Textpattern CMS version 4.5.7 was released on Saturday September 20th, 2014. Ten years previously, Dean Allen made the first public commit to Textpattern on Google Code. Textpattern 4.5.7 is a security and maintenance release, and should be considered an important or essential upgrade if you’re responsible for any Textpattern instances.
In my last article, I explained how Textpattern 4.5.7 resolves the CVE-2014-4737 issue, and in some respects you may not even be at risk if you’re running an older version of Textpattern that pre-dates version 4.5.7; the `textpattern/setup` directory is the entry point for this issue, and if you followed the text carefully as you installed Textpattern you will have been advised (OK, strongly recommended) to remove the `textpattern/setup` directory immediately after the installation has completed. So, succinctly, if you’ve zapped the directory already, this upgrade should not be a ‘drop everything and fix as a top priority’ situation like Heartbleed and Shellshock were.
In addition to the resolution of CVE-2014-4737, other changes have been made to improve the Textpattern experience, including:
- Textile has been updated to version 2.4.3, which resolves PHP 5.5 compatibility issues
- The default site theme and libraries have been updated
- Various improvements to the initial setup routine, including MySQL 5.6 support
- Fixes to `<txp:link_to_prev>`, `<txp:link_to_next>`, `<txp:prev_title>`, and `<txp:next_title>` tags when used in certain combinations with `<txp:article_custom>`
- Comment emails of any valid length are now properly saved
- Visitor logs now support IPv6 addresses
- Articles can be assigned to sections with names longer than 64 characters
Textpattern version numbering follows the major.minor.patch format, and the list above tallies up with just that; this is a patch-only release. The patches encompass security fixes, and to that end I strongly recommend you upgrade your Textpattern instances at the earliest convenience. Upgrading to Textpattern 4.5.7 is pretty straightforward and I’ll cover it in my next article. I hope you can join me.
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