The second maintenance release of the 3.0 branch, Breadcrumb NavXT 3.0.2 brings many fixes to the table. WPMU users rejoice, most of the issues that 3.0.1 and 3.0.0 had are fixed thanks to Merci Javier who provided a WPMU testbed to help diagnose and fix the WPMU related problems. It is now safe to call Breadcrumb NavXT from within the loop. Some minor adjustments were made to the Tabular add on which makes it more WordPress 2.7 friendly. Problems with default options not being loaded on install should be fixed now.

There are now Spanish and French translations for the Breadcrumb NavXT settings page. These are included within the main distribution. Thank Karin Sequen and Laurent Grabielle for these translations. The German translation is still out of date, Tom Klingenberg does not have the time to maintain it, so if you speak German and would like to update the German translation we could use your help.

You can grab the latest version of Breadcrumb NavXT from the Breadcrumb NavXT page.

-John Havlik

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Late next week Breadcrumb NavXT 3.1.2 will be released. This will include new language files for Spanish and French. Hopefully the German language files will also be updated (Tom has been very busy so if someone want’s to take over the German translation feel free to).

Early next week I will take a good look into WordPress MU compatibility of the administration interface. Thanks to Merci Javier next Monday I should have access to a WPMU test site. Normally I would setup my own testbed, but with WPMU I simply can not make an internal testbed for it without some DNS trickery which I really do not want to do (I’ve already made an attempt at this without much success). By Breadcrumb NavXT 3.1.2 the administrative interface will work correctly with WordPress MU.

Additionally, qTranslate users, this weekend a patch for qTranslate will be available that makes it compatible with Breadcrumb NavXT. Currently, it does not support the get_category filter, which is needed for it to work its magic on the category breadcrumbs.

-John Havlik

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Beginning with version 3.1.0 Breadcrumb NavXT will probably retain a WordPress 2.7 and newer compatibility mode (rather than the current WordPress 2.5+ compatibility mode that is in place right now). This is due to some API changes that are being phased in with 2.7. 3.0.x will work perfectly fine with WordPress 2.7, but with WordPress 2.8 the administration interface may break (option saving/setting wise).

For my other plugins, both Mtekk’s Testimonials and Iframe-b-Gone are not fully compatible with WordPress 2.7. Mtekk’s Testimonials does work, but needs some tweaks. Iframe-b-Gone is more or less obsolete, and I really do not plan on continued maintenance of it. Comment Code Filter is 100% WordPress 2.7 compatible. Moo.wp and RPC Utilities are both very old and I doubt either still work. Moo.wp is no longer needed thanks to the script enquery tools in the WordPress API. RPC Utilities stopped working at around WordPress 2.3 or 2.5. I plan on eventually revisiting it, though that will be after Mtekk’s Testimonials gets updated.

-John Havlik

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This is the first maintained release for the Breadcrumb NavXT 3.0 branch. UTF-8 support has been improved for users of the administrative interface. Previously, UTF-8 characters saved in any of the fields of the administrative interface did not save correctly, this has been resolved. A bug related to attachments to pages was fixed, as well as a fix for the installation script of the administrative interface. Users that previously had issues with the administrative interface not containing default settings should remove the bcn_options entry in WordPress’ options table before activating this version. Finally, the behavior of the plugin was modified for users of static front pages that do not specify a Posts Page (under Settings > Reading). The new behavior is to drop the blog breadcrumb if Posts Page is not set, while before it was assumed Posts Page was set.

You can grab the latest version of Breadcrumb NavXT from the Breadcrumb NavXT page.

-John Havlik

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Looks like many people blindly update their WordPress plugins. What is even worse is they do not notice changes in a plugins behavior, even messages that a function is being depreciated. Case in point, this Google query yields 62 relevant pages (out of over 4000 supposed results) that all updated to Breadcrumb NavXT 3.0, but have not updated their function calls. Come 3.1 their sites will break unexpectedly (If they are using the correct calling code their breadcrumb trail just won’t appear).

One cause of this blindness is the built in plugin updating functionality built into WordPress since 2.5. Don’t take this the wrong way, it makes updating easy and is a really useful feature. However, it has become too easy for a user to upgrade to a version of a plugin that may not work in their setup (they are still running PHP4–which they should not be doing, or using outdated function calls). There is no easy way for a developer of a plugin to make something jump out at the users telling them: “Hey this version no longer supports PHP4 and by the way make sure you are using this function instead of tHis old one.”. Thankfully, come WordPress 2.7 the situation will improve slightly, a “release notes” page link is available in the plugin management page.

When running a website it is important to really pay attention to what is going on. Those with this problem are not paying enough attention, and frankly are vulnerable to hacking and hijacking of their websites. Weblogs.us had another security breech back in late September–more on this at a later time. It was discovered through Google search. Even after only three days, the Google search results for this blog were poisoned with explicit content. Prevention through security is always the first route to take, but active monitoring for early detection of events is just as important.

As a side note, there is now a Frequently Asked Questions page for Breadcrumb NavXT. Users should read it before asking for help regarding errors and other things. It was compiled from actual questions asked by users, and search queries that were relevant to the plugin. By no means is it an exhaustive list, and will be added to as time goes on.

-John Havlik

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