My single favorite new feature in WordPress 2.5 [Techno File]
There is nothing more calming than a sea of light green boxes descending in an ordered column down the page.
My partner told me tonight that I’m a tech nerd. Can you believe that?
Anyway, to extend the basic functionality of WordPress, many of us bloggers and designers rely on third-party bits of code to do the whiz-bang bits of our sites. The “bling,” as it were.
These bits of code are called plugins. However, unlike the Glade brand Plug-ins, they are odorless. Also, if you installed more than, say, three of them, they used to be a chore to check, download, unpack, delete the old one, upload and install.
No longer! Now, all you have to do is enter your server, your username and your password, then CLICK. WordPress does the heavy lifting.
Plugin Security Hazard?
Some say this kind of access could be a hazard, a security loophole. I’m not too worried that some incredibly bored hacker would want to take down this little blog, but perhaps if you run a bigger outfit, you may want to look into the inner workings of how WordPress automagically removes the old plugin and installs the new one. Not me.
Image via WikipediaHowever, there is one small problem I anticipate running into. When I was upgrading my plugins by hand, I would carefully check to make sure the upgrade hadn’t broken the feature, or the site. Now, I have no such concerns and upgrade at the first sign of tale code. So far, it’s worked out fine, but the nice young women and men obsesively compiling code rather than going out on a Saturday night just so I can post my Twitter tweets to my blog do make mistakes from time to time.
But, hey, I’ve had experience rooting around in my blog’s plugin folder trying to fix broken widgets, and such. So, my advice would be to jump into 2.5, but spend some time getting to know how your directories work via FTP. You never know when you might need to perform some plugin surgery.
UPDATE 4/10/08
Recently, many bloggers have had offensive links injected into their RSS feeds, serving up a platter of pr0n to unsuspecting readers. Since I mentioned security above, I thought I would link to this post, which offers tips to secure your WordPress powered site.
Screenshot above 
by fmg2001
