It’s time to upgrade your WordPress software to version 2.5.x (the current version is 2.5.1; that may change if you read this later). I wrote about why you need to upgrade your WordPress software on my Business Protector blog, so I won’t cover it here. Please do take a moment to read that post; it’s important that you understand the issues.
I like to make blog posts via email because it’s almost automatic. In fact, I’ve created a crude prototype for a system that makes it very easy to blog by email and am actually using it to write this blog post. Once I’m finished, I simply click a button, which takes me to a “Success!” page that has a link to the page on my blog that, by visiting it, tells WordPress to take any emails that are coming in to my secret blog by email account and post them to my blog. So with just a couple of clicks, I can blog from any web browser in the world without having to enter my WordPress passwords or access my admin panel.
The reason I started this was because I didn’t like the way that standard email clients wrap lines at the 60 column mark. This made my posts look funny when they were posted. After testing several components, I ended up writing my own — and that one doesn’t wrap lines. The rest is just nice features to make it easier to use.
The new version of WordPress adds an additional feature to the Blog By Email mix. First, you still need a “secret” email account to which you will email your blog posts and you’ll need to both create that account on your web server as well as set up WordPress to access that account. Nothing new there. What’s new is that these posts are held for moderation and not posted until somebody with administrator rights logs in to your blog’s admin panel and approves it.
That’s a nice security feature but it’s not something I want because it breaks the way that I want to blog. Thankfully, there’s a work-around — which you should implement ONLY if you are willing to “break” this additional security feature.
Simply create a new user account in your WordPress admin area and use the email address that you’ll be sending the email from as the email address for that account — and then make that account an administrator account. Once you’ve done that, it will automatically make your posts active without being held for moderation when you visit the “post my email” page.
Again, PLEASE upgrade your WordPress software to the latest version.
I’ll make a post on one of my blogs “soon” that will tell you how to easily upgrade your WordPress blog. I can do it in less than three minutes per blog — and I use a dialup connection. Wanna know how I do it? Then check back soon (or even better, sign up for my blog announcement list so you don’t miss that post!).
Thanks for listening,
Tom
Post a Comment