Author Archive for Mr Papa

With Simple:Press 5.0 having reached Release Candidate status, we have no frozen our strings. This means the translators can now begin the process of translating Simple:Press 5.0.

For 5.0, we are going to do translations a bit different.  We have launched a new collaborative translation site in the hope of coaxing more folks into helping to translate. This new collaborative translation site uses GlotPress, the same localization tool used for WordPress in creating its localized versions.

For SP 5.0, we have broken the translations up into multiple pieces. There is the front end core, the back end administration core, plugins and themes. So the base SP core is broken into two pieces: front end and administration. Each plugin and each theme will have their own translations too.
With GlotPress, users can translate a single string or as many strings as they like.  Additionally, if you disagree with a translation or want to recommend an improved translation, users can do that. 

So head on over to our new Simple:Press 5.0 Translation Site and help translate Simple:Press into your language.

You will need to register on the translation site in order to help translate (yup, that’s a WordPress site hiding in the background).  You can find the register link in the upper right hand corner as well as some getting started information.

As part of the translation process, and to help speed it up, we would like to get a couple 2 or3 Translation Validators for each language. When a translation is submitted, it needs to be approved.  Since the Simple:Press team doesn’t speak all the languages that our users do, these Translation Validators will help the approval process along.  If you would like to volunteer to be a Translation Validator for a language, please let us know via our contact form.

If you don’t see a language listed that you would like to translate Simple:Press into, please let us know and we will see if we can get it added for you.

Again, that new translation site is http://glotpress.simple-press.com

Join the forum discussion on this post

Today, we have released Simple:Press Version 4.4.5. This is primarily a bug fix release to coincide with the WordPress 3.2 release cycle. WordPress version 3.2 is currently in RC2 status and will be released any day. Simple:Press version 4.4.4 (the previous release) works just fine with WP 3.2 so an upgrade is not required unless you want to get the bug fixes.

Some of the bugs squashed were an issue with using wp smileys, images from flickr and photobucket clashing with oembeds, wp/sp comment interspersing, icon text not saving in options, tinymce spellchecker and tinymce paste plain text. You can see all the changes on our bug tracker page for 4.4.5.

It is a also worth noting that we updated all of the Simple:Press Icon Sets for this release as part of the icon text not saving in the options issue. So you may want to grab our latest icon sets too though not required if you are not having any issues.

Please head over to our downloads page and grab 4.4.5. This really does clear the decks for 5.0 development which is starting an Alpha testing period beginning July 1.

The affected files are listed below:

M simple-forum/sf-hooks.php
M simple-forum/styles/editors/tinymce/ui.css
M simple-forum/styles/icons/default/ICON_DEFAULTS.php
M simple-forum/styles/icons/three-en/ICON_DEFAULTS.php
M simple-forum/styles/icons/two-en/ICON_DEFAULTS.php
M simple-forum/styles/icons/ash/ICON_DEFAULTS.php
M simple-forum/styles/icons/four-en/ICON_DEFAULTS.php
M simple-forum/sf-loader-admin.php
M simple-forum/admin/panel-options/forms/sfa-options-style-form.php
M simple-forum/admin/panel-options/support/sfa-options-prepare.php
M simple-forum/admin/panel-options/support/sfa-options-save.php
M simple-forum/forum/forms/sf-form-login.php
M simple-forum/forum/sf-page-components.php
M simple-forum/linking/sf-links-comments.php
M simple-forum/library/sf-filters.php
M simple-forum/install/sf-install.php
M simple-forum/install/sf-upgrade.php
M simple-forum/sf-constants.php
M simple-forum/editors/tinymce/plugins/spellchecker/editor_plugin.js
M simple-forum/editors/tinymce/plugins/spellchecker/css/content.css
M simple-forum/editors/tinymce/plugins/spellchecker/classes/utils/JSON.php
M simple-forum/editors/tinymce/plugins/spellchecker/classes/utils/Logger.php
M simple-forum/editors/tinymce/sf-tinyinit.php
M simple-forum/sf-control.php
M simple-forum/messaging/ahah/sf-ahah-pm-manage.php

Just an update on the upcoming Simple:Press 5.0 Alpha testing. A couple weeks ago we announced the alpha was nearing. We are happy to say, the Alpha will start on Friday, July 1.

If you have already volunteered to participate in the Alpha, we should be contacting you this weekend for some details and preparation. If you haven’t volunteered to help test our new Theme and Plugin API, you can leave us a note in our 5.0 Alpha Forum and let us know you want to participate.

The countdown to Simple:Press 5.0 begins now! Watch for more posts discussing V5 features in the near future!

The Simple:Press team is really excited about version 5.0. And with the alpha testing getting ready to commence in a week or two, we have good reason to be excited. We have been working long and hard on 5.0. We are anxious to share our work with you and get some initial feedback. In our 5.0 Alpha Announcement post we talked about the alpha being primarily for testing of the new plugins and themes API.

Plugins are something we have wanted to do for Simple:Press for sometime now. Over the years, the core code has bloated to nearly 2.5 MB as we added in new features and capabilities. Not all of these features and capabilities are used by all users. Additionally, we get a lot of requests for new features too – again, ones that wont be used by everyone. Plugins allow us to break out some capabilities and functionality into add on modules. If a user wants that capability, they can just add the plugin and press on. If you don’t, then your Simple:Press core will be leaner. As of the writing of this post, and its certainly subject to change as we finish the 5.0 development, the core code size is down to under 800 KB. Thus far, the functionality that we have pulled out into a plugin includes:

• Admin Bar
• Custom Profile Fields
• Policy Documents
• Post Rating
• Private Messaging
• Profanity Filtering
• DB Pruning
• Editors (TinyMCE, HTML, and BBCode)
• Report Post
• Spam Registrations
• Subscriptions
• Syntax Highlighting
• Tags
• Watches

Additionally, we have created a few new plugins for use with 5.0. These include:

• Akismet Spam Prevention (have Akismet monitor your posts for spam)
• Online Activity (see who is visiting what pages in your forum)

We expect the number of plugins to grow considerably after the 5.0 release. A lot of the requests from folks are simple plugins. We hope the community gets behind plugins and contributes some back. We certainly will whip up a few plugins as we have some tickets that have been just waiting for the plugin API.

To facilitate plugins, we developed an API and leaned heavily on the WP plugin API. So the former SP program hooks and how they were implemented are no more. We have now sprinkled a liberal amount of hooks (actions and filters) around our code core to make it easy for plugins to hook into what’s going on and affect it in their plugins. Additionally, the inclusion of themes into 5.0 (that’s a post for another time) and the use of template tags much like a WP theme make it possible for plugins to provide an easy method for users to put the plugin output wherever they want. Of course, we cannot predict every location where a hook or filter will be needed so as time goes by and users start playing with the plugin API, we will add more hooks and filters. Did I say their was a 5.0 alpha coming up to play with the plugin API?

To help admins manage their Simple:Press plugins, we have created a new admin panel that lists all currently loaded plugins. Just like with WP, you can have plugins activated or deactivated. This admin panel will show you which plugins are active and which are not. Also, if a plugin has an update available, it will be shown on the plugins panel too. And yes, you can upgrade any plugins with an update available right there from within the WP admin panel (assumes the plugin is in the SP plugin repository). We will cover the inclusion of the auto update of sp core, plugins and themes in another preview post, but it too is a big deal! Additionally, on our storage locations admin panel, you can choose where to store your SP plugins that you are using.

So plugins have arrived to Simple:Press with a bang in 5.0!