Improving your plugin – Changelogs

We’ve recently made some changes to help improve the communication between plugin authors and plugin users about the changes that are made between versions.

We feel that all software should have a changelog that details, at a high level, what changes have been made in each version so that the user can make an informed decision about when to upgrade and how much testing they should do with their site.

In order to make this an easy and open communication channel we have added support for a Changelog section in the plugins readme.txt file.  This changelog information is then displayed as a separate tab in the plugin directory and also in the back end of your WordPress blog when you view the details on a new version of a plugin.

The new section is formatted as follows:


== Changelog ==

= 1.0 =
* A change since the previous version.
* Another change.

= 0.5 =
* List versions from most recent at top to oldest at bottom.

We would also like to recommend that you also provide meaningful log messages when you commit changes to the subversion repository for your plugin so that people who want to dig further into your changes can see why things are changing (At the moment is seems a large number of plugin authors leave this field blank which isn’t very helpful).

WordPress 2.8.2

WordPress 2.8.2 fixes an XSS vulnerability. Comment author URLs were not fully sanitized when displayed in the admin. This could be exploited to redirect you away from the admin to another site.  Download 2.8.2 or automatically upgrade from the Tools->Upgrade page of your blog’s admin.

Class Manager

Package:
Summary:
Auto-load classes based on XML definitions
Groups:
Author:
Description:
This class can be used to load classes automatically based on definitions read from a XML file.

It can parse a XML file and extract definitions from it that specify the paths from which given classes should be loaded.

The class registers an auto-loader function that uses the information from the XML definitions file to locate and load the scripts that contain the classes that are needed by the applications.


PgFieldNameFixer

Package:
Summary:
Fix names of PostgreSQL table columns
Groups:
Author:
Description:
This class can be used to fix names of PostgreSQL table columns.

It retrieves the names of the columns of a given PostgreSQL database table and checks if it has upper case letters, special characters spaces, or any other problematic characters.

The class renames the columns to remove or replace the problematic characters.


MCshoutbox 1,1

This shoutbox written in PHP and MySql, is a very easy way to give your website visitors the option to leave a short message or you can use it to chat. It features an easy installer file that will help you installing the MCshoutbox in seconds,a Control Panel,where you can administer all your tasks,like adding or deleting smilies ,thou at the installation you have a few smilies as default,or deleting the shouts that you don't like.A bad word filter that you can modify from the config.php file.You can also change the look of the MCshoutbox from the shout.css file.

Language Definition

Package:
Summary:
Retrieve application texts for multiple idioms
Groups:
Author:
Description:
This class can be used to retrieve application texts for multiple idioms.

It can load localized texts for a given idiom from a script that contains an associative array with the text translations.

The class retrieves the translation for a given text looking up the translation associative array.


URL Shorten using short.ie

Package:
Summary:
Create and retrieve short URLs using short.ie
Groups:
Author:
Description:
This class can be used to create and retrieve short URLs using short.ie.

It can sent an HTTP request to short.ie Web services API to create a short URL for another given URL.

The class can also do the opposite, i.e. get the original URL associated to a previously created short URL.


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