LnBlog 0.8.0, "No Need for TrackBack"

Well, it's finally here: LnBlog 0.8.0 is now available. You can grab it here or go to the download page.

Several files have been removed in this release, so to upgrade, you should upload the new directory to your server and then copy/move your old userdata folder into it. Before that, though, you might want to take a look at the new system.ini file, just to see what the new options are. That part is optional, though.

Lots of changes and lots of bug fixes in this release. I won't bore you with all (or even most) of the specifics. That's what the changelog is for. However, for this version, I did do some extra testing and even documented the outstanding problems in this release. Fortunately, most of them are relatively small.

There are bunches of new features. First, LnBlog now has support for Pingbacks. You can turn on and off both the sending and receiving of Pingbacks on a per-entry basis. Note that there is an AllowLocalPingback setting in the entryconfig section of the system.ini file. If you set this to 0, then LnBlog will not send Pingback pings to enrties on your

Second, there's a new standard plugin: the TrackbackValidator. Basically, this checks the URLs of incoming TrackBack pings to see if they link to your blog. This works on the principle that legitimate TrackBacks almost always link to you, but TrackBack spam almost never does. So far, it seems to have completely eliminated my TrackBack spam problem.

Third, there's now a standard profile.ini file. This adds a custom "contact me" link field for your profile. This field takes an HTML link as its input. If this is given, then your e-mail address will not be displayed in your profile. You can use this with the ContactForm plugin.

Fourth, LnBlog now has simple Podcast support. Basically, this means you can add an enclosure URL to your entries and it will be included as an RSS enclosure in the RSS 2.0 feed (if you have one). You can either enter the RSS attributes directly, specifying url="http://somehost/file" length="12345" type="audio/mpeg", or, if the file in on the same server as LnBlog, you can give the URL and let LnBlog compute the file size and MIME type. Note that you can also use LBCode-style relative URIs, giving only the name for files in the entry directory, or a path relative to the blog root.

Last, I've reworked the post editor, including a lot more JavaScript. I've condensed the LBCode editor buttons, added a drop-down menu to add topics, and hidden the extra settings in an expandable box. I think it's much easier to use now. Also note that there's an EditorOnBottom setting to the entryconfig section of the system.ini file. Although it's not acutally in the default file, the default value is 0, which puts the editor buttons above the text area. Add this setting with the value of 1 to put them below.

I think that pretty much sums up the big things for this release. As usual, all forms of feedback are welcome. If you have any comments, find any bugs, or whatever, feel free to leave a comment, e-mail me, or whatever.

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