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 (7998 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.

Google Forms v0.64-beta-7 available

This afternoon I released beta-7 of Google Forms v0.64.  I expect this to be the final beta release.  It contains a few minor fixes, most notably the warning from the cURL check regarding calling a non-static function statically.  Additionally, some new “placeholder” information has been added to the Form Definition form which disappears when the user starts entering text into the field.

Google Forms Beta (7998 downloads )

Google Forms v0.64-beta-6 available

I have just released beta-6 of Google Forms v0.64 which is a CRITICAL update for anyone who loaded beta-5.  Beta-5 had a serious bug which if you had defined more than one form using the Dashboard UI, would corrupt the content of all of the saved forms so every form would display the same content.  Beta-6 fixes this issue!

Google Forms Beta (7998 downloads )

wp-SwimTeam v1.42-beta-3 available

This afternoon I released beta-3 for wp-SwimTeam v1.42.  This builds adds a new option to allow control of the temporary storage used when exporting data to use outside of WordPress.  For now, this new functionality is limited to Roster Export only however if it works, I’ll do it for everything.

wpst_SS_06

Historically wp-SwimTeam has used PHP’s temporary file facility to store the constructed export data and it then sends it to the browser for download.  In a few corner cases, it appears the server configuration won’t allow doing this so I have added a new option to use WordPress transients as temporary storage.  It is a little slower than using temporary files so be patient for the download dialog box to display.  I am hoping this is a viable solution and will allow users who run into this issue, which I assume is security related, to use wp-SwimTeam.

wp-SwimTeam Beta (2262 downloads )

wp-SwimTeam v.1.41-beta-2

This morning I uploaded beta-2 of wp-SwimTeam v1.41.  This build adds intelligence and error messages during the export process (rosters only for now) to detect an unusual, but critical situation, which occurs when the plugin is unable to generate a  temporary file.  The temporary files are used to hold the generated data which is eventually sent to the browser for download.

wp-SwimTeam Beta (2262 downloads )

Google Forms v0.64-beta-5 available

2/14/2014 Update:  If you have more than one form defined, do not use beta-5, there is a serious bug which corrupts the content of the defined forms so they all contain the same data.

Beta #5 of Google Forms v0.64 is now available for testing.  This update addresses a plugin conflict between Google Forms and WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast.  The new implementation removes the hook into the_content which is a much more robust solution.

Google Forms Beta (7998 downloads )

Email-Users v4.6.3-beta-11 available

I have just posted beta-11 of Email Users v4.6.3.  This beta version has quite a bit in it, new functionality and bug fixes:

  • CSS fixes to the settings page so the Editor boxes don’t over flow into the right hand column.
  • Integration support for the Paid Memeberships Pro plugin.
  • Language file updates.
  • Empty User Groups from the Groups plugin are no longer displayed when sending group messages or notifications.

Please do some testing with this build, I would like to release it fairly soon.  I have limited knowledge of Paid Memberships Pro so it could use some testing.  My experience with PMP is it is pretty fragile, I had to mess with my WordPress database just to get users assigned to PMP groups.

Email Users Beta (5018 downloads )