YouTube’s default video resolution is utter crap (not sure what the resolution is) and the existing higher quality video was 480×360. This new video resolution is 2-3 times as good as the previous “high quality” resolution.

To prove it, here’s some sample videos. The difference is more apparent if you click the fullscreen button, especially if you have a large monitor. Make sure to also have your speakers or headphones on to notice the improved audio quality.

YouTube Default (Low Quality)

YouTube’s Previous High Quality

YouTube’s New HD Quality

I have added support to my Video Quicktags plugin but note that if a video does not have the HD quality version available (99% or more don’t), it will drop back to the lowest quality format. As a result, I don’t recommend making the HD format your default on your blog. Instead, set the quality to 22 like this:

[youtube width="630" height="380" quality="22"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY[/youtube]

As of the time of this post, there is no such thing as WordPress 2.6.4. There also likely never will be as 2.7 will be the next version of WordPress assuming no emergency security fixes are needed before it comes out.

If you “upgraded” to “2.6.4″, then you have installed a fake trojan version (full description is here and here), you should delete your wp-admin and wp-includes folders and replace them with fresh copies downloaded from WordPress.org, the official site. If you have a recent database backup from before you upgraded, I would also advise dumping your database and using that backup just to be safe. You should also of course change all of your WordPress user account passwords.

Please be smart when it comes to WordPress! Because it’s so immensely popular, it has become the target of spoofers and hackers. Always type in the URL to the official site (rather than using a link and not paying attention) if you are trying to download the latest version.

WordPress Admin Bar will need a fair amount of work. Yes I’m aware it’s fairly broken at the moment.

The rest should probably work fine as they’re fairly simple. If not, please post on that plugin’s homepage with full details.

Note: the Twitter checkbox is Alex King’s Twitter Tools.

Note I have not had a chance yet to implement threaded or native paged comments yet.

DD32 used his awesome Googling skills to find this page in the TortoiseSVN docs that talks about automation. Turns out you can launch TortoiseSVN via the command line, have it update the folder(s), and then close when done. So here’s an updated guide.

These instructions are for Vista, but they are likely similar for XP.

1. If you don’t already have TortoiseSVN installed, download and install it.
2. If you don’t already have a copy of WordPress checked out to a folder, do it. WordPress’ in-development SVN URL is http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/trunk/
3. Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Task Scheduler
4. On the right, click on “Create Task” (not the basic one)
5. Fill out as follows. Paths will likely be different! Click for bigger versions and hover over the images (even when the lightbox is up) to display the comment text.

Done!

To test it to make sure it’s working properly, delete a few non-custom files from your SVN’ed folder. wp-trackback.php, xmlrpc.php, etc. are good test files. Then click on “Task Scheduler Library” in Task Scheduler (it’s on the left), click once on your new task, and then click “Run” on the right-hand side. If it’s working properly, the files your deleted will be restored.

This post has been deprecated as a better method was discovered. Please see this other post for details.

Full credit for figuring this out for me on IRC goes to Ryan McCue.

I have multiple WordPress alpha installs on my computer. I use them for development and it’s a “pain” having to constantly update them manually. So here’s an awesome solution to keep them up to date automatically.

These instructions are for Vista, but they are likely similar for XP.

1. Using TortoiseSVN or whatever your regular SVN client is, check out a copy of WordPress (or whatever) to a folder. WordPress’ in-development SVN URL is http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/trunk/.
2. Download and install CollabNet’s command line SVN client (no need for the server). You can use it alongside TortoiseSVN with no problems. If you don’t want to register on their site in order to download, use BugMeNot.
3. Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Task Scheduler
4. On the right, click on “Create Task” (not the basic one)
5. Fill out as follows. Paths will likely be different! Click for bigger versions and hover over the images (even when the lightbox is up) to display the comment text.

Done!

To test it to make sure it’s working properly, delete a few non-custom files from your SVN’ed folder. wp-trackback.php, xmlrpc.php, etc. are good test files. Then click on “Task Scheduler Library” in Task Scheduler (it’s on the left), click once on your new task, and then click “Run” on the right-hand side. If it’s working properly, the files your deleted will be restored.

UPDATE: 13-14 hours later I’m home. What an awesome day. I’d write more, but I’m burned out and not big on word words anyway. See me on Twitter as well as the #wordcampdx tag for a summary. So totally going next year.

• YouTube: Can now choose between high quality FLV and high quality MP4 formats.
• FLV: Bundled skins.
• FLV: Improvements on how custom colors are set.
• TinyMCE: Can now choose what line number to display the buttons on.
• TinyMCE: Automatic browser cache breaking when the plugin is (de)activated or the line number is changed.
• General: SWFObject calls moved to bottom of posts rather than theme footer.
• General: Admin notice warning about automatic plugin upgrade breaking SWF files, etc. (ASCII vs. binary).
• General: Ability to set custom feed text via settings page.
• General: Image pre-cache URL fix.
• General: Settings page improvements for users without Javascript.
• General: More translations and translators added to credits page.
• General: Redid admin warning message for users without the head hook.
• Flash: Aliased “kml_flashembed” shortcode and “movie” parameter now used if it’s there. This is to support Anarchy Media Player.
• Other various bug fixes.

If you find any bugs, please report them via my support forums or the plugin’s homepage. Thanks!

Someone just came into #wordpress asking for help modifying their theme a few hours ago. I found the URL to the theme’s website via their style.css and downloaded the theme in an attempt to help them figure out which file to edit to do what they wanted.

What I found inside the theme’s footer.php file though was tons of malicious code. The entire contents of the file was heavily encoded (it was encoded with gzinflate(), str_rot13(), and base64_decode() around 150 times) and a ton of eval()’s. Since I was curious what it was doing, I wrote some PHP to decode it without using the nasty (and unsafe) eval()’s and I finally ended up with the HTML for the footer file (I assume to stop people from removing the code) and some more crazy eval() PHP code to display links to websites.

Luckily the code was just there to insert links (although using such a theme is a good way to get banned from Google), the PHP could just as easily have stolen passwords and other things. Remember, themes are exactly like plugins — they can execute code. You wouldn’t download a random program off and Internet and run it on your PC, so why would you do it with a plugin or theme?

So please, only download themes and plugins from reputable sites such as WordPress.org. If in doubt, don’t use it.

And if you’re wondering, qualitywordpress.com is the site where the user got the theme from. I have only posted the URL to that website in an attempt to prevent people from using it’s themes. Do not use the themes from that website.

The vast, vast majority of pings sent from other sites are done via pingbacks, not via the old trackback system (I think I’ve gotten like 3 legitimate ones this year or something). However, spammers just love them to death and is pretty much the only ping system they use. So, I wrote this plugin a week or so ago and enabled it on my blog. I’ve gone from a few thousand spams a day to next 0-5 a day. A worthy tradeoff if you ask me (ignoring the couple legitimate ones a year to avoid literally hundreds of thousands of spams).

I also run Cookies For Comments to avoid regular comment spam. In order to post a cookie comment on my site, you must have stylesheets and cookies enabled. Since this is a personal website that isn’t mission critical, I can make that requirement.

Finally Defensio picks up any spams that make it though which are mainly pingbacks from spam blogs (aka splogs).

Spam problem solved, at least for now…

Please leave any comments about my “Disable Trackbacks” plugin on it’s homepage.

It’s a complete recode literally from scratch (essentially no old code was used) and is incredibly more powerful and feature filled than before.

The only way to really see all the new features is to try it yourself, but here’s a taste of it:

Please leave all feedback on the plugin’s homepage. Thanks.