Breadcrumb NavXT 4.0 Beta 1

Posted by in WordPress > Plugins

Yes, you read that correctly, there is a beta release. Yes, this is a tagged release. Yes, the last time there was a beta was four years ago. Breadcrumb NavXT 4.0 is feature complete, after an extended development cycle. Several items that were goals for 4.0 have been pushed back to 4.1 and 4.2. These include contextually aware taxonomy selection and a multisite “global admin” interface.

Regardless, several objectives were achieved. Custom post type support has been improved. Several issues regarding custom post type archives and root pages for custom post types have been fixed. The way current items are handled has changed as well. Proper links for current items, if set to be linked, are now generated. The settings page has received a minor update, taking advantage of new features found in WordPress 3.3. Finally, the biggest change in 4.0 is the change in the settings structure. Prefixes, suffixes, and anchor templates were replaced with a linked and unlinked breadcrumb template.

Note, Breadcrumb NavXT 4.0 has been developed against WordPress 3.3. This beta and the final release will require WordPress 3.3. Please keep this in mind while testing.

Grab Breadcrumb NavXT 4.0.0-Beta1 and report any bugs in the comments section of this post.

-John Havlik

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BlogPress SEO: A Year Later

Posted by in Enemy of the Spammers

A year ago, I published my discovery of a backdoor within the BlogPress SEO plugin. The only reason I looked at the plugin was author tried to get me to review it. Little did he know I’d actually look at the code before installing it.

Since that time, the plugin received a ton of bad publicity, the author lashed out against Joost de Valk, and now, a year later, it appears the saga ends. The domain name blogpressseo.com expired back in October, and no one has renewed it yet. My only hope is the people behind BlogPress SEO didn’t move on to using a different name for the same plugin.

-John Havlik

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WordCamp MSP 2011?

Posted by in WordPress
WordCamp MSP 2010 Badge Closeup

A year ago, we had a nice turnout for the first WordCamp in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. That event was announced about 8 months in advanced, and dew in quite a few speakers from throughout the United States. We had 5 tracks spanning from 9:00AM to 7:00PM. Actual attendance numbers were never released, but somewhere between 250 and 400 people is a good estimate.

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Pointless Tab

Posted by in Reviews > Hardware

What do you do when you are trying to keep symmetry in your device, but only have 2 speakers and a volume rocker to fill the spaces? If you’re HP, you’ll hide the serial number barcode on a popout tab in this fourth space.

Naturally, they could have done something useful with the space. Placing a SD (or micro SD) card slot in this location comes to mind. Possibly, this was going to hold the SIM for the 3G version that was never released. Regardless, it is still odd.

-John Havlik

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Cisco Valet Connector Constant Reboot

Posted by in General

A few Sunday mornings back, I was woken up by the dog, who was in a quite agitated state. The media center had been trying to come out of hibernation to check TV schedules and do the other miscellaneous stuff that brings it out of sleep. However, it kept rebooting instantly out of the BIOS. Every time the memory check passed, it would beep, annoying the dog, who passed the annoyance onto me.

Unplugging the Cisco Valet Connector allowed the media center to boot properly. Cool, well not really, as a WiFi adapter should not keep a computer from booting. The fact that the Valet Connector shows up as a USB flash drive before becoming a WiFi adapter seemed odd to be before. And, I’m placing part of the blame on that behavior for this constant rebooting. To resolve the issue, I removed USB flash drives from the boot list in the motherboard’s BIOS.

When the media center finally booted, I noticed another issue. The Valet forgot that it was supposed to be in WiFi adapter mode. This one was my fault. If you do not complete the device setup using the included easy setup software, the device may not remember its state after reboot. Awesome, right? After completing the setup within the included easy setup software I have not had either issue reappear for a week now.

-John Havlik

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