Free Technology Tutorials

In WordPress 2.9 one of the new features is the ability to send posts, pages, and comments to trash instead of simply deleting them as in previous versions.

One thing about this new feature that is not so obvious, is that by default, items in trash are automatically deleted after 30-days. Of course, this could be a good thing as long as you know about it, but it could catch some by surprise who don’t know about this auto-delete feature in trash. I would imagine there are some who will use the trash as a holding place for posts, pages, or comments that they may want to remove from public view, but keep handy for possible future use. In the past, you may have just changed the status of a post or page from “Published” to “Draft” or simply “Unapproved” a comment to achieve the same result. The difference is, your draft posts/pages and unapproved comments were never deleted unless you deleted them–not so when you send something to trash. The 30-day delete time is defined in wp-settings around line 570–see screenshot below.

Of course, now that you know this, if you wanted to change it, you could open wp-settings and edit it there–changing the 30 to 60 would auto-delete items after 60 days. However, there is a better way to accomplish this so that you don’t over-write your changed during an upgrade, by defining this variable in the wp-config.php file. So, if you want to increase, decrease, or even disable this feature, you should open your wp-config.php file and include a line somewhere just like you see highlighted in the screenshot above. A good place to add the line would be directly below where the table prefix is defined in the wp-config.php file. The screenshot below shows wp-config.php edited to auto-delete items in the trash after 120 days.

But what if you want to completely disable the new trash feature? Changing the value to 0 (zero) will do that for you. The screenshot below shows how to edit wp-config.php to completely disable trash so that when you delete an item it is automatically deleted just as it was prior to version 2.9.

But note, if you disable trash, then when you click to delete something you will NOT be prompted to confirm…when you click Delete the item simply gets deleted and there is no getting it back without a backup.

WordPress 3.0, due to be out around mid-2010, will be getting a new default theme. So, if you love Kubrick, I’m sure you will still be able to use it and customize it, but it won’t be the default with the next release–at least not in its current form. If you would like to provide input on what the default theme should be, look like, features it should have, etc., then be sure to stop over at WP.org and post your 2 cents.

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/342819

Since I don’t participate in those forums any longer, I’ll just provide my thinking here.

In a nutshell, I don’t really care what the default theme is. The first thing most people do once they get WP installed is change to a custom theme anyway. So putting a lot of thought and effort into what is the “default” theme may be important to WP and its image or brand, but it’s not important to end users…in reality, the default theme is really nothing more than just one of over a thousand GPL themes anyone can install in just a few seconds through the theme installer in the WP admin.

Now don’t get me wrong…I’m not trying to throw a wet blanket on the theme initiative and I’m sure it’s important for WP to show that they are staying “up to date” and on the cutting edge. Simple fact is, WP is hands-down the best blog software (and fast becoming the best CMS software) available today–open source or proprietary. So, best of luck with the default theme initiative, but I’m far more interested in how WordPress MU will be incorporated into WordPress–which is also due to happen in 3.0.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Figaro and Tori and family.

Note: Figaro is the old, ugly one Tori, joined our family in 2009, so it’ll be hard for 2010 to top that.

Note: The following is made available under GPL from http://codex.wordpress.org/GPL. It may be edited a little from its original form, but probably not a lot. There is no guarantee this information is accurate…use at your own risk.
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In WordPress 2.9, it’s super easy to embed videos, images, and other content into your WordPress site. Just type/past the url into your post/page and WordPress does the rest. Make sure that the URL is on its own line and not hyperlinked (clickable when viewing the post).

For example, all I did to add the video below was copy/past the the video url into this post…the url should be on its on line. In the past you would have just seen the link to the video, but from 2.9 onward, WordPress automatically embeds the video in the post.

You can also opt to wrap the URL in the embed shortcode. It will accomplish the same effect, but does not require the URL to be on its own line.

Note: It’s important to make sure the url isn’t hyerlinked when you type/past into the post/page. If so, then you will simply see the link, like below. This is also a good tip if, for some reason, you want to show the link and not the embed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nxXsROoBYs

Can I Use Any URL With This?

Not by default. For secutity reasons, WordPress will only embed URLs matching an internal whitelist. By default, WordPress will automatically embed from the following sites…this list will grow over time.

• YouTube
• Vimeo
• DailyMotio
• blip.tv
• Flickr (both videos and images)
• Viddler
• Hulu
• Qik
• Revision3
• Scribd
• Photobucket
• PollDaddy
• Google Video
• WordPress.tv (only VideoPress-type videos for the time being)

If you have upgraded to WordPress 2.9 and are running into problems, it’s usually due to incompatible plugins or themes. If you’ve upgraded and can’t login now, you can search this site for video tutorials on how to disable the plugins. If that doesn’t work, then you can try to ftp to your site and rename the current theme you are using–this will result in WP using the default theme. If that doesn’t work, then you can contact me and I’ll look at it for you for a small fee…if I can fix your site, you pay the fee–no more than $50–if I can’t fix your site, then you pay nothing. If interested, use the contact link in the nav bar.

WordPress 2.9 has just been released as stable. I upgraded this site and all seems to be well. See the following post for some of the cool new features.

http://educhalk.org/blog/wordpress-2-9-a-video-demonstration-of-new-features/

Saw a very interesting post in the moodle.org forums today titled: “Ridiculous $400/hr. for Moodle support with no guarantee”.

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=140152

Let me see if I understand this:

1. They build a product that for the past 9 years has been giving away virtually all personal information on every Moodle install in existence.
2. Once they are forced to address the problem and release what seems to be a broken upgrade that causes the OP in the thread above more major problems, then he’s quoted $400/hr to talk with a Moodle Partner with no guarantee of results.

…and I thought Angel was expensive…

Merry Christmas from the Moodle Business Partner “community”

PS: Just a thought…Blackboard bought Angel, but they don’t own the disciples…inside joke

In the following video I demonstrate three of, what I consider to be, the most useful new features coming out in WordPress 2.9 — Image Editing, Trash Bin, and Post Thumbnails. As of today, 2.9 is still in beta (beta-2), so the latest stable release is still 2.8.6, but I would expect (just a guess) 2.9 will be released as stable by the first of the year. When it’s released, I think the built-in Image Editor alone will be a very good incentive for a lot of users to upgrade.

Version 2 of my WordPress User’s Guide is now available for download. See the link in the Nav Bar or click the link below for the download page. This is an update of the 96-page Free WordPress User’s Guide. It’s now 159 pages and I’ve incorporated several of the suggestions from the comments on the download page. See the download page here:

http://educhalk.org/blog/free-wordpress-users-guide/

Moodle released an urgent upgrade notice today, two weeks after this post.

To upgrade your Moodle 1.9.x or 1.8.x branch installs, see the following information published today on moodle.org:

http://docs.moodle.org/en/Moodle_1.9.7_release_notes
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Moodle_1.8.11_release_notes

In addition, if you are among the tens of thousands of people using the 1.7 or 1.6 branches (which, as of today, are still being offered for download on moodle.org), it seems support has been discontinued for those branches and there is no fix for your sites. Upgrading is your only option.

Update: The following was posted to the web less than an hour after the “Advanced notice to admins” email was sent out.

http://gctefriends.blogspot.com/2009/11/urgent-moodle-releases-197-and-1811-are.html

http://pastebin.ca/raw/1687668

http://de.pastebin.ca/1687671

Just three of several places where this is already posted on the web. By this weekend, it will be all over the web.

Advanced email notice to moodle admins is a myth! It’s a nice theory, but doesn’t translate into practice.

Advanced email notice to Moodle admins, that, by Moodle’s own figures reach 0.001666% of the user-base does not work. Additionally, it’s Thanksgiving day in the US. If an admin in the US does get that email, he/she will probably read it 5 days from now on Monday.

If Moodle wants to send these notices out to an email list, that anyone can sign-up on with no verification of their identity, then that’s great, but in addition, these notices should be plastered across the moodle.org homepage…a place where Moodle users frequent! And every Moodle blogger should be encouraged to post this information to their blogs…blogs Moodle users read! Shouldn’t Moodle users be given at least as much advanced notice as hackers who may be subscribed to that “advanced notice” list?

Important information like this could be posted on the moodle.org homepage, right above the Moodle Business Partner advertisements. This is just a friendly (common sense) suggestion to consider if Moodle really wants to get this kind of urgent information out to as many of their users as possible in a timely manner.