If you’re looking to create your own plugin and want to get it noticed, it’s recommended that you publish and host it in the directory. Here’s a quick guide to take you through the steps of publishing a plugin on a Windows based system.

1. Download and install Tortoise SVN
2. Request an SVN repository using the Add Your Plugin page (It may take few hours to get your request approved).
3. Once you receive the SVN credentials you will be able to access the repository from http://svn.wp-plugins.org/plugin_name.
4. Checkout the blank repository from your svn account. (This contains three empty folders – branches, tag, trunk). To do this, right click the folder you want to Checkout to and select SVN Checkout.

   

   Enter the URL of your plugin repository and click OK.

   

   Once the process is complete you will see the three folders that have been added.

   

5. Copy the plugin files into the trunk folder and create a readme.txt file if one is not already present.



6. Commit your changes by right clicking the folder and selecting SVN commit.



7. You will be prompted for your authentication details, enter your WordPress.org/bbPress.org username and password (the same one you use on the forums).



8. Now create a tag. Right click on the trunk folder and in the context menu go to TortoiseSVN and choose Branch/Tag. In the dialogue box change the url path from /trunk to /tags/0.1 (or whatever you have stated as the stable tag  in the readme file.



9. Run SVN update on the tags folder (Right click the tags folder and select SVN Update).

Committing a modified plugin / new version

1. Make modifications to the trunk folder.
2. Change the stable tag value in the readme file to the latest stable version, e.g. 0.1.1
3. SVN commit the latest changes in the trunk.
4. Tag the new version (see step 8 above) .
5. SVN update the tags folder.

Aside from what has been described as a “very important security fix” there were over 70 additional bug fixes, most of which I hadn’t come across myself although had heard of some troubles encountered by others.

Unlike my previous upgrade this time I just switched the subversion repository and ran the web based update script, shaving off an additional few minutes and therefore upgrading my install in under two minutes from start to finish!

svn switch http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.5.1/

Luckily everything seems to be working fine and I have faith in the WordPress releases, but if you want to be more cautious you should probably backup your database first.

As Paul’s response to my previous upgrade post mentions, any web scripts can be rolled back using svn.

It is highly recommended that you carry out the upgrade as it is said that the vulnerability to 2.5 will be made public shortly.

There is also to introduction of additional security in the form of secret keys, introducing randomness into the cryptographic functions used for cookies.

Simply obtain a secret key and paste the code into your wp-config.php file along with the other defined variables.

Paul went through the upgrade steps on his blog, but thought I would go through them here as I went along.

Unfortunately when I initially installed WordPress I committed it directly to the root directory unlike the more popular location of the subdirectory /blog, but not to worry.

Here are the steps I followed to complete the update:

# Backup the current directory...
cp -Rp http httpBACKUP
# Create a new location for the update...
mkdir httpNEW
# Checkout the latest release from the repository...
svn co http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.5/ httpNEW/
# Copy across any custom changes/themes and config file...
cp -Rp http/wp-con* httpNEW/
# Copy over the .htaccess file..
cp -Rp http/.htaccess httpNEW/
# Delete the old directory...
rm -rf http
# Rename/move the update to the original location...
mv httpNEW/ http
# Switch the SubVersion Repository...
svn switch http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.5/
# Finally, run the browser based update script...
http://yourdomain/wp-admin/upgrade.php

And that’s all there is to it really, now every time I need to update WordPress I can simply copy and paste the above commands.

define: blogger – “The author of a blog”.

Over at Fubra they like to encourage – or nag – all employees to write their own blog and be part of the ever increasing population of online bloggers.

Until now I have been putting off the process of setting up my own blog in the hope that one would just magically appear or allow me to create one with minimum effort.

Thanks to the wonders of Subversion and WordPress I was able to quickly and easily install a blog on my vserver that Fubra have kindly supplied.

It can’t really get much easier than running the following cmd to checkout from the WordPress repository:

svn co http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/branches/2.3/ .

All that was left was to come up with a quick and simple design to get away from the default template theme.

So there you have it, the kick start to my future in blogging.

Oh, and a quick thank you to my boss Paul for backing me into a corner and pressuring me into this whole blogging malarkey.