (formerly "Delete") in Links --> | |
| 633 | + Syndicated now offers three options for unsubscribing from a feed: (1) | |
| 634 | + turning off the subscription without deleting the feed data or affecting | |
| 635 | + posts that were syndicated from the feed (this works by setting the Link | |
| 636 | + for the feed as "invisible"); (2) deleting the feed data and all of the | |
| 637 | + posts that were syndicated from the feed; or (3) deleting the feed data | |
| 638 | + and *keeping* the posts that were syndicated from the feed | |
| 639 | + setting the Link to "Invisible" (meaning that it will not be displayed | |
| 640 | + in lists of the site links on the front page, and it won't be checked | |
| 641 | + for updates; (2) deleting the Link and all of the posts that were | |
| 642 | + syndicated from its feed; or (3) deleting the feed data but keeping the | |
| 643 | + posts that were syndicated (which will henceforward be treated as if | |
| 644 | + they were local rather than syndicated posts). (Note that (1) is usually | |
| 645 | + the best option for aggregator sites, unless you want to clean up the | |
| 646 | + results of an error or a test.) | |
| 647 | + | |
| 648 | +* FEATURE / BUG FIX: If you have been receiving mysterious "I don't | |
| 649 | + syndicate...", or "(local) HTTP status code was not 200", or "(local) | |
| 650 | + transport error - could not open socket", or "parse error - not well | |
| 651 | + formed" errors, then this update may solve your problems, and if it does | |
| 652 | + *not* solve them, it will at least make the reasons for the problems | |
| 653 | + easier to understand. That's because I've overhauled the way that | |
| 654 | + FeedWordPress goes about updating feeds. | |
| 655 | + | |
| 656 | + If you use the command-line PHP scripting method to run scheduled | |
| 657 | + updates, then not much should change for you, except for fewer | |
| 658 | + mysterious errors. If you have done updates by sending periodic HTTP | |
| 659 | + requests to <http://your-blog.com/path/wp-content/update-feeds.php>, | |
| 660 | + then the details have changed somewhat; mostly in such a way as to make | |
| 661 | + things easier on you. See the README file or online documentation on | |
| 662 | + Staying Current for the details. | |
| 663 | + | |
| 664 | +* FEATURE: FeedWordPress now features a more sophisticated system for | |
| 665 | + timed updates. Instead of polling *every* subscribed feed for updates | |
| 666 | + *each* time `update-feeds.php` is run, FeedWordPress now keeps track of | |
| 667 | + the last time it polled each feed, and only polls them again after a | |
| 668 | + certain period of time has passed. The amount of time is normally set | |
| 669 | + randomly for each feed, in a period between 30 minutes and 2 hours (so | |
| 670 | + 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 | |
| 671 | + directly by the feed, which brings us to ... | |
| 672 | + | |
| 673 | +* FEATURE: FeedWordPress now respects the settings in the `ttl` and | |
| 674 | + Syndication Module RSS elements. Feeds with these elements set will not | |
| 675 | + be polled any more frequently than they indicate with these feeds unless | |
| 676 | + the user manually forces FeedWordPress to poll the feed (see Links --> | |
| 677 | + Syndicated --> Edit settings). | |
| 678 | + | |
| 4 | 679 | Changes from 0.95 to 0.96 |
| 5 | 680 | ------------------------- |
| 6 | 681 | |
| 7 | 682 | * FEATURE: support has been added for enclosures in RSS 2.0 and Atom |
| @@ -11,9 +686,10 @@ | ||
| 11 | 686 | into the WordPress database so that (among other things) that post |
| 12 | 687 | will have its enclosure listed in your blog's RSS 2 newsfeed. |
| 13 | 688 | |
| 14 | 689 | Note that enclosure support requires using the optional MagpieRSS |
| 15 | - upgrade (i.e., replacing your `wp-includes/rss-functions.php` with `OPTIONAL/wp-includes/rss-functions.php` from the FWP archive) | |
| 690 | + upgrade (i.e., replacing your `wp-includes/rss-functions.php` with | |
| 691 | + `OPTIONAL/wp-includes/rss-functions.php` from the FWP archive) | |
| 16 | 692 | |
| 17 | 693 | * FEATURE: for completeness's sake, there is now a feed setting, |
| 18 | 694 | `hardcode url`, that allows you to set the URI for the front page |
| 19 | 695 | of a contributor's website manually (that is, prevent it from being |
