I am please to announce a new WordPress plugin which allows you to peek under-the-hood at the new cache in WordPress v2.0 (and v2.0.1) and to see what it is doing. A semi-transparent window is displayed for the admin user at the top right hand corner of your blog. It also allows the admin user to easily clear the cache from within the WordPress adminitration interface.

The following terminology is used in the display:

Cold Cache Hits

This is the number of cached items that were loaded from disk.

Warm Cache Hits

This is the number of cached items accessed that were already in memory

Cache Misses

This is the number of items that had to be fetched from the db as they were not in the cache.

Loaded data

This lists the type and amount of data loaded into memory from that currently stored within the cache..

Head on over to the wp-cache-inspect page for more info and to download.

Wordpress Version Check v1.00 is now available.

The follow changes have been made in v1.00:

1. Added support for WordPress v2.0-RC1 (see below for a screen shot)
2. Added timeout to XML-RPC calls.
3. Updated version number to 1.00.

(Read on …)

Now available for a Spam Karma 2 install near you a updated version of my SK2 Moderate Plugin.

New features:

Enforces the main WordPress admin setting “Comment author must have a previously approved comment” (under Options … Discussion) within Spam Karma - The plugin ensures that the highest karma level a comment from a new author can achieve is -1 so that all comments must be moderated before appearing on your site.
(Read on …)

Wordpress Version Check v0.90 is now available.

The follow minor changes have been made in v0.90:

1. Improved check for Tiger Admin Plugin - When detected alternate CSS is used for message display. Thanks to MarkJ for the new and improved CSS.
2. readme.txt included in the zip file with installation instructions.
3. Updated version number to 0.90.

The following new features have been added in v0.90:

1. Added support for wp-dash plugin with a builtin WordPress Version Check widget.
2. For advanced users who are installing this plugin on multiple blogs that they administer for others you can now enable email notification of new messages.

(Read on …)

Wordpress Version Check v0.80 is now available. Upgrade is recommended especially if you are using the Tiger Admin UI as you will now be able to see the plugin’s messages much easier. The changes for the Tiger Admin UI have been tested with v1.3 of the Tiger Admin UI plugin.

There is also now a page for Wordpress Version Check which will always have the latest news.

Changes in v0.80:

1. Added GPL Licence Text.
2. Added check for Tiger Admin Plugin - When detected alternate CSS is used for message display.
3. Changed default CSS so that info level messages are displayed in grey rather than green.
4. Added version info to the IXR UserAgent - To enable tracking versions of the plugin in use.
5. Used action hooks to ensure only run update checks when in admin ui.
6. Updated version number to 0.80.

Version 0.80 can be downloaded here: pjw_wp_version_monitor.0.80.zip

Now available for a Spam Karma 2 install near you: SK2 Moderate Plugin.

What it does:

Enforces the main WordPress admin setting “An administrator must approve the comment (regardless of any matches below)” (under Options … Discussion) within Spam Karma - The plugin ensures that the highest karma level a comment can achieve is -1 so that all comments must be moderated before appearing on your site.

Why it does it:

Some people see this as a deficiency in Spam Karma 2, they think that even with the level of protection provided this WordPress option should be observed - now they have the choice.

Please visiting the permanent page for the plugin for more info and to download.

Recently a lot of people have been hit by a wordpress security vulnerability that was fixed with an hour of it being reported about a month ago. Why have they fallen prey to this vulnerability - because they failed to update to the latest version for one of many possible reasons:

1. Laziness.
2. They failed to notice the post on the dev blog in their wordpress dashboard.
3. They failed to notice the number of people blogging about having upgraded.
4. etc

To help alleviate this problem in the future I have crafted a simple wordpress plugin which takes a simple approach to get the users attention. Once activated the plugin checks an XML-RPC webservice for update news displaying a message at the top of every page in the wordpress admin user-interface. The plugin will check for an update to the message every 15 mins with an additional check being kicked off if the installed wordpress version changes so as to give instant feedback on upgrades.
(Read on …)