The WordPress team announced a security upgrade to 2.6.5 that fixes an exploit only affects IP-based virtual servers running on Apache 2.x.  Fortuanately, for Blogs About clients, this only affects our clients on only one of our servers.  If you are hosted on our Kiwi server (IP 76.74.159.114), and are running WordPress on your account, you will want to upgrade to WordPress 2.6.5.  Our Kiwi server is running Apache 2.2.9.  ( The IP of the server you are on is listed in your account CPanel, in the left menu - if is 76.74.159.114 - you’re on Kiwi)

The security issue is an XSS exploit discovered by Jeremias Reith that fortunately only affects IP-based virtual servers running on Apache 2.x. If you are interested only in the security fix, copy wp-includes/feed.php and wp-includes/version.php from the 2.6.5 release package.

2.6.5 contains three other small fixes in addition to the XSS fix. The first prevents accidentally saving post meta information to a revision. The second prevents XML-RPC from fetching incorrect post types. The third adds some user ID sanitization during bulk delete requests. For a list of changed files, consult the full changeset between 2.6.3 and 2.6.5.

Get the WordPress 2.6.5 files from the official WordPress site.

Our client, Anita Campbell from SMBTrendWire wrote in with a valuable resource that I want to share with you. It’s an article written by Aaron Wall at SEOBook.com called WordPress Blog Hacking Checklist. Aaron’s article points out some great pointers and tips on how to find out if your WordPress blog was hacked, and what to do about it if you find out that it was.

This is also a perfect time for me to emphasize how important it is to keep your WordPress software upgraded to the most recent version. Old versions of WordPress are vulnerable for exploitation, simply due to the fact that the older versions have an old code base that is no longer being developed. This means that bugs and/or vulnerabilities that existed in old versions were fixed in the new versions - - so, if you’re using old versions… you’re also using the bugs and vulnerabilities, too!

Take control of your WordPress blog and don’t let his happen to you by upgrading as soon you can after you hear about a new WordPress version release. For those of you keeping up - WordPress 2.6.3 is the most recent version available right now. WordPress 2.7 is due for release on 11/10/08.

I use this handy plugin that allows me to easily, and quickly, upgrade my WordPress blogs from within my WordPress administration panel - - no uploading, no configuring, no messing with the file structure at all: WordPress Automatic Upgrade. Give it a shot - it will make your WordPress experience much more pleasant!

Here it is in all its glory Ain’t it pretty??

For those of us who *just* got used to the new dashboard that came with version 2.5 - prepare yourselves for yet another dashboard change for 2.7. It’s refined. It’s friendly. It’s really beautiful, I have to say!

Here’s a screenshot so you can see what I mean:

For those of you following my book, WordPress For Dummies - We are releasing the 2nd edition of the book that will shortly follow the release of WordPress 2.7. We (Wiley Publishing, my publishing company) are making every single attempt at closely following the actual WordPress development schedule as much as possible. It’s more than a job. . . it’s an adventure!