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-3 Available

Building on the beta-2 feedback, I have released what I hope to be the final beta release of Email Users 4.8.2.

Email Users 4.8.2-beta-3 adds the following:

  • Ability to remove the “Notify Users” menus from the on the Post and Page sections of the Dashboard menu.

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

Email Users Beta (23212 downloads )

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 (23212 downloads )

Opting out of new Google Forms

As I noted in a post last week, Google has a new version of Forms on the horizon and it doesn’t currently work with the Google Forms plugin.

For the time being, it looks like Google has provided the ability to opt out of the new version of Google Forms which means you can still create forms which work with the Google Forms plugin.

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When creating a new form, look for the small running man icon in the lower left corner of the form editor as shown below.

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Clicking on this icon will revert the form the older version which works with the Google Forms plugin.

I still plan to look at supporting the new version as questions have already started to come in. I am just not sure when I will have a solution IF I can.

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 (23212 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 (30194 downloads )

Email Users v4.7.10-beta-4 available

I have just posted beta-4 of Email Users v4.7.10.  This beta update fixes another issue with the line breaks (hopefully the last one) and also adds the capability to use or include the user’s email address when sorting and/or displaying the user selection lists.

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Email Users Beta (23212 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 (23212 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 (23212 downloads )

Email User 4.7.6 released

About a week ago I got a notice from WordPress.org letting me know Email Users had been de-listed from the plugin repository due to potential security exploit. While the odds were low, it was still a vulnerability which required fixing. This came at a time I was heading to Taiwan for work so my ability to fix it quickly was limited.

This morning I had some cycles to work on it while traveling home. I made the necessary fixes, committed them to Subversion, and informed WordPress.org. I just received a notice from WordPress that Email Users has been listed again. It may take a day or two to propagate through their cache.

Look for the version update notice on your Dashboard and I highly recommend installing this update. There is one other fix for users who use the Ithinx Groups plugin which had a bug in it.