So, I nearly had the plugin done. It has so many new features you wouldn’t believe and it works like a dream. All I had to do was bring the widget code up to date and all would be fine.

But then I had an idea about some performance improvements.

Then I thought it would be a good idea to compare the features of my plugin with the competition – in this case the top 10 most downloaded plugins that allow YouTube embedding. As well as looking up the instructions, I’m also installing each to get a good feel of them – however, I’m not going to take this as an opportunity to “diss” alternatives. Instead, I will present a straight forward comparison of features between the plugins.

First I had to identify them, so I started looking around WordPress.org. Not easy – it’s all based on tags and different authors use different tags to identify them. However, as I looked around, it became apparent that there were many out there with USP’s – one’s that I’d missed. So the spreadsheet is continuing, but I’m also looking at around 41 other plugins available to see what features they have that mine doesn’t. My intention is to launch a product that doesn’t have any features that the others don’t – unless I don’t think they’re worth it

So, more work to do. The words “back” and “rod” spring to mind.

None-the-less work continues and I hope YouTube Embed version 2 will be released soon.

Update: Further progress is now being tracked on the forum – read more here.

WordPress 3.1.3 has been released.

WordPress 3.1.3 is available now and is a security update for all previous versions. It contains the following security fixes and enhancements:

• Various security hardening by Alexander Concha.
• Taxonomy query hardening by John Lamansky.
• Prevent sniffing out user names of non-authors by using canonical redirects. Props Verónica Valeros.
• Media security fixes by Richard Lundeen of Microsoft, Jesse Ou of Microsoft, and Microsoft Vulnerability Research.
• Improves file upload security on hosts with dangerous security settings.
• Cleans up old WordPress import files if the import does not finish.
• Introduce “clickjacking” protection in modern browsers on admin and login pages.

The official WordPress announcement

3.1.3 Codex Details

Change Details

A list of the modified files (between WordPress 3.1.2 and 3.1.3)

Download 3.1.3 (entire installation)

Download 3.1.3 (just the changed files between 3.1.2 and 3.1.3)

Up until now I haven’t retried any of my plugins. However, there are a few I wish to – mainly wrapping their functionality into other plugins.

In the case of Organ Donor Register, however, it’s gone completely.

This plugin would add an image to your sidebar promoting the Organ Donor Register in the UK. You could click on the chosen image (there were a number to choose from) to visit the registration on their site.

I created this plugin as I am a big believer in their cause and wanted to make it easier for UK WordPress users to help in the promotion. Sadly, though, the NHS Organ Donation people thought otherwise. When creating the plugin I had some initial contact with them and they assisted me with the images – the intention was that they’d give their approval to my work and this would help in promoting it. After all my work however, they didn’t. Indeed, they stopped communicating.

13 months after releasing it the plugin has had just 253 downloads.

My wife used to work for a chemicals company who supplied many of the larger charities who were doing medical research. She found that they had so much money they stopped caring about ensuring that every penny of donations were spent wisely – if they were accidentally charged twice they wouldn’t even notice and rarely even seemed bothered. My wife stopped donating to them after this and, instead, gave to local charities, for example hospices. I wonder if this is the same for NHS Blood & Transplant (as they are now called – again, spending money on regularly changing their name seems to be a clue as to how wise they are being with our money). Of course, in this case, NHSBT are not a charity but part of the NHS, paid for by the UK tax-payer. Still, the same applies as they are asking for people’s assistance to help with promotion.

In fact, when they publish newsletters and refer to them as “stakeholder newsletters” then you know they’ve been over-come with business babble and general nonsense.

Anyway, I decided to stop supporting it and, the easiest way to ensure this, was to remove the plugin from WordPress.org.

The first thing I did was remove all the code from the SVN archive. Next, I sent an email to plugins@wordpress.org requesting the plugin be removed from the repository – although the code no longer exists, the plugin will still appear on the site until this is done. Now it’s gone. Totally.