Tag Archives: beta

04.19.13
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New Google Forms break multi-page support

Ugh. Google has made the process of using multi-page forms much harder than it used to be. In the older version of Google Forms the values were passed from one page to another in an array.

In the new version of Google Forms the data is still passed from page to page in a variable (called draftResponses) however PHP sees this data as a string instead of an array so the code which reformats the array from a PHP style (which WordPress uses) to a Python style (which Google uses) doesn’t run.

It looks like I will need to parse the string into a PHP array and then encode the array to be compatible with Python. As I said, ugh.

04.12.13
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WordPress Google Form v0.46 beta 12 available

I have posted wpGForm v0.46-beta-12 this morning.  This update removes some debug code,  updates the ReadMe file to reflect usage of the Custom Post Type and new wpgform shortcode, and adds the URL (permalink) of the page from which the form was submitted to the confirmation email (when used).

Now that the issues with the new version of Google Forms appear to be worked out, I am close to releasing this update.  All I have left to do is to update my Help and Support Form to support the new usage model (CPT) and I think I am ready.

Google Forms Beta (10119 downloads )
04.11.13
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WordPress Google Form v0.46 beta 11 available

Things are finally settling down and I am able to spend some time on my WordPress plugins.  I updated Email-Users this week and am now focusing on WordPress Google Form.

Shortly before I went out on vacation I learned from one of the people who has been testing beta releases that the CAPTCHA functionality was no longer working.  I took a quick look at it and sure enough, somewhere between Beta 5 and Beta 10 I broke something and the CAPTCHA was not working but oddly enough, it was only broken on some browsers (e.g. Chrome) but worked on others  (e.g. Firefox).  These sort of bugs are a pain to chase down and with work being very busy and my family and I getting ready to go on a week long trip to Ireland, I decided to wait until I came back to figure out what was wrong.

It turns out I had introduced a very subtle syntax error in the jQuery script which defines which form fields are validated.  I am still surprised it works in Firefox but not in Chrome.  Regardless, it is fixed in Beta 11.

This bug affected me quite a bit as I have the beta version running on my site for Help and Support Requests and I had a slew of spam responses while I was out on vacation.  Hopefully in my clean up I didn’t delete any real requests!

There are a lot of new features in v0.46, please refer to this post from about a month ago which shows how to request an email address from a user as part of the submission.  This post explains how the new Google Form Custom Post Type (CPT) works.

Google Forms Beta (10119 downloads )
03.14.13
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WordPress Google Form v0.46 beta 10 now available

A user recently reported a very odd issue where their server would report a 505 error when visiting the WordPress Google Form Plugin Settings Page.  Having never seen this sort of behavior, I was somewhat stumped.

The user had a test server I was allowed to access and I was able to narrow the problem down to a call to preg_match_all(), a standard PHP function.

The plugin settings page scrapes some content from the WordPress plugin repository and puts it on a tab within the Plugin Settings Page.  The call to preg_match_all() involved a fairly complex regular expression to extract just the content I wanted.

It turns out there is an undocumented WordPress Plugin API which makes extracting this same date extremely simple.  This beta release incorporates the API and eliminates the call to preg_match_all().  The solution is much cleaner, wish I would have known about this sooner!

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

Google Forms Beta (10119 downloads )
03.05.13
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Email-Users v4.4.1-beta-6 now available

This morning I updated the beta version of Email Users 4.4.1 to beta-6.  This version incorporates updated Spanish and German language files and fixes a few remaining links within the plugin which referred to the old plugin home page on <a href=”http://www.marvinlabs.com”>MarvinLabs.com</a>.

I had hoped beta-5 would be the final beta release however I am still waiting for updated French language files before 4.4.1 is released.  Updates to other languages are welcome too however I no longer have the contact information for the Russian and Persian support files.

Email Users Custom List (6001 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 (6649 downloads )
03.01.13
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Email-Users v4.4.1-beta-5 now available

This morning I updated the beta version of Email Users 4.4.1 to beta-5.  This version updates a number of the links within the plugin which referred to the old plugin home page on MarvinLabs.com which are no longer in existance.

I hope this is the final beta release before 4.4.1 goes out.  All I am waiting for is some updates to language translation files.

Email Users Custom List (6001 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 (6649 downloads )
02.08.13
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Email-Users 4.4.1-beta-2 available

I have uploaded v4.4.1. beta-2 for Email Users.  This version changes the custom filters previously defined to be a “user” filter and introduces a “group” filter.  If you have used the “Send to Group” feature, you can now define a series of filters that you can send to.   There are examples of sending to the “Police” and “Fire” departments in the example filter plugin (see below).

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I have updated the example plugin to create the filters, you download it and drop it into  your plugins directory to see menus like shown in the beta-1 post.

There is also a new option on the plugin settings page to control where bounced emails are sent.

Email Users Custom List (6001 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 (6649 downloads )
02.02.13
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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.

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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 (6001 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 (6649 downloads )
12.03.12
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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 (10119 downloads )