Email-Users 4.5.2 released

This morning (updated) afternoon I released a minor update, v4.5.2 (updated) v4.5.3, of Email-Users.  This update adds new information on the Dashboard to help the WordPress Admin ensure that the number of users they expect to receive email is correct.

There is a new Dashboard Widget and an updated Settings Page which note how many users will receive each type of email.  If no users will receive notifications or mass emails, a warning message will be displayed at the top of the Settings Page.

Email Users Settings Page

In addition to the new Dashboard Widget for Email Users, I am adding some additional information to the Settings Page to indicate when User Setttings aren’t in a state the admin expects them to be.

When visiting the Settings Page, if either the number of users who receive post or page notifications OR mass email is equal to zero, a message will appear at the top of the page.

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In addition to the box pictured above, the current number of users who receive each type of email is now displayed in a small box at the top of the right hand column above the Donation box.

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Hopefully these improvements will help people chase down situations when users aren’t receiving email when they are expected to.

Email Users Dashboard Widget

I’ve gotten a rash of questions about Email Users lately.  Most of the questions revolve around users not receiving email messages.  In some cases the users don’t receive email messages because their settings aren’t set correctly.  I am in the process of adding some information to Email Users to make it obvious when this is the case.  The first thing I am working on is a Dashboard Widget.

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Should anything else appear on this widget?

WordPress Google Form v0.56-beta-3 available

This evening I released beta-3 of WordPress Google Form.  This release addresses a requested feature to have “pre-populated fields which disappear when clicked“.

My solution to this request was to implement the placeholder attribute for the input tag.  This is also much easier than expecting users to decipher the complex URL requirements to pass default values to a form.  The difference between a placeholder and a default value is the placeholder value cannot be submitted.  In the case of wanting to have something like “email address”, which isn’t a valid email address, in the form field as a “placeholder”, using the placeholder attribute is a better solution.  At least I think so.

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Placeholder values are defined when the form is added as a Custom Post Type.

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Like the custom validation rules, to use placeholders you will need to know the name attribute for the field you are defining a placeholder for.  Refer to this post I wrote on Advanced Validation to learn how to identify the field name.

Google Forms Beta (7971 downloads )

WordPress Google Form v0.56-beta-1 available

I have posted the initial beta version of WordPress Google Form v0.56.  This preliminary release has bug fixes to handle UTF-8 characters in from values and also handles the unusual case where a tab character is embedded in the form response value.

The embedded tab issue was particularly tricky to track down as it is (a) it wasn’t obvious since web browsers render tabs as white space and (b) it isn’t easy to actually enter a tab into an HTML form (which is how Google Forms are created).  I was able to embed a tab in a form response by pasting some text from Word.  It turns out the user that had the problem I was trying to resolve had done the exact same thing.

Handling the tabs turned out to be tricky so initially I thought I thought I might have to simply detect them and display a warning but in the end I was able to find a viable solution.

This beta release also has the first implementation of Transients for the initial rendering of a form.  This use case is likely not all that common but came from a user who had four (4) forms on a single page and was seeing timeouts from Google.  Caching the initial rendering of the form will help in this situation.  Thanks to Camilo Flores for providing a patch which I based the implementation on.

Google Forms Beta (7971 downloads )

Email-Users v4.5.0-beta-1 now available

I’ve been working on Email-Users this week and have added quite a bit of functionality.  Before I release it I’d like to get a few people put an early version through its paces so if you have a chance to test it out, please do so.

This new version has a number of new features:

  • All postboxes on the admin screens now have their own CSS ID and Class so they can be styled or easily hidden.
  • Email-Users now support integration with two User “Group” plugins:  User Groups and User Access Manager.  When you set up groups in either of these plugins you will be able to select them as recipients from the Group Email and Post/Page Notification pages.
  • Selection of Custom Filters as Group Recipients is no longer a separate action – it, along wit the Group support noted above, are all presented in the same target recipient selection list.  This allows the Custom Filters to work on Post/Page Notifications as well.
  • A new action has been introduced:  mailusers_update_custom_meta_filters  This action will allow for updating meta filters dynamically just prior to their use.  This is the best way to create complex meta filters or integrate other plugins.  There is a good example in the plugin README file.
  • Chinese language support has been contributed.
  • Integration panel added to the Plugin Settings Page.
  • Updated language support files which incorporate 20+ new strings.

A few other things were cleaned up while I was tinkering with the code as well.

Email Users Beta (4998 downloads )

I have also updated the sample plugin file I use to test Custom Meta Filters.  It has the full example of the “Public Works” example.

Email Users Custom List (5584 downloads )

New capabilities for Email-Users

I am finally getting around to incorporating a patch for Email-Users which adds integration with the User Groups plugin.

The way the patch was written it removed the ability to send to Groups based on standard WordPress Roles and replaced it with Groups defined by the User Groups plugin.  While this is useful for the user who submitted the patch (thank you for doing so), I don’t think it is the right way to do this sort of integration in the general case.

I don’t think eliminating the standard functionality is always a good idea so I am incorporating the patch such that being able to target groups of users through either standard WordPress roles OR via User Groups defined groups is possible.

To that end, I have always considered the way I implemented custom groups and filters sort of half finished.  While they work for sending email, they don’t work for Post and Page notifications which is a limitation.  So I have decided to revamp how I am presenting groups of users for both Email and Notifications.

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You will be able to mix and match Roles, User Groups (when the plugin is active) and Filters to target the recipients of Email and/or Notifications.  I hope to have a beta release out later today for people to test with.

WordPress Google Form v0.54-beta-7 now available

I have just posted what I hope is the final beta release of WordPress Google Form v0.54.  This latest beta release fixes a couple of minor issues, notably the lack of stickiness on the Form Submission Log setting and adds one new feature.  You can now define a CAPTCHA message to appear below the CAPTCHA input box.  These two screen shots show the information on the Plugin Settings page and the result when the form is rendered.  The message is placed in a DIV which has the class “wpgform-captcha-description” so it can be styled as needed.

Google Forms Beta (7971 downloads )

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WordPress Google Form v0.54-beta-4 now available

This evening I posted a new beta release (#4) of WordPress Google Form v0.54.  This beta release addresses a problem where values with escape characters and/or other encoded characters end up in the response spreadsheet.

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As you can see in the image above, the values are escaped until the final entry.  This fix needs some testing to make sure it doesn’t break anything, please try it out and let me know how you make out.

Google Forms Beta (7971 downloads )