If you've never visited the site before, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed, or create an email subscription using the link at the top. Enjoy the site, and thanks for visiting!
WordPress › Blog » WordPress 2.6
WordPress 2.6 is now available. Hit the link above for lots of info on what’s new.
I’ve updated my hosted blogs, so if you’re reading this and I host a blog for you, you’re good to go. If you’re reading this, you know me, and I don’t host a blog for you (but you’d like one) let me know…I’m sure we can sort something out…
As for my favourite new features, there are a few. The Press This bookmarklet is extremely nifty, and auto senses whether you’re posting about a link, quote, picture, or video. Hopefully it’ll ramp up my blogging habits a bit on ITF. I might even create an asides type category for short and sweet posts. What say you, reader?
To use it, drag the Press This link out of the Write Post page onto your toolbar, or make it a bookmark, then just click it to include a link to the page you’re currently viewing. Or, select some text, and click it to include text and link. Or try it on YouTube…or…you get the idea.
Also there’s nifty theme previewing if you fancy trying new themes out, post revisioning (which will be handy for CMS and magazine style sites, like Eurocritics), and Google Gears support (hit the turbo button in the top right of your admin). Gears support looks nice, and does provide a nice speed boost. If I’d had it before moving away from my former hosts I might not have moved. But then I lurve WebFaction, so I’m glad I did.
Last couple: image captions (coming soon to ITF), and better image editing support in the editor are very welcome, as are the usual bug fixes and performance tweaks.
Another very solid release from the team. 2008 is certainly WordPress development’s most successful year to date.
I think this is round 3, not sure now, lost count.
I’ve just called Carphone Warehouse again (on 0870 087 0168). I spoke to Alan, in Preston, who was extremely pleasant on the phone. In fairness to them, everyone I’ve spoken to have been very polite and efficient. I just think they’re getting nonsense information from other sources and nobody really knows what’s happening.
Anyway, Alan - in Preston - said that my details were all stored on their systems, and that said systems had sent the information off to O2, but that the aforementioned systems hadn’t had a response from O2. In the words of Alan Partridge “a-ha!”.
So, Alan (did I mention he was in Preston?) sent the details to O2 again, and also sent them via email. This took a few minutes while I endured the cheesy piano rendition of “Man On The Run” for the millionth time, but Alan returned and said he’d sent everything off.
Apparently, O2 have sent an email to Carphone Warehouse assuring them that by 1pm today, all Friday customers will be activated. They’ve said the backlog will be cleared today, and as there are no more iPhones to sell, so no new activations, things should settle down.
I asked how this affects me, if my details were botched and are only just being sent across, and Alan didn’t really have an answer. He said they usually advise 2-24 hours for a new connection, but that with the chaos lately he didn’t know how long it might take.
So, I’ve not been back to my local store yet, but I’m going to pay them a visit at lunchtime, and see if I can get rid of the nasty Jawbone thing I bought. I’m sure it’s a perfectly good headset if you’ve got a compatible head. My head, it seems, it distinctly incompatible.
Here’s a brief update on the iPhone situation.
I called O2 again, and spoke to Nicola. She used various details to try to locate any record of an account, and can’t find anything. Not using email, surname, or post code. Least of all using the mobile phone number I’ve been given.
She’s said it sounds like Carphone Warehouse haven’t sent my details across, because orders that are falling foul of the delayed activation are visible on their systems. She’s advised that I should wait until tomorrow morning (like I’ve got a choice) and call Carphone Warehouse again. I’m thinking of getting a bed down there. There’s a McDonalds next door and everything!
She also said that new activations are taking 2-3 working days. So it sounds like I’m looking at Wednesday before I’m up and running, even if someone grows a brain tomorrow.
In the words of the immortal James Dalton - Patrick Swayze, Road House (1989) - “Be nice, until it’s time to not be nice”. I think the time to “not be nice” has come. Tomorrow, it’s Kung-Fu Warehouse, brothers and sisters. Skadoosh.
Update: I’ll keep this post updated until there’s something significant to report. Carphone Warehouse’s phone system asks for your mobile phone number when you call them, which their system doesn’t recognise, even though it’s their receipt that’s got the number on!
I’ll bet there are a few stories like this around, but here’s mine. I’m actually typing this up to send to Garry over at Autumn Skies, so if you’re reading this and are in a similar boat, do let him know.
I ordered an iPhone from Carphone Warehouse on Thursday afternoon, but heard nothing. I called them Friday night, and they told me there was a problem with the orders, and they weren’t going through. The best thing I could do, they said, was to go to the store on Friday morning if I really wanted one.
I got up at 5:30am on Friday, headed off down to the local Carphone Warehouse, and joined the other person in line. Nice chap, totally non-techie, non-gadgety, but loves his iPhone. Fair enough.
By the time the store opened at 9:02, there were twenty people in line. The first four of us got 16gb iPhones. Well, number four was told there were only three 16gb devices in stock when he got to the tills, despite earlier being told there were four. After complaining, the fourth device magically appeared. It had “accidentally” been placed in the reserved bin. Later, the assistant manager would actually confess, and reveal it had been put by for a colleague in another store. Naughty.
I left the store at 10:10. It took over and hour for O2’s credit checking systems to catch up. I paid my money (quite a bit actually, 16gb phone, Jawbone headset, new case), and took my new device to work. I didn’t play with it at work, it stayed in the car.
Around lunchtime, I got an email from Carphone Warehouse telling me my web order was shipping. I called them, and was told they couldn’t see my order. Nothing they could do. I called the store, who could see the order, and called their retail helpline to get it cancelled. Which they did.
I got home and tried to activate my phone. I couldn’t even pull down the iTunes 7.7 update from Apple as their servers were, at that point, crumbling under the stress of launching in the US (and 21 other countries).
Finally I got iTunes downloaded, installed, and tried to activate my phone. After three attempts, the iTunes part went OK. The phone flashed up a message saying “a signal is required to complete activation message”. Odd, as I had no service.
Brothers and sisters, April 9th is a day to get naked.
And tempted as I was to take a photo of myself like these fine looking specimens, I figured I’d just drop the stylesheet and post up a few lines. Aren’t you glad?
CSS Naked Day is intended to show your appreciation of the wonders of CSS. Without it, well, you can see how the site looks 
And it’s pretty awesome, in my humble opinion.
Earlier tonight, it was announced that WordPress 2.5 has finally been released, after what seems like an awfully long time. Automattic skipped the 2.4 release, and packed as much tasty php-powered goodness into this release as they could possible manage. Have a look at the post on the dev blog to see what I mean.
Is There Food, and all the blogs I host, have been updated to 2.5. As usual, if you come across anything weird, please let me know and I’ll try to fix it.
To weigh in on what I think of 2.5: I love it. I posted on the wp-testers mailing list the other day to say that, after a short period of adjustment, it’s really hard to go back to 2.3 (I’ve been using 2.5 in beta and RC form for weeks on other sites).
Is it niggle free? No. But then no release with changes this massive was ever going to be. Will things improve? Absolutely. There’ll be plugins or hacks to resolve the majority of complaints people have, and maybe 2.6 (or 2.5.1) will make some more alterations.
But for me, 2.5 is a massive leap in the right direction. I recommend you upgrade, or get someone who knows what they’re doing to do it for you 
