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 (8567 downloads )Category Archives: Plugin
wp-SwimTeam v1.42-beta-4 available
This morning I uploaded beta-4 of wp-SwimTeam v1.42. This build completes transient support for all file downloads ( reports, rosters, entries, etc.). Additionally, all download operations now share common code and consistently download files with the same content type.
wp-SwimTeam Beta (2420 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 (8567 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 (8567 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 (5481 downloads )Google Forms, Checkboxes and PHP 5.4 or 5.5
WordPress Google Form v0.63 introduced a change which allowed the plugin to work on newer versions of PHP, notably 5.4 and 5.5. Unfortunately that change has broken support for checkboxes.
For those who are new to the plugin or never needed to know how it worked, what the plugin does is retrieve the HTML for the form from Google and render it within the context of WordPress. When the form is submitted, it is actually submitted within the context of WordPress. The data is collected by the plugin and then submitted to Google. The retrieval from and submission to Google is done with the WordPress HTTP API. In particular, the wp_remote_get() and wp_remote_post() functions are used to retrieve and submit the form.
To complicate the problem further, Google uses Python as the backend for their form processor where as WordPress uses PHP. For the most part, the fact that they are based on different scripting languages isn’t a big deal. Until you get to checkboxes. Checkboxes in Python are handled differently than they are in PHP.
I had solved the compatibility problem a couple years ago (see this thread on the wp-hackers mailing list) using a small jQuery script which fixed the form variables on the WordPress side and manual construction of the body parameter for wp_remote_post() when submitting the data to Google. This solution worked fine until I received a bug report that nothing was being submitted on a site which was running PHP 5.4.x.
Fortunately the user who encountered the problem provided me with a patch that I was able to fold in which changed the way the body parameter was constructed (array instead of a string) which worked with PHP 5.4.x and also worked with older versions. However, I didn’t test it thoroughly as I have had several reports that checkbox content was not being submitted correctly. Uh-oh. I was able to verify the problem fairly quickly and was able to push out a version which essentially reverts how the body parameter is constructed (string instead of an array). The problem is, this build doesn’t work with newer versions of PHP.
I have PHP 5.5 running on an Ubuntu virtual machines for testing and so far, I have not found a solution which (a) works with PHP 5.5. and (b) submits checkboxes correctly.
Stay tuned.
WordPress Google Forms v0.64-beta-2
This evening I released beta-2 of the upcoming v0.64 release of WordPress Google Forms. This build addresses a problem recently reported on the Support Forum where the responses for checkboxes wasn’t being recorded properly.
I was able to verify this problem using one of my test forms and began looking into it. It turns out, the changes made in v0.63 to allow the plugin to work with later versions of PHP 5.4 breaks the ability to uses checkboxes. This build employs a similar method of submitting parameters to Google that versions prior to v0.63 did.
Handling checkboxes has long been a challenge due to the different ways which Python (used by Google) and PHP (used by WordPress) handle the assignment of checkbox values to a named parameter.
Please download this build and test and let me know if you run into any issues.
Google Forms Beta (8567 downloads )wp-SwimTeam v1.41 released
This morning I released v1.41 of wp-SwimTeam. You can find the update on your WordPress Dashboard or in the WordPress plugin repository. This release addresses two bugs, one of which is pretty significant but would not affect a site where the age groups were already set up.
- Fixed bug which resulted in warning regarding extra output upon plugin activation. This was introduced in the WIP role code and as the result of a reference to a non-existing role.
- Fixed a serious bug which prevented creation or update of standard age groups. If age groups were already set up, this bug was unlikely to be encountered but for new installations, it was a significant issue.
Email Users v4.6.3-beta-9 available
Update: Around noon EST I updated the build to beta-10 to fix another bug.
This morning I posed beta-9 of the upcoming Email Users v4.6.3 release. This build includes an updated Spanish translation as well as several new options for the BCC Limit setting targeted at sites with very large numbers of users (e.g. 4k, 13k, etc.).
This build also moves some debug code I have been using to chase down the memory issue under the control of the Email Users Debug setting (which is on the plugin settings page – Dashboard->Settings->Email Users). I have found this code to be really useful chasing down this odd memory problem however I don’t want it running all the time so putting it under the control of the debug setting makes sense. When debug is enabled, if you choose the “Send to Users” menu (Dashboard->Email Users->Send to Users) and examine the source HTML code for the page, you will find a section of code which looks similar to this:
<pre id="line1"> <select id="<a>send_users</a>" name="<a>send_users[]</a>" size="<a>8</a>" style="<a>width: 654px; height: 250px;</a>" multiple="<a>multiple</a>" >
<!-- email-users.php::1010 -->
<!-- email-users.php::1058 -->
<!-- email-users.php::1059 -->
<!--
Array
(
[total_users] => 805
[avail_roles] => Array
(
[administrator] => 1
[contributor] => 4
[editor] => 2
[subscriber] => 798
)
)
-->
<!-- email-users.php::1061 -->
<!--
Array
(
[exclude] => 1
[fields] => Array
(
[0] => ID
[1] => display_name
)
[offset] => 0
[number] => 500
)
-->
<!-- email-users.php::1063 -->
<!-- email-users.php::1082 Query #1 Memory Usage: 20.5M -->
<!-- email-users.php::1082 Query #2 Memory Usage: 20.5M -->
<!--
805 -->
<!-- email-users.php::1116 -->
<option value="<a>308</a>" ></pre>
This sort of information is tremendously helpful when chasing down odd behavior.
I am hoping to get a couple more translation updates before I do the v4.6.3 release along with some testing from a couple of sites with large user counts. In the meantime, you can download the latest beta version here.
Email Users Beta (5481 downloads )Email-Users v4.6.3-beta-8 now available
I have just uploaded beta-8 of Email Users v4.6.3. This build addresses an unusual out of memory situations which affected sites with very large numbers of users. You can find a detailed write up of the problem here.
The change s required to address this problem are pretty substantial so I would appreciate any testing people can do, I don’t want to break anyone’s email system!
Email Users Beta (5481 downloads )