Hoist on My Own Petard

After I lauded software that publishes HTTP 304-aware feeds, Scott tells me that IJSM.org’s feeds are no longer 304-aware. UHOH!

So I decide to do some investigation. I have a variety of WordPress installations at various revision levels across the server I administer. [Bad, I know!] Anyhow, my results were as follows:

v2.0 RSS2 feed shows up as returning 304. v2.0.1 RSS2 feed shows up as returning 304. WordPress.com RSS2 feed shows up as returning 304. v2.0.2 RSS2 feed does not return a 304.

I have checked the /rss/, /comment/, and /atom/ feeds for IJSM.org and they also show no 304 headers returned.

The comments feed for the 2.0.1 install I have returns a 304 as it should.

– Trac.WordPress.org ticket 2597

Seems that the issue definitely showed up in the 2.0.1—>2.0.2 transition.

I don’t know if this is related to the security fixes of 2.0.1—>2.0.2; if so, I’m okay with it. I’ll take the bandwidth hit on my box over the probability of my box being 0WN3d. That said, this is still an issue.

– ibid.

I really and truly mean that. I’ll take the bandwidth penalty! … for now. Eagle-eyed readers will suspect that I’ve future-posted this entry; indeed, I have. It was written Friday night to give the WP guys 24 hours’ notice. I figure that I owe them that.