If you remember, WordPress 2.1 have introduced a built-in support for static frontpages. It caused some confusion initially, cause plugins which used to provide this functionality, stopped working completely. However, one you discover the feature, it’s very easy to use it.

There is one small problem though: is_home() function will not work for such static frontpages. To work around, you can use a plugin called is_frontpage. Here’s how its author, Martijn Stegink, describes it:

Version 2.1 of WordPress introduced native support for a static frontpage, which only has been supported by plugins before. When using this option however, the is_home function doesn’t work. This is because is_home is supposed to return true for the “blog” home page, where your most recent posts show up, not the “front” home page. An is_frontpage function is not available yet.

Therefore I whipped together this small plugin, called is_frontpage. Just download the plugin drop the file in your plugin folder, activate the plugin through the admin interface and the is_frontpage function is available to you. Use it just like the is_home function. It returns true if you’re at the frontpage you set, otherwise it returns false.

Taken from: Bos89.nl blog

Since upgrading to WordPress 2.1, I’ve finally switched back to using the built-in posts editor. One of the reasons for doing this was that I’ve found the options I so needed – text justification and HTML code cleanup – available through the advanced editor options panel.

Pressing Shift+Alt+V in Firefox or Alt+V in Internet Explorer transforms your Standard Editor panel:

… into something like this:

As you can see, there’s quite a few more options available, namely:

• paragraph formattion options (address, preformatted text, headings)
• underline your text
• full justification
• color selector for your text
• paste options for plain text and MS Word
• messy HTML code cleanup
• custom character button (charmap which allows you to click and insert any special character)

With all these options, there really is no reason to search for a better visual editor anymore. TinyMCE, which is the engine behind it, fits WordPress 2.1 like a glove, and makes editing your posts and pages a real pleasure.

It’s been a bit over two weeks since the release of the long awaited WordPress 2.1, codenamed Ella, and although I had upgraded one of my blogs the very next day when it became available, it’s only now that I finally have some time to post about it.

First of all, please go and read the official announcement of WordPress 2.1. Once you learn all the new features, you will immediately know whether it’s worth upgrading or not.

If you have WordPress 2.0.5 and anything below it – don’t even waste your time: it is time to upgrade! Get at least version 2.0.7, although in most cases you should be okay just jumping up to 2.1.

There are many wonderful features in 2.1, but I personally like the following ones:

• Autosave – an AJAX-powered feature to save you from losing any of your ingenious posts again. Quite often, having typed a page or two of text, you lose your text if your browser crashes or something else interferes before you hit the Save button – so this Autosave feature is a real saver (pun intended).
• New visual editor for posts and pages – a much better looking editor which has a different tabbed interface for easier switching between post and its HTML code and also includes a spell-checker. It pleases me a lot that all the dialog windows appear normally in Firefox 2 now, cause they definitely were buggy in WordPress 2.0.7.
• Admin area rework – it works much faster, thanks to more AJAX code and a cleaner CSS.
• Upload manager – for a much easier uploading and management of your media files

Hope I got you interested in at least giving it a try? Although if you haven’t done this by now, there’s hardly anything to convince you. As a last resort kind of a thing, I offer you a 10 Things You Should Know About WordPress 2.1 by Aaron Brazell at Technosailor. His article gives a great introduction to new features, and I think you will benefit from it even if you think you know enough.

Thanks to Thilak of TechBuzz, I've just learned about wp-admin/templates.php (part of your WordPress administration functionality) seems to be vulnerable to a rather nasty XSS exploit.

All the versions of WordPress prior to the future 2.0.6 are vulnerable to this issue, so it's highly recommended to back up your current templates.php file and replace it with a patched templates.php file (mind you, it's a WordPress 2.0.5 version of this file).

For more details, please read the WordPress Persistent XSS post by David Kierznowski who is credited with discovering this vulnerability. David has also posted a proof of concept for this exploit: WordPress template.php exploit.

For a structured description of this problem and a fix for it, please consult the relevant Security Focus discussion.