Before getting to the name a quick update to all those people who have been asking about the status of Simple Forum Version 3. Yes - it’s a little on the late side. I had hoped to release before the end of January. But the good news is that it is code complete and the number of bugs or problems we are finding with the new code are declining swiftly. I very much expect to have it running my support forum in the next couple of days - at the latest the weekend - which is one of the best tests it can have.

So - back to the name. A few weeks ago I was sent a link to Simple Forum. Stunned, I was, to discover that there is actually a commercial web forum software package that goes by the same name as my humble WordPress plugin. I debated whether I should change the name of mine and then basically forgot about it again. Until this week, when a security vulnerability notice was posted against this other product and some people immediately figured they were talking about mine. Even one of the sites who raised the notice put a comment on my plugin page with the foreboding message ‘Beware’! This was plain stupidity of course and showed an amazing lack of judgement. But it is there and I responded to it and the guy went very quiet.

But it bought back into focus the question of whether I should or should not change the name. And to be totally honest - I just can’t make up my mind.
Maybe I will. Then again… maybe I won’t. But if anyone has any good ideas - do please email them to me.

As from the start of this year I am removing the ‘Popup Image Gallery’ from my available WP plugin list. This was the first plugin I ever wrote at a time when I was new to WordPress, to php and even to CSS. It has many flaws and is showing it;s age and the strain!

I have a lot of ideas for a replacement and know exactly what I would like to do with it. The main obstacle is simply time. But maybe one day…

Having just trashed my hard disk while upgrading to Leopard, I found myself having to erase everything to start re-building my MacBook from scratch. This included rebuilding my development environments and local website ‘clones’ of my public sites. And as whenever I do this I always forget to do something and spend hours looking at that ‘Server Not Found’ page that Firefox throws up, I thought I best write the process down for the future.

And then thought that it might be of use to others. So, if interested in running your sites on your Apple laptop - the full instructions can be found in my latest article: Installing WordPress On Your Apple Mac

As I have developed just about all the features I personally wanted to see Simple Forum capable of I have selected to open the floodgates to user requests. This does not mean that everything people ask for gets added but certainly requests that garner a lot of support will be considered and coded if feasible.

if you want to have your say and out forward your requests - or just want to keep an eye on what comes up - please do so at the Discussion Forum created for the purpose. You can contribute directly of just subscribe to the RSS feed to keep abreast of what is going on.

Please do NOT use the comments to this post for requests!

And any help is always welcome.

I have been meaning to do this for a long time but a few questions recently on the same subject have propelled me into action!

I have started a new ‘Articles’ section (see the new tab on the sidebar). First up is a tutorial on creating a custom page template for WordPress. I know this is covered in the Codex but it can be hard to find and assumes some coding skill. I hope it is of some use to people.

I will add any other items as they come along.

I have today, as planned, released Simple Forum version 2.1 and it is now available for download along with the User and Troubleshooting Guide. (See the Simple Forum plugin page).

This is a recommended upgrade for all users - including those on the beta or RC1 releases. A few days ago I was made aware of a SQL injection hack that can be used against the plugin to obtain the admins user credentials. This should now be fixed and addressed in the 2.1 version. This has meant that some very late code has been added to this release which has not had the benefit of a month of testing. if any problems are found because of this, I will issue patches as necessary.