WordPress Google Form Update

I have spent some time comparing low level WP_Http results against wget results and have come to the conclusion that Google Cookies aren’t being passed through the series of redirect which happens when viewing a Google Form with the new URL scheme.

Unfortunately I am not sure what to do about it yet.  The usually very helpful WordPress Hackers mailing list is surprising quiet right now.  I am trying to figure out if I can “remember” cookies and pass them along each time a redirect happens.  I am reasonably confident that is what is needed however making it happen within the WordPress context is another story!

Google change to breaks WordPress Google Form

Last week Google introduced a significant update to Google Forms.  In addition to a very different UI, the format of the public URL has changed AND more importantly, it has broken my WordPress Google Form plugin.

The change only seems to affect forms created from scratch using the new version of Google Forms.  My plugin is dependent on the WordPress HTTP API to retrieve the form from Google and with the new URL format, the API is returning an error.  I am trying to figure out what Google doesn’t like.

What is odd is I am able to successfully retrieve the form using the wget utility (a Unix command line tool for retrieving remote content) however wp_remote_get() doesn’t work.

I wish had some better news to report but right now I am stumped as to why this isn’t working.

If anyone has any ideas, I have posted some of the low level debug stuff on PastBin.

Email-Users 4.4.1-beta-1 available

I have fixed a couple of minor bugs, added German Language support and introduced new functionality to send email to a custom list of users based on meta data.  The ability to target a specific list of users based on user meta data is a feature that was requested a while back on the WordPress support form.

The new Customer Meta Filter List functionality allows the the site to create a custom list of users by adding an action in either the theme’s functions.php file or in a stand-alone plugin.

EU_SS_04 EU_SS_05

Unfortunately I ran into a WordPress limitation while working on this functionality.  The  ability to match user meta data through the WordPress get_users() API doesn’t work as expected with the LIKE and NOT LIKE comparisons.  In an effort to protect the SQL, WordPress wraps the value being compared with wildcards to the match is either too permissive (matches too much) or too restrictive (matches to little).

I have opened a WordPress Trac ticket and submitted a patch for this problem but until it gets fixed (or the patch in the Trac ticket is applied), only standard comparisons work.  The “Last Name: M” example won’t work without the patch nor will the “First Name: Not D”.

I have written an example plugin to create the above filters, you download it and drop it into  your plugins directory to see menus like shown above:

Email Users Custom List (5587 downloads )

Please download and test the beta release.  Report back any issues and I’ll do what I can to fix them quickly.

Email Users Beta (5003 downloads )

Understanding Email-Users Settings

Periodically I receive Help Requests (either from the WordPress Support Forum, a comment on my blog, or an email) for Email-Users.  Most of the requests involve why some users do or don’t receive email.

Each user has two values associated with their user id:

  1. Does the user receive mass email?
  2. Does the user receive post and/or page notifications?

The ability to control these settings by the user from their User Profile page was a feature of Email-Users long before I got involved.  I have enhanced this functionality to allow an Administrator have the ability to change the settings for a specific user as well as adding the ability to bulk change the settings for a large number of users.

The bulk change feature appears under the Email-Users menu as “User Settings”.  Looking at this page will show you the current state of each user with respect to receiving mass email and post/page notifications.

The administrator can also remove the ability for a user to change their own settings through the plugin settings.

When using the “Send Email to User(s)” or “Send Email to Group(s)” feature, the list of users or groups is extracted from the database based on the settings for their user id.  You can always send email to a single user regardless of their setting however if you select more than one recipient, the Mass Email setting for a user is honored and they will be dropped from the recipient list.

Here are some screen shots to illustrate the points made above.

WordPress Google Form v0.46 beta 8 available

I’ve updated the beta version of WordPress Google Form v0.46 one more time to beta-8 and made it available for download from this site. This beta update fixes a redirect problem when using the original “gform” short code. It was not present when using the new “wpgform” short code. I would encourage migrating to the new short code and defining forms with the Google Forms Custom Post Type UI.

Download the beta release and please let me know if you run into any issues.

Google Forms Beta (7979 downloads )

Email Users v4.3.15-beta-5 available

This evening I made a beta-4 beta-5 version of Email Users v4.3.15 available for download from this site. I still hope to incorporate as many translation package updates as I can before the final release. This latest beta version has some more tuning to aid in translation.

Download the beta release and please let me know if you run into any issues.

Email Users Beta (5003 downloads )

Email Users v4.3.15-beta available

This morning I have made a beta version of Email Users v4.3.15 available for download from this site. I have not posted this version to the WordPress plugin repository yet as I’d like to get some additional testing done on it before doing so as well as incorporate any translation package updates as I can before the final release (which I will likely label v4.4.0).

There are a couple of significant new features and a number of bug fixes in this version.

  1. Fixed the problem where a dollar sign in the post or page content followed by a number disappears.  This was happening due to  preg_replace() seeing the $nn pattern as part of its regular expression processing.
  2. Fixed issues with user settings disappearing.
  3. Added the ability to include the sender in the recipient list as an options setting.
  4. Fixed bug which prevented WordPress Dashboard and Menu Manager from working correctly.
  5. Changed a number of strings to make the process of creating a language package much easier.

Download the beta release and please let me know if you run into any issues.

Email Users Beta (5003 downloads )

WordPress Google Form v0.46-beta available

This afternoon I made a beta version of WordPress Google Form v0.46 available for download from this site. I have not posted this version to the WordPress plugin repository yet as I’d like to get some additional testing done on it before doing so.

There are a could of significant new features and a few bug fixes in this version.

  1. Columns!  You can now have your form rendered in columns.  To have a two column form, add the attribute columns=’2′ to your short code.
  2. When enabled, the simple math CAPTCHA will now appear above the Submit button instead of below it.
  3. Some minor CSS updates to support the new column feature.

Download the beta release and please let me know if you run into any issues.  You can see an example of multi-column support on my Multi-Column Test Bed Form.

Google Forms Beta (7979 downloads )

WordPress Google Form v0.45-beta available

I’ve made a subtle but potentially significant change to WordPress Google Form that I am looking for some people to try out.  The plugin generates a jQuery script on the fly to perform a number of actions depending on the shortcode attributes present and their setting.

Historically the jQuery script has been output as part of the form code but I’ve seen a number of cases lately where another plugin or in some cases, the theme, is manipulating the page content which ends up affecting the jQuery script.

In one case I looked at this weekend something, I am still not sure what, is injecting paragraph elements into the HTML after it detects a closing DIV tag.  For the most part this isn’t a big deal except, there are closing DIV tags in the jQuery script as part of the CAPTCHA functionality.  The CAPTCHA functionality injects a DIV which holds a second DIV and some other input elements and labels.  What ever is injecting the P elements into the HTML after every closing DIV is causing my script to have syntax errors when the page loads.

To solve this problem I have moved to loading of the jQuery script into the WordPress footer action.  In my testing making this change  has zero effect on the functionality but I’d like some other people to test it and provide me feedback.

Google Forms Beta (7979 downloads )

WordPress Google Form v0.43 now available

This evening I released v0.43 of my WordPress Google Form plugin.  This update addresses a couple of bugs and fixes a few more issues with the optional CSS prefix.  It also addresses a potentially serious problem when using Debug Mode with PHP version prior to 5.3.

  • Reimplemented shortcode attribute br=’on’ usinq jQuery instead of preg_replace().
  • Reimplemented shortcode attribute legal=’off’ usinq jQuery instead of preg_replace().
  • Fixed DEBUG mode so it will work with PHP 5.2 (which doesn’t support anonymous functions).
  • Fixed CSS prefix bugs which prevented CSS prefix from being applied to all Google CSS classes.