Google Forms v0.66-beta-2 available

I have been working on resolving a plugin conflict between WordPress SEO and Google Forms.  Based on some help from the WordPress SEO plugin author I have made some small changes to Google Forms which I believe will alleviate the conflict.

I am looking for people who’ve been dealing with this problem to test this out, if you have a few minutes, please download this beta and give it a run through.

Google Forms Beta (7741 downloads )

Google Forms v0.65 finally released

This morning I released v0.65 of Google Forms, a long overdue update.  I have been sitting on this release for a while because of one outstanding issue I was aware of which I simply haven’t had time to chase down.  The ability to email the end user upon form submission broke at some point, I am not exactly sure when but it has been reported a few times recently.  It turns out, it only worked if email to the admin was also enabled.

Here are the highlights from the Change Log:

  • Implemented “save_post” for custom post type eliminating general purpose “save_post” (only option prior to WordPress 3.7) action which could potentially, if not handled correctly by another plugin, corrupt post data.
  • Formally deprecated the gform shortcode by updating README file.
  • Added flush of rewrite rules upon plugin activation and deactivation.
  • Implemented protocol relative URLs for loading jQuery script from Microsoft CDN to avoid mixed-content warnings when serving over https.
  • Fixed layout of CAPTCHA options on settings page.
  • Fixed bug with preset values as part of the URL which contain spaces.
  • Fixed bug sending End User email upon form submission.
  • Refactored construction of email headers based on experience with Email Users plugin.

You can find the update in the WordPress plugin repository or on your WordPress Dashboard.

Email Users v4.6.6-beta-3 available

Over lunch I posted beta-3 of Email Users v4.6.6.  This build addresses an issue with User Groups integration when using a non-English version of WordPress.  A value embedded in the form was translated which the form processing logic wasn’t handling correctly.  This problem also could have manifested itself if a group name contained a hyphen (dash) character.

Email Users Beta (4828 downloads )

Email Users v4.6.6-beta-2 available

Yesterday on my flight to Phoenix I implemented a feature which was recently requested to use the To field for the recipient address when the BCC limit is set to 1.  There is a new choice in the BCC Limit option on the Settings page:

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If  you’d like to test this new feature, download this beta build and report any issues you encounter.  It will work with both Post/Page notifications as well as group emails.  The only limitation is when used, the user’s email address will be placed in the To header without their display name.

Email Users Beta (4828 downloads )

Google Forms v0.65-beta-3 available

This morning I posted beta-3 of Google Forms.  This latest beta addresses an issue reported on the Google Forms Support Forum where extra URL parameters would result in the form not being rendered.

Google Forms has supported additional URL parameters for a while as a mechanism to preset form values.  The problem turned out to be that parameters which contained spaces weren’t being handled properly which resulted in a bad URL.  The bad URL was then used to retrieve the Google Form which failed and resulted in the form not displaying.

This build properly handles spaces in URL parameters and Google ignores, as expected, any parameters it doesn’t know what to do with.  So in the case reported on the Support Forum, the extra parameters added by MailChimp will simply be ignored.

Google Forms Beta (7741 downloads )

Email Users v4.6.6-beta-1 available

This afternoon I posted beta-1 of Email Users v4.6.6.  This build addresses an issue reported on the Email Users support forum.  The user reporting the issue was running into a feature that was actually designed into Email Users – the ability to email a user regardless of their Mass Email and Notification settings.

Based on the user’s use use case, I can understand the desire to prevent certain types of users from appearing in the User Recipient List.  So I have added a new option to the settings page which will prevent users who do not have a role on the web site from appearing in the Recipient List.

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EU_SS_34Please report any issues with this new functionality ASAP and I will try to address them quickly.

Email Users Beta (4828 downloads )

Google Forms v0.65-beta-2 available

I received a patch over the weekend from a Google Forms user which I have incorporated into beta-2 of v0.65.  The patch changes how Google Forms loads the jQuery Validation plugin from the Microsoft CDN.  The plugin is now loaded using a protocol relative URL.  This change will eliminate the mixed content message which appears on sites using HTTPS.

There are a couple other minor fixes in this build as well, the most notable a flush of re-write rules upon plugin activation or de-activation in hopes that it will eliminate one of the most common questions I receive (why doesn’t my URL work when I click the View Form button?).

Google Forms Beta (7741 downloads )

Google Forms v0.65-beta-1 available

Shortly after releasing v0.64 I received a report of data corruption from a Google Forms user.  I took this report very seriously and immediately reverted the stable tag for Google Forms back to v0.63 while I looked into this users report.  The last thing I wanted to do was introduce a bug which resulted in corrupted posts.

I spent some time looking through my plugin code and tried a couple experiments but could not replicate the behavior the user reported.  My gut feel was we’re dealing with a plugin conflict however it is hard to know for sure.

The user and I ended up swapping some email and I got a list of plugins they were running.  I initially thought I would try and replicate their problem by installing the same set of plugins but quickly figured out that wasn’t possible.  Nor was it possible to examine all of the code for the plugins looking for what I suspected was a conflict in a “save_post” action or call to wp_update_post().

In doing some research I learned (unfortunately I can’t find it in the Codex) that beginning in WordPress 3.7 there is a new save_post action for Custom Post Types:  save_post_{$post_type}  Whoo-hoo!  This didn’t exist when I originally wrote Google Forms, so my plugin, much like many other plugins which define Custom Post Types, define a save_action which then has to determine if the post is relevant to the plugin or not before doing anything to it.

I quickly implemented the new action and removed the old action and Google Forms is behaving as it should in my testing.  I have uploaded this latest beta to my site and beat on it a bit and cannot corrupt any data.  I am very confident now that Google Forms should never touch anything other than it’s own post data.

Because of the reported corruption, I would encourage beta testers to backup their database before installing this update JUST TO BE SAFE but I think the corruption risk is very low.  Please let me know if you run into anything unusual.

In this v0.65 beta I have also changed the name of the plugin from “WordPress Google Form” to “Google Forms” as it is more representative and the plugin repository now prohibits the use of “WordPress” in a plugin name.  There is a chance you’ll have to reactivate the plugin depending on how you install this beta.

Google Forms Beta (7741 downloads )

Google Forms v0.64 released

I did some additional testing with UTF-8 characters over the weekend and everything is working as expected.  With no known issues outstanding I have released v0.64 this morning.  You can find the update on your Dashboard or download it from the WordPress Plugin Repository.

  1. Fixed a number of strings which were missing translation wrapper functions.
  2. Reverted to manually constructed body parameter for wp_remote_post() to allow checkboxes to be properly passed to Google.
  3. Fixed warnings generated by calls to static functions which were not declared static.
  4. Added check for HTTP API cURL transport and issue a warning when not present. There was a change between WordPress 3.6.1 and 3.7 to the WordPress HTTP API and the streams and fsockopen transports are unable to post form values back to Google using wp_remote_post().
  5. Added a setting to allow hiding the cURL transport missing message on the Dashboard.
  6. Added a check to ensure jQuery script isn’t output more than once.
  7. Remove hook into “the_content” to reduce potential conflicts with other plugins (e.g. WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast).
  8. Added placeholders for some of the form fields when defining a Form within the UI.

Email Users v4.6.3 released

I finally had a chance to do some final testing of Email Users v4.6.3. To the best of my knowledge there are no outstanding issues so I have released it today.  You can find the update on your WordPress Dashboard or in the WordPress Plugin Repository.

Bug Fixes and Enhancements

  1. Fixed several strings which were not properly set up for language translation.
  2. Re-added French translation file as it had gotten corrupted somehow and wouldn’t load in WordPress.
  3. Added Dutch translation support (thank you Bart van Strien).
  4. Fixed bug where sites with large numbers of users would exhaust memory.
  5. Updated Spanish translation (thank you Ponc J. Llaneras)
  6. Added additional options for BCC limit.
  7. Fixed several CSS bugs on Settings page.
  8. Initial implementation of Paid Memeberships Pro integration.