WordPress 2.8.3 Released

With WordPress 2.8 out the door less than two months, minor updates have been coming in steadily, solving small bugs and security vulnerabilities. The latest bug-fixing release, 2.8.3, finalizes some fixes initially introduced in 2.8.1 while also solving some other minor bugs. The new version comes barely two weeks since the latest release, while work on the next major version, 2.9, is starting to get traction with a final feature list shaping up.

"Unfortunately, I missed some places when fixing the privilege escalation issues for 2.8.1. Luckily, the entire WordPress community has our backs. Several folks in the community dug deeper and discovered areas that were overlooked. With their help, the remaining issues are fixed in 2.8.3. Since this is a security release, upgrading is highly recommended," Ryan Boren, lead developer for WordPress, wrote.

The biggest fix was the security bugs regarding privileges escalation, which have now been ironed out. Other fixes involved several issues with the comments system, including a logic fault in the edit_comment_link() method, another issue with editing comments and one with quotes in comments. A bug in the "plugin-install.css" was also resolved and, finally, the difference between using$_REQUEST and $_GET/$_POST was fixed. Not such a long list, but this was just a minor release, with the previous 2.8.2 having fixed roughly the same number of features.

Meanwhile, the results of a survey done by WordPress developers to find what features were the most requested for the upcoming major release, 2.9, have come in and some 3,500 users have had their say. The most desired new feature was a standalone photo album that would greatly improve photo management in the blogging platform and the feature is already being worked on as a Summer of Code project. Other popular requests are also being under development or discussed. The full results can be viewed here.