So it now looks like the PodPress forum has over a dozen pages of spam where there should be information about the development of the PodPress plugin. The last message from the plugin author on the forum was nearly three weeks ago explaining why the release of the new version was already a week late, meaning that we are now four weeks late with a new version of the plugin.

Will we ever see a new PodPress plugin? If the current state of the forum is any indication, I wouldn’t hold my breath. If you are having any issues that can be fixed through the dozens of simple patches that people have come up with, that might be your only option unless Automattic puts out an interim release based on the fix that they’ve created. Though from what I’ve heard, they would only do such a thing if all other forms of communication broke down.

Originally posted on August 30, 2008 @ 3:48 pm

For those of you wondering what is going on with PodPress like I am, so far it doesn’t look like the programmer was able to complete an update to the popular WordPress plugin in the ten days that he assumed it would take.

There are currently many issues with PodPress’ WordPress 2.6 compatibility, and Dan Kuykendall aka Seek3r seems to be taking his time to work on what should be a major release in version 8.9, despite everyone wishing he would push an interim release to fix the current issues.

Over the last few weeks, people have come up with all sorts of ideas on how to make PodPress 8.8 work with WordPress 2.6 as well as making the experimental version of PodPress 8.9 work with WordPress 2.6.

Andrew Ozz was one of the first to get the PodPress 8.9 experimental release working for many people, with a fix that should fix PodPress for those using WordPress 2.6 and having issues due to the post revisions feature that WordPress now includes.

In the comments of the Andrew Ozz post, there is a person named Otto who has instructions on making it work with PodPress 8.8, but not really any confirmation on if it does, in fact, work or not.

There are also people disabling post revisions, which is a great feature, either through plugins or through manually editing core files.

Some people started a small donation drive in order to try to fund development time of the plugin, and not much money was raised, from what I can tell.

It looks like the WordPress community really wants this plugin to work, but aren’t willing to wait for the final release, nor pay for its development. As I have said before, I think the biggest issue is that this is a hobby project for Dan, rather than an Automattic sponsored project. Automattic should be actively participating in the development of important plugins such as PodPress.

Will we see a new release of PodPress in the next week? And if a WordPress 2.6 compatible version of PodPress becomes a month or more away from being released, will people wait, or try to transition to something else?

Originally posted on August 4, 2008 @ 9:48 pm