Wordpress 2.5 is out, and we’re ready!
After some delays, our friends at Automattic have finally released version 2.5 of their flagship product, Wordpress. We’ve been watching their progress closely and making a few tweaks along the way. Today, I’m happy to announce that the latest version of the Defensio plugin works just fine with WP 2.5!
So upgrade without fear, we’ll still be there. Happy blogging!
14 Responses to “Wordpress 2.5 is out, and we’re ready!”
oh, what about DRUPAL!!
By dave on Apr 1, 2008
Dave: a few members of the community volunteered to make a Drupal plugin but nothing came out of this yet. If you want to write it, it’d be great. Our API is pretty straightforward too.
By Carl Mercier on Apr 1, 2008
Since upgrading to WP 2.5, Defensio has yet to make a connection to Defensio servers. I have 2000+ comments that could not be verified because Defensio was unreachable. Running the latest version of Defensio plugin 1.5.2.
By Derek on Apr 3, 2008
Derek: hmmm, we haven’t seen that behavior. I have upgraded both my personal and Defensio’s blog to 2.5 and everything’s running smoothly.
You mean that absolutely no connection (as in NONE) have been made to Defensio? That’s odd. Can you send us an email with more details and possibly admin credentials to your blog, I’d like to investigate that further. Thanks.
By Carl Mercier on Apr 3, 2008
Derek: I see that your blog is hosted on Media Temple. This host had problems connecting to Defensio in the past (http://forum.defensio.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=11&page=1). I wonder if the same problem is happening again?
By Carl Mercier on Apr 3, 2008
It may be a Media Temple thing resurfacing but prior to WP 2.5 I had Defensio loaded and running w/o any hiccups.
By Derek on Apr 3, 2008
Update: Seems to be working now. Ever so slowly checking each individual spam against the Defensio database. Phew… I was really worried for a second. I really didn’t want to go back to Akismet with its somewhat shoddy spam identification accuracy.
By Derek on Apr 3, 2008
Derek: that’s odd. We didn’t change anything on our end, I swear!
I wonder if DNS problems are frequent at MT. Next time, try to SSH into your account (if you can) and do a ping to api.defensio.com.
By Carl Mercier on Apr 4, 2008
It has resolved itself I guess. SSH in and ping api.defensio.com works just fine.
By Derek on Apr 4, 2008
After reading a few very positive reviews, I’m going to give defensio a try. I’ve just installed it and, as a plugin coder, I have a few comments about the plugin itself:
- you could probably reduce the plugin overhead: basically, everything is included (the very beginning of defensio.php) no matter if you’re in the blog, in the admin area, posting a comment, installing/activating the plugin for the first time, etc… waste of resources. Conditional includes look like a much better solution to me, especially considering the size of your plugin
- similarly, you’re adding the defensio-related CSS & JS no matter what admin page is viewed. Will break someone’s javascript on their plugin page, guaranteed.
- instead of hooking defensio_key_not_set_warning() to ‘admin_footer’ then attempt to position it via CSS, use ‘admin_notices’ which is intended to display admin messages like “Defensio API key missing”. This will avoid this kind of mess-up with admin themes.
- Although it’s harmless, I don’t see the point of adding 2 identical submenu entries (one under “Settings”, the other under “Plugin”)
- defensio_render_html_head() could use wp_enqueue_script() to make sure no javascript is added twice
Overall I’m quite confused by the size of the plugin. Since most of the thing it does are on defensio’s servers side, how come it’s so *big*? Compare to the tininess of Akismet, there’s something that looks wrong. Didn’t really dove into your code, but, don’t know, really looks big.
By Ozh on Apr 6, 2008
Screenshot URL escaped from previous comment: http://i30.tinypic.com/168haqg.gif
By Ozh on Apr 6, 2008
Ozh, thanks for your comment.
In order to keep backward compatibility with older versions of Wordpress, we had to go through a few (ugly) hacks. We’ve recently been working on improving the plugin, so I’ll definitely forward your recommendations along to the person in charge. The new admin theme in WP 2.5 changed a bit and a few things are still not looking perfect; we’re also working on that.
As far as the size goes, well, our plugin is definitely doing much more than Akismet, and it translates in the number of lines of code. We have a complex quarantine view with ajax calls, our own database table where we store metadata, support for OpenID, etc.
By Carl Mercier on Apr 7, 2008
Are you aware that the Defensio SPAM page under comments is messed up (JS and CSS wise) in IE7?
By Matt on Apr 12, 2008
Matt: We didn’t know. We’ll take a look. If you could send us more details by email (support at defensio.com), that’d be appreciated. Thanks!
By Carl Mercier on Apr 12, 2008