These few days, I’ve taken a look at a couple of desktop blog editors like Performancing, BlogJet and w.Bloggar.

While most of them work really fine as powerful desktop blog editors, I somehow prefer using the native WordPress admin console, partly because of familiarity, and also, I wanted the functionality of my WordPress Plug-ins like Ultimate Tag Warrior, I wanted to define the custom fields for my meta description and meta keywords.

Some of these functionality are available only to WordPress, so naturally, these blog editors using the XML-RPC API and protocol was not able to achieve them.

Then, on my WordPress Dashboard, I saw this article on Installing WordPress on a USB Stick, and I checked it out. The instructions brought me through installing XAMPP-Lite, and then installing WordPress on that localhost server.

The installation was really a breeze. In fact, there wasn’t an installation at all. It was just downloading, extracting and then running the server using the very friendly control panel. (Yes. Very very friendly, even for newbies. )

So now, I’ve got a local installation of WordPress for me to fiddle with, play around with my plugins, and more importantly, a “desktop blog editor” using the native WordPress interface. Even though I have to copy the text over to the live version, I think its pretty easy. At least, I can have my UTW tags and meta description written offline.

I was considering taking up the challenge of creating a Plug-in or “modding” that local copy of WordPress to have the option to publish to the live server, but after looking at the code… well… erms… maybe I’ll just stick to copy and paste! On that note, readers who think this challenge is fun can consider doing this!

The peeps have at WordPress announced a very critical update WordPress 2.1.1 users.

Long story short: If you downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 within the past 3-4 days, your files may include a security exploit that was added by a cracker, and you should upgrade all of your files to 2.1.2 immediately.

My oh my, this message has to spread quickly. So please please also help to bring it to further attention. I’ll go upgrade two of my blogs now.

The WordPress documentation on Include Tags listed four different functions which template developers can use to in their templates:

1. <?php get_header(); ?>
2. <?php get_footer(); ?>
3. <?php get_sidebar(); ?>
4. <?php comments_template(); ?>

Most templates in the WordPress themes directory use these set of functions, simply because they are used with the default Kubrick template, and according to the documentation, these functions provide the additional functionality over a regular PHP include like <?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/header.php'); ?>, because if the the file required (e.g. header.php) is not found in the template’s directory, the default template’s header.php will be used instead.

However, I figured out that there might be a reason why a developer may choose NOT to use these functions.

I don’t know how exactly to put the challenge I faced into a statement… but here is the scenario which I found and issue with.

In my template, I normally use an extra config.php file, where I define a few variables, like my FeedBurner Feed Address, or the main meta keywords for my blog. As I did so, I used a <?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/config.php'); ?> at the top of every main page I use (i.e. index.php, single.php, archive.php and page.php) so that the variables will be available for use in that page.

And in these main pages are where I used to have get_header(), get_footer(), get_sidebar() and comments_template().

So, for example, in my sidebar page (sidebar.php), I have an RSS icon which is hyperlinked to my blog feeds – which I want to point to my Feedburner feed address. However, it seems that the variables in scope on the main page is not available in these pages.

Even when I did another <?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/config.php'); ?> in my sidebar.php, the variables still showed blank when I loaded the page on the browser.

When I swapped <?php get_sidebar(); ?> with <?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/sidebar.php'); ?>, the variables worked well.

I think the four include functions by WordPress works well for templates that do not do a lot of customization and optimization. They work perfectly for themes like the default Kubrick. However, if you are a developer who wants to tweak the details of your template, you might be better off using regular PHP functions, where you are assured of the exact functionality (of course, unless you have the technical expertise to look into the WordPress source files).

Yes, I’m back up with my new hard disk – rushed down to Sim Lim square and got myself a Seagate SATA 80GB for S$107. Cheapest SATA I could find in the short time I have to spend there. So I’m back up. Yeah, I guess I’d pay S$107 for less frustrations.

Good thing my recent backup was very recent, so I didn’t lose much data, and even better because I had a Nortan Ghost image file so I could just restore the image to the partition instead of going through the 2 hour WinXP installation process.

Oh, I had good assistance from the GParted Live CD to do the inital partitioning for me too. Great stuff.

Yae! Kian Ann is back!

Anyway, WordPress just announced the arrival of 2.1.1 and 2.0.9 but they are low to medium priority updates, so if you are busy rushing your million dollar project, maybe you could ease on that update.

On to read my feeds and tweak my blogs now 😉

For once, I’m going to tell you to hold on tight, back up your files, stop eating, stop watching television and stop blogging! Its time to upgrade to WordPress 2.1! Finally!

Autosave features, tabbed editor… I’m not going to type more! Head of over to the download page now!