The latest package of Wordcraft, the PHP/MySQL based blog software that runs this site, is available for download from Google Code.  Just some minor bug fixes and cosmetic stuff.  Its getting a little use in the wild.  That is always fun to see.

There are several key changes in Wordcraft 0.9.1. The two big things are:

• Tokens on post forms in the admin to help ward off CSRF attacks.  
• Database schema updates automated.

The first comes as a result of us doing the same work on Phorum recently.  I realized I needed the same protection in Wordcraft.  The second was done out of neccesity as I changed the datetime fields in the database schema into int fields.  Not sure why I ever made them datetime fields.  Unix timestamps are much easier to work with.  It saves many strtotime() calls and will make eventual time zone settings much easier to implement.

In addition to those two big ones, there were some notable small ones:

• HTML 4.01 validation fixes
• Ensuring UTF-8 on all …

I am happy to announce Wordcraft 0.7.  There are two big changes in this release.  On the front end, I added a simple search.  It just uses a LIKE clause.  But, I figure a lot of blogs never reach 1,000 posts.  Even at 10,000 posts, a LIKE would not be too bad.  On the backend, I have switched the post editor to TinyMCE. YUI's editor is decent, but it needs polish.  Perhaps my time with Wordpress just made me more familiar with it.  TinyMCE does save XHTML.  I put some code in the PHP side to use Tidy if it is available to convert it to HTML 4.01, which I prefer.

Also in this release:

• Fixed an XSS issue in tag.php.
• Fixing a parsing issue with anchor tags when doing pingbacks.
• Fixed an error when the remote site …

I am pleased to announce the release of Wordcraft 0.6.  I have been using it for a month or so now and I am learning some things.

I had been having trouble logging in lately from multiple places.  So, instead of trying to work on the built in session handling I had written, I took my own advice (use stuff that exists) and just switched to PHP sessions.  All the cookie stuff is worked out and I can get a lot done with just a little work.  PHP sessions make me a little nervous.  If you have lots of applications installed on the same site that use them, you can get some odd behavior.  But, why reinvent the wheel right?

I have found myself wanting to save a post while working on it.  To do that before, I would have to uncheck the Published box.  To solve this, I changed the behavior of the Save …

Well, I blogged about Wordcraft the other day.  I have just been running live on the software for 4 days now.  Well, that post had no URI associated with it.  It took me two days to figure this out.  Oops.  Welcome to eating my own dog food.  So, running this live with actual users (and a host of bot spam attempts) I am learning a lot and making a lot of commits.  So, I may very well roll once or twice a week for the first few weeks.

So, with that, I have packaged 0.5.  There are 15 changes in this package.  Some features, but mostly bug fixes.  So, if you could use a simple blog, give it a try and help me debug it.  If you do, please use the Google Code …

So, a while back, not sure when, I was listening to the P3 Podcast and Paul mentioned his dislike for Wordpress.  He said he wished there was a simple blogging application.  I am probably misquoting him horribly.  It was an idea that I had been tinkering with.  So, I started on Wordcraft in my spare time.  Like super spare time.  That time between the kids going to bed and me falling  asleep.  So, it took a while to get it to a usable state.

Up until now, I have used Wordpress.com for my blogging.  It works quite well.  You can get started quite quickly and it does what most people need.  My wife uses Blogger for our family blog.  It is, IMO, not as nice as Wordpress.com in some ways.  But, it does allow you to edit your styles (for free) and such which is nice.

So, why would I want to reinvent the …