Google Forms development moved to GitHub

I have been toying with idea of moving development of my Google Forms plugin over to GitHUb for a while and I finally did it. Using the process outlined here, Google Forms development can now be found here. I’ve already made a few changes and pushed them into the WordPress Subversion repository from GitHub.

I’ve started looking at supporting the new version of Google Forms. What Google has done is so significantly different than prior versions that I am not if it will be possible. Google has stopped using standard HTML input elements and instead is using DIV elements with CSS classes and Javascript to handle the form. I can’t think of a technical benefit for Google to do what they did but it is their product and they can do as they see fit.

If someone wants to fork Google Forms and work on this, you are welcome to do so.

Email Users 4.8.2-beta-2 Available

It has been quite a while since I’ve updated Email Users.  There have been a couple of enhancement requests that I’ve wanted to add and some deprecated notices I wanted to resolve.

Email Users 4.8.2-beta-2 adds the following:

  • Custom Header (similar to the custom footer which has been part of the plugin for a while).
  • Control over customer header and footer usage.  Each can be applied to Notifications, User and Group Emails, or both.
  • Ability to remove the “Notify Users about this Post/Page” on the Post/Page editing screen.
  • All references to get_currentuserinfo() have been updated.  The get_currentuserinfo() API function has been deprecated for a while but WordPress 4.5 issues a strong warning on the Dashboard about it so it was time to resolve it.

Please report any issues and I’ll do my best to get them fixed quickly and get this release out.

Email Users Beta (27583 downloads )

Email Users v4.8.0-beta-3

Minor beta update to add more options for the BCC settings.  BCC setting now can be set to 2, 3, or 5 in addition to the other previously available values.   These values are basically an aid for debugging, they are not expected to be widely used as few hosting providers enforce limits this small.

Email Users Beta (27583 downloads )

Email Users v4.8.0-beta-2 available

I received a new translation (Danish) and updated all of the other translation files for Email Users and have rolled out a new beta release.  There is no new functionality in this beta release as compared to beta-1.

If you have the ability to update a translation, please contact me so I can get you the source files.

Email Users Beta (27583 downloads )

Email Users v4.8.0-beta-1 available

Earlier today I released Email Users v4.7.10 which is the formal release of a number of fixes I’ve had in the queue.  Now that it is out, I’ve moved on to the first real new functionality in a while which is why this will be v4.8.x.

Recently there was a 1 Star rated review of Email Users which had a comment about not being able to search for a user in a list of potential recipients.  As you can see in the comments, I didn’t disagree with the user although what they wanted to do was sort of possible.

I’ve used the jQuery Chosen plugin a couple times and it works great for making SELECT elements much more user friendly.  I decided to add it to Email Users to make finding users, particularly for sites which have lots of users, much easier.  If you used WooCommerce, you’re familiar with Chosen as that is what WooCommerce uses for SELECT elements as well.

The v4.8.0-beta-1 release is the first implementation of Email Users with the jQuery Chosen plugin integration.  Please download it, try it out, and report any issues or concerns.

Implementing Chosen allows for easy search and selection as noted in these images.

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From the Send to User(s) page

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From the Send to Group(s) page

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From the Send to Group(s) page after entering “au” to do some filtering

Email Users Beta (27583 downloads )

Google Forms v0.83-beta-1 available

Based on a question in the Support Forum I have added a new feature to suppress breaking a form into multiple columns when the browser is narrower than a specified width (e.g. on a phone).  This should allow forms which are set up for columns to be presented better on phones and tablets.

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If you’d like to try out this feature, download this beta release and provide feedback on any issues.  By default, the plugin will handle columns exactly as it always has.

Google Forms Beta (35923 downloads )

Email Users v4.7.10-beta-3 available

I had started looking at bounce issues a while back but never completed the work.  It turns out bounce emails are problematic and the PHPMailer code included with WordPress has deprecated support for it.  I’ve made some minor changes that may help those trying to use the bounce email address capability.

I stress the “may” aspect of it because my own testing I have been unable to get it to work.  I have not seen anything not working from the changes I’ve made but I have not received any bounce emails either.  They simply seem to go in the bit bucket as far as I can tell.

Due to this unreliability I am recommending against using the bounce email address feature and have added a warning on the settings page advising as much which appears when a bounce address is set.

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From looking at email headers this morning, I believe they are constructed properly.  I have no idea when bounced messages are actually routed versus discarded and different email servers seem to do it differently.

Email Users Beta (27583 downloads )

Email Users v4.7.10-beta-2 available

This version of Email Users adds a new option to enable apply WordPress’ wpautop function to post content prior to sending it as part of a Post/Page notification email.  This will allow retaining the line breaks in post content as they are shown with the visible editor.  This new option is NOT enabled by default – it must be set on the Email Users settings page.  I chose to do this because it would be a change of behavior for users who have been using the plugin and may yield unexpected results.

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The difference between what a post notification with and without this setting checked can be seen in the following images:

Test Notification without “Process Content with wpautop” option:

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Test Notification with “Process Content with wpautop” option:

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Email received from “Send to User(s)”:

This option also ensures that email composed with the Visual Editor is correctly processed.  The images below show the compose screen within WordPress and the view of the received email within Gmail.

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Download the beta and report any issues encountered.

Email Users Beta (27583 downloads )

Email Users 4.7.2 released

Late last week there was a request on the WordPress Support Forum to add a filter to allow control over the HTML which wraps email content (post/page notifications or email to users/groups).

email_users_html_wrapper

This seemed like a reasonable request so I decided to look into it.  Adding a filter was fairly easy.  If the mailusers_html_wrapper filter exists, the default, and very basic, HTML wrapper is ignored and the filter is expected to properly construct the necessary HTML to wrap around email content.

This is the result of a email using the example filter now supplied as part of the plugin as viewed on my iPhone.

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


/**
* To customize the look of HTML email or to integrate with other
* plugins which enhance wp_mail() (e.g. WP Better Emails), use this
* hook to wrap the email content with whatever HTML is desired - or
* in some cases, none at all if another plugin will be adding the
* necessary HTML.
*
* This example wraps an "Urgent" message and table around the email
* content so the background can be styled. A table is the best way
* to do this because not all mail clients will recognize styling
* elements such as BODY and DIV like a traditional web page.
*
* Drop this code snippet and modify to suit your needs into your
* theme's functions.php file.
*
* @see https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-better-emails/
* @see https://litmus.com/blog/background-colors-html-email
*
*/
function mailusers_sample_html_wrapper($subject, $message, $footer)
{
// Wrap the HTML in proper header and body tags
// add some CSS styling to make the email look good.

$mailtext = sprintf('
<html>
<head>
<title>%s</title>
<style>
table { border: 1px solid black; width: 800px; background-color: #c5f6c0; }
td { background-color: #c5f6c0 }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<table class="content">
<tr>
<td class="content">
<div class="content">
<h1>This is an Urgent Message from Email Users!</h1>
%s
</div>
<div class="footer">
%s
</div>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>', $subject, $message, $footer) ;

return $mailtext ;
}

add_filter('mailusers_html_wrapper', 'mailusers_sample_html_wrapper', 10, 3) ;

Google Forms v0.77-beta-1 available

This morning I uploaded beta-1 of Google Forms v0.77.  This release would only be of interest to users who are using the deprecated gform shortcode and ware worried about PHP warnings in the log file (see this post on the WordPress Support Forum).

The warnings were a result of the plugin looking for meta data which is stored with the Custom Post Type (recommended) usage of Google Forms.  The fix skips the check when using the gform shortcode thus eliminating the PHP warnings in the log file.

Unless there is a significant bug reported I will likely release this update fairly quickly as I view the changes made as very low risk.

Google Forms Beta (35923 downloads )