Many of you have been using our v2.8.6 release candidate waiting it's final release. In the meantime our v2.9 release actually caught up so we have abandoned v2.8.6 and skipped forward to v2.9. Version 2.9 is now available for download from your original download URL. If you do not have that URL you can get it at http://autoblogged.com/download.

Both v2.8.6 and v2.9 have included many new long-awaited features that we are excited to announce. Here is a rundown of some of the most interesting of these:

Full Content Articles

We have resisted this feature for quite some time due to the potential for abuse but frankly we just got tired of telling people no. Seriously, we get 2-3 support tickets every day asking for this. Besides with services like Instapaper and Readability as well as mobile readers, most publishers have been more open to sharing their content.So here it is, full text articles!

In v3 we will have a more advanced full text content feature but we decided to throw in a preview with v2.9. This feature is by no means robust enough to extract the content from every web site, but it does work quite well. Of course, the FiveFilters method still works and it does handle some sites better.

And of course we expect you all to behave responsibly and always ask permission when reprinting copyrighted works!

HTML Filtering

AutoBlogged has always created text-only excerpt from the original content. The reason for doing this is first for security and second because embedded formatting often conflicts with the design on your site. However, often you do want certain HTML elements included in the post so we have now provided you with four levels of filtering. These options are:

• Plain text only - This option will remove all HTML elements except for paragraphs and line breaks.
• Remove all but basic formatting - This option will remove all but the following HTML tags: a, b, blockquote, br, code, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, li, ol, p, pre, q, s, small, strike, strong, sub, sup.
• Remove only unsafe tags - This option will remove all HTML elements that might be unsafe, allowing only these tags: a, abbr, acronym, address, b, bdo, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, cite, code, col, colgroup, dd, del, dfn, dir, div, dl, dt, em, embed, fieldset, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, iframe, img, ins, label, legend, li, noscript, ol, p, param, pre, q, s, samp, small, span, strike, strong, style, sub, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul. Note that the iframe and embed elements will only be allowed for certain trusted video sites.
• Leave HTML intact (not recommended) - This option will keep most of the original HTML intact and is not recommended except for cases where you fully trust the content sources. It is important that you understand that enabling this option may lead to account theft, cookie stealing, injection of unsafe code, and may compromise the privacy and security of you and your site visitors.

Feed Defaults

AutoBlogged now has the option to create default feed settings. This can be done by clicking on the Create Default Feed Settings option on the main feeds page. Furthermore, if you want to create defaults for every new blog you create, you can create a mydefaults.php file in your AutoBlogged directory. To do this, make a copy of the defaults.php file and rename it to mydefaults.php. Edit any settings you want in the file and AutoBlogged will use those for the defaults on every new feed.

Improved Tagging

In this last round of updates we reviewed our automatic tagging feature and made some significant improvements in keyword detection and removal of bad keywords. Furthermore, with the new full text articles feature, AutoBlogged is better able to extract content from the article itself and avoid picking up keywords from headers, sidebars, and footers. While it is still a computer trying to guess keywords it will never be perfect, but we have seen a tremendous improvement in keyword detection with very few false positives.

Redesigned User Interface

It was about time for a user interface overhaul.

Hundreds of Other Fixes

We have done a complete review of our code and have fixed hundreds of minor bugs, improved performance, and reduced memory overhead where possible. We have made a number of user interface improvements, improved handling of character encoding, added more per-feed settings, and brought compatibility to WordPress v3.3.1. Other fixes include improved author handling, bug fixes in keyword filtering, better theme compatibility, and dozens of other fixes.

While we do have a number of features that are still new and may need some tweaking, most users will find our v2.9 candidate release to be more stable than any other current production release.

Upgrading to v2.9

When upgrading to v2.9 we recommend making a backup of your old directory, removing the directory completely, then uploading v2.9 as a fresh install. Note that doing this will have have no affect on your settings or saved feeds. Once you activate the plugin, all of your settings will still be there but migrated to v2.9.

For those of you used to working with earlier versions you may notice the feed settings are rearranged some. Also, note the we have changed the default post template and excerpt settings are per-feed rather than a global setting.

We hope you enjoy this release and please let us know if you have any issues! We expect to have a final version available within two weeks.