The release of Geeklog 1.5.0 Beta 1 by the Geeklog Team marked a new milestone for the open source blogging system. Although the software is still in development, Geeklog's developers hope to release the final version of Geeklog 1.5 on May 26th. The end of May marks the beginning of the coding phase for Google's Summer of Code 2008. To mark the occasion, Geeklog is highlighting the work done by students participating in last year's Summer of Code that is going into this new release. How cool is that!

Changes found in Geeklog 1.5.0 incorporates the following projects implemented during the 2007 Google Summer of Code:

• New user-friendly install script
• New Configuration Graphical User Interface
• New Webservices API based on the Atom Publishing Protocol

Blog Herald: Bloggers are not gone for long, though some manage to stay away a year or so. Typically, all return for more, and what they bring with them is fascinating to watch.

Complete Story

S9Y.org: Serendipity 1.3.1 has been released. This is a bugfix and security related release, basically adressing a potential XSS issue within the Top Referrers plugin as well as hypothetical XSS issues with the installer.

Complete Story

eWeek: "With the recent release of WordPress 2.5, the popular open-source blogging application has greatly improved its already good administration and blogging management interface and has made it much easier for bloggers to add widgets and do extensive customizations of their blogs. That's right, the best blogging platform just got better."

Complete Story

A couple months ago, Technorati announced that users of Wordpress needed to upgrade to the latest available version (now at Version 2.5). This week, Technorati announced that blogs remaining vulnerable to identified security exploits may no longer be indexed by their service.

Because of this ongoing problem, we're discontinuing processing crawls of blogs that exhibit common symptoms of being compromised. We strongly recommend upgrading your WordPress installation. Even if you haven't been afflicted by a compromise, by the time you are aware that you have been a number of negative consequences may have already occurred (for instance, flagged spam by Technorati, Google or Yahoo!) -- this has been reported by many WordPress users.

By not upgrading your software, the search engine services may block your site from being listed. I can't think of a greater incentive to update your content management software to the latest version than the threat of being delisted. This is a bold move by Technorati. I'm personally glad Technorati is taking a stand against sites hosting older versions of Wordpress with the known security holes. In my opinion, there really isn't a good reason you shouldn't be upgrading your Wordpress site to the latest version.

Wordpress.org: WordPress 2.5, the culmination of six months of work by the WordPress community, people just like you. The improvements in 2.5 are numerous, and almost entirely a result of your feedback: multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages.

Complete Story

LifeType (formerly known as pLog) dropped off my radar scope some time ago. I'm not sure why, but I think at the time I had the desire to concentrate more on full featured content management systems and less on just blogging applications. So, like catching up with old classmate, it's nice to see this Linux.com article focusing on LifeType:

LifeType is a full-featured GPL blogging platform designed for use with a MySQL database and PHP...LifeType is perfect for site owners who want to administer multiple blogs and users through one back end. Even if you have only one blog and one user, you'll appreciate the features and flexibility of LifeType.

You can read the complete story at Linux.com, Want a blog? Get a LifeType.

This is a tough time for blog reading junkies like me. I like to spend some of my time in the evenings winding down by reading CMS related blogs. Well, it seems some of my favorite blogs have decided to take a vacation. For example, many of the working group blogs found at Joomla.org are down.

No problem, right? I can can always visit some of the blogs I have listed in my blogroll. However, you'll also find Jeff Eaton's blog (Drupal) has been down for some time. Recently, JoeJoomla's blog has also been offline. Perhaps, it is time I find something else to do for relaxation...like talk to the wife. That's a new idea...and a good one too.

Serendipty 1.3 has been released. This new version of the blogging applications introduces 41 changes. Not only are enhancements and additional features introduced, but also changes to address a nasty cross site scripting issue (security exploit).

Some of the more significant features and enhancements for Serenditpity 1.3 include:

• The karma rating plugin has been upgraded to support nice, CSS-based rating graphics (see this post) and an overall rehaul on the its coding.
• Make the Spartacus plugin be able to use FTP upload, a workaround for SafeMode PHP restrictions. Also add a remote backend for plugin update checks.
• Import scripts for phpNuke and lifetype.

"I recently asked if you were ready for WordPress 2.5, but let’s go through the steps to prepare your blog for upgrading to the new version next week."

Complete Story found via Weblog Tools Collection