Another bug fix for the 2.9 versions, WP 2.9.2 was released this week to solve a security issue with deleted articles. Although deleted, they are still available, and unfortunately available to more than the original author! Download the latest version from within WP Admin, or go to their website.

For some time, Google has had a way to filter web pages, called Google Section Targeting – using it, pages can emphasize one part over another, and bloggers improve the focus of their site.

This can be important, especially for WordPress bloggers. For example, I once wrote on another blog about a dog ebook. For days afterwards, no matter what I wrote about, the Google ads remained for dog-related items!

On other occasions, I’ve received emails from people asking why they get ads for blogging items, although they never write …

Can you leave off the ending ?> tag in a PHP file?

Yes – and in fact, sometimes it’s the BEST thing to do.

I first heard of this in a newslist post, where a member insisted that this should be done rather than ending code with the traditional closing ?> tag.

There’s a very good reason for this in WordPress – if you leave it off your wp-config.php file, then you will avoid the dreaded ‘headers already sent’ message coming from a broken one:

Cannot modify header information …

Although I usually do my editing in a PHP editor like PSPad (and my new favorite, Notepad++), in preparation for a ActiveBlogging Report for September I decided to check out the PHP syntax highlighting editor now built into WordPress since 2.8.

And couldn’t find it.

The option, which used to be in the Appearance; Editor tab, is gone. In fact, it’s been gone since version 2.8.1, making it one of the most short-lived addons in WP history.

According to this page, the problem was due to ‘browser incompatibilities’.

Will there …

For quite some time, I’ve been recommending to my members a free source code editor called PSPad. Powerful, easy to use, and flexible (I especially like its long line editing – ideal for mySQL files – and its regular expression search and replace).

However, last week I tried a new editor, called Notepad++, found at SourceForge.

Why the fuss about editors? If you’re into source code twiddling, you know that Windows Notepad lacks for anything but a quick change – and word processors try to adjust the text in ways …