Advanced Excerpt 4.0 problems

A few days ago I published a long-due update for the Advanced Excerpt plugin for WordPress: version 4.0. Much to my embarassment, problems became apparent immediately after the download went online and I had to do an instant update to make 4.0 even remotely usable.

The problem was that I accidentaly saved some whitespace outside the code (right before the first <?php) and then released it without testing. WordPress doesn’t handle this very well, so this caused some trouble for those who updated early. This was corrected almost immediately, but only by retagging 4.0 to a working revision. A few people complained about this and I understand that it can be confusing.

Does that take care of the problems? Unfortunately it seems it does not. Particularly, the template tag (the_advanced_excerpt) does not apply custom settings anymore. For this reason, people who use the plugin in their themes like this should definitely not upgrade until 4.1. There may be more stupid bugs yet, so I am currently working on testcases to figure that out.

If you haven’t upgraded already, I would recommend not upgrading at the moment. Version 4.1 should be out soon, with cleaner code and better testing to remedy the current problems.

If you have upgraded already and the plugin is causing you trouble, then first of all I’m sorry for the inconvenience. You can use the support forum to find a solution or ask about the issue you’re having. I’ll try to be around often to answer questions.

I hope this takes care of it for now. As I said, 4.1 should be out soon to help us forget this terrible tragedy.