WordPress 2.8.3 was just released, just a couple weeks after the last one. This is a security update, so it’s highly recommended you upgrade immediately.

What exactly is fixed? According to Ryan Boren, some things that were supposed to be fixed in 2.8.2, as he “missed some places when fixing the privilege escalation issues.”

No worries Ryan, we’re all human. This is open source at its best, as several community members saw these overlooked areas and contributed to the fix. As always, make a WordPress backup before upgrading.

P.S. I left a message on Twitter a few hours ago about the winning Slick Red theme from last week’s theme battle. Make sure to check this page periodcally to check the Slick Red coding in progress.

The release of WordPress 2.8.2 has been announced. This was a relatively unexpected release, however it fixes a cross site scripting (XSS) vulnerability due to comment author URLs not being fully sanitized. This could then cause you to be directed to another site from your admin panel.

I’ve been reading on Twitter that people haven’t had any problems upgrading, it looks to be a pretty simple fix. Just to be on the safe side, I’d recommend you take a backup before upgrading.

For all you people who like to wait for the first point release to upgrade, now is the time. WordPress 2.8.1 fixes a number of bugs. Some of the more glaring fixes I noticed are listed below:

• Certain themes were calling get_categories() in such a way that it would fail in 2.8. 2.8.1 works around this so these themes won’t have to change.
• Disabled code highlighting due to browser incompatibilities.

The first seemed to effect a number of mostly commercial themes which used the get_categories() function in their theme options pages. Despite the initial dismissal of this apparent bug, it is now resolved thanks to the swift action of WordPress developers.

Even though we already know how to disable code highlighting, having it disabled in 2.8.1 means you won’t have to deal with it at all, which is fine by me. Seems that feature turned out to be a dud.

Have you upgraded to WordPress 2.8.1 yet? Any thoughts, problems, concerns? Let me know in the comments.