I've posted a new update to the Semiologic theme.

It works around a couple of niggles in WP's FTP-based Filesystem Classes that prevented the custom.css editor from working on some sites.

This morning's plugin releases and updates:

• Google Analytics v.4.0
• Nav Menus v.2.0
• Search Reloaded v.4.0.2
• Semiologic Affiliate v.2.0
• Semiologic Fixes v.1.9
• Version Checker v.2.0 RC4

Version Checker RC4 is the only one worth a note: it switches the dev feed over to this site's WordPress feed.

I just released five minor plugin updates, that fix a minor quirks in each of the plugins:

• Autotag v.3.0.1
• Author Image v.4.0.1
• Autolink URI v.2.0.1
• External Links v.4.0.1
• Fancy Excerpt v.3.0.1

The details are in the plugins' respective change logs.

Sometimes, the obvious gets overlooked… I had bumped the version a few weeks back to RC1, but it never occurred to me that the old version API was returning a server error…

Anyway, in case you're running Semiologic Pro 5.7.1 and just saw the prompt to upgrade to 6.0 RC1 in your dashboard:

• We've been in beta/RC for nearly two months now, making this upgrade quite safe from a stability standpoint
• The recent hype about WP security issues do not affect you unless you allow users to register on your site
• RC2 is around the corner, so you'll probably want to delay upgrading by a few more days (unless, of course, you allow users to register)

Please see the forum thread for the complete change log. And enjoy.

So… The Semiologic theme, Reloaded got updated to v.0.8 RC4.

There was a short-lived and undocumented RC3 in between, so the changes described below are those since RC2.

What prompted me to do them: I was recently browsing a blogger.com website, trying to find an couple of old posts in order to place a comment in a forum. The navigability of its archives was lacking, to say the least. Completely inexistent, in fact. WordPress is arguably better, since there are at least next/previous page links, but checking my own site revealed it definitely wasn't that suitable either.

With all this in mind, the key changes in the Semiologic theme (the first set also applies to the deprecated theme, for consistency in the widgets)…

First and foremost, the "Entry: Category" widget's caption has an expanded argument list. You can now display the post's date at your option, with a link to the monthly archives. The number of comments on the post (or an add a comment link) also made its appearance.

Post Dates

Next, post lists now have page numbers for easier navigability, rather than mere next/previous page links:

Posts Navigation

Lastly, date archives are sort by date ascending by default, and feature top and bottom navigation so as to allow for quick browsing from a date to the next:

Date Navigation

Semiologic Pro users who use Version Checker should be able to upgrade under Appearance / Themes.

Two more key changes are related to my wanting to re-open comments because the development feed is moving to this blog instead of my twitter account.

Basically, the way comments are displayed (this one only applies to the new theme): the comment's header now flows above the comment, and the gravatar is larger:

Comments Format

Along the same lines, the space assigned to the comment form's fields' labels were shortened, and the checkbox to subscribe to comments (when the plugin is enabled) was moved further up:

Comments Form

The key change is a font size increase in the Semiologic Reloaded theme. While reading and rewriting docs since the beginning of the month, I've found things hard to read due to its small size. It's now using 15px across the board, instead of 14px give or take depending on the font used.

After upgrading you'll need to edit or recreate the "Blog: Header" widget (in the "Before the Entries" panel), as the "Archives" caption has changed. Be sure to do the same for the "Entry: Category" widget if you wish to have links to monthly archives or comments at the end of your posts.

In case you want to stick to a smaller font, browse Appearance / Custom CSS to change it as you see fit. But as noted further up, if I found it hard to read my own site, the odds are your readers find yours hard to read as well — ask them before reverting to something smaller.

I've published several plugin and theme updates in the past couple days. Smart Links RC8 and XML Sitemaps 1.5 in particular. I'd advise users of those two plugins to upgrade them.

For those who are interested in the gory details, I was running into weird smart link bugs on this site, whereby smart links in posts were occasionally not found. It took me about two weeks to weed through each one.

Scanning through my site's error logs, looking for "MySQL has died" types of error (to my despair, none were present) revealed a rather critical niggle in XML Sitemaps. I introduced it two or so weeks ago, so be sure to grab that one.

The two issues fixed in Smart Links 4.0 RC8 probably don't affect most users, but they certainly did affect my own site enough to mandate that they get fixed:

• It no longer fails to catch two links to the same entry with different references — e.g. "smart-links" and "Smart Links"
• It no longer caches context-sensitive data

The second point was quite tricky to identify. Only when I worked on the Semiologic theme's archives pages' navigability (more on this later) did I finally understand what was going on: the WP workflow interfered with caching when Fancy Excerpt — or WP, for that matter — was generating excerpts.

Initially, I had resorted to caching based on whether the content or an excerpt is being generated (RC5 to RC7), but it occurred to me this afternoon that it wouldn't prevent a multi-page post to cache junk. RC8 introduces a context-free cache by changing the workflow a bit.

The plugin is now fixed as far as I can tell from my own site. I'll give it another couple of days of testing before I give it a final go for it.