Mediacaster tackles podcasting and videocasting in a radically different manner form existing WordPress plugins. The underlying idea was to make it simple simple simple. And simple it became.

With Mediacaster, you upload media files from the WordPress admin interface. And you're done!

Special thanks go to Paul Colligan, Colin Collard and Sherman Hu for their invaluable input.

Enjoy.

Shortly after php 5.1 broke a throng of object oriented php scripts around the world, php 5.2 is about to bring carnage to scripts that rely on output buffers.

The symptom is simple and obvious to anyone who takes a few minutes to look into it: A blatant workflow error destroys variables before the output buffer is flushed. Adding to the insult, the php bug gardeners report that this is not a bug, but a feature.

Anyway, if you've the same problem I had, the fix involves moving the output buffer flush to the shutdown hook where it belongs:

# Fix php 5.2 output buffer problems
# Public domain, use and redistribute at will

if ( !function_exists('ob_end_flush_all') ) :
function ob_end_flush_all()
{
  while ( @ob_end_flush() );
}

register_shutdown_function('ob_end_flush_all');
endif;

'nuff grunting. The following WordPress plugins got an update as a result:

• Admin Menu
• Ad Spaces (obsolete)
• External Links
• Google Analytics

The following plugins were also updated recently:

• Bookmark Me
• Frame Buster
• Newsletter Manager
• Wysiwyg Editor (obsolete)

• The static front page plugin (obsolete) will let you pin a post to the front page
• The opt-in front page plugin will let you add posts to your front page on an opt-in basis rather than remove them on an opt-out basis

Note that the opt-in front page plugin de-facto enables you to use WordPress as a multi-blog platform:

• Set the default category's slug to "blog"
• Create one category per user, or topic, whatever (your "blogs")
• At your option, use the front page to opt-in all posts from all blogs, or as a separate blog with the more important stuff only