Well, we are getting close and coming down to the wire on 5.1. The amount of changes has drastically slowed down and we are mainly committing minor fixes and cleaning up a few of the remaining tickets. I think we are down to 3 or 4 tickets remaining and none of those are issues that have to get into 5.1. If all goes according to plan, we have designated May 31 as the release date for 5.1. So, its right around the corner!

One of the major accomplishments we (err, Andy) did this past week was implement topic splitting and merging. This is probably one of the most requested features that we have had. Basically, it will allow you to move a singular post from an topic to either a new topic (can already do this today) or to an existing topic (new). You can also move multiple posts to a new or existing topic. You will be able to select a post and then choose to move all posts before or after it in the topic to a new or existing topic. And finally, you will be able to manually a series of posts (can be in any order) in a topic that you want to move to a new or existing topic. Yup, its in 5.1. The coding is done and we are just testing away and cleaning up the UI.

We are also going to be giving a bit of mobile love to some of the SP features. Mobiles (phones and tablets) have always had an issue with clicking and dragging objects since using your finger on the screen doesn’t really replicate a mouse down and drag on a desktop. There is a cool jQuery plugin out there called jQuery Touch Punch that handles this very nicely. The core devs over at WordPress have seen fit to include the Touch Punch plugin in the 3.4 core now and we have used it to for our stuff. If you are not on WP 3.4 (in beta as of this writing), no worries, it will continue to work as it does today. But, when you get WP 3.4 and SP 5.1, some drag and drop functionality that did not work previously on mobiles will magically start working. And as a bit of teaser, we plan some major work in 5.2 for the Simple Press mobile browsing experience.

On the Simple Press plugin side of things, we wrote another plugin for some folks who had been requesting it. Some of you wanted the ability to add a topic description for new topic. With this new Topic Description plugin, you will be able to do that. The plugin will release shortly after the 5.1 release. We want to get a beta version to a few of you to test it out for us but it needs SP 5.1 first. So just to recap plugins, that means after 5.1 drops, we will have new plugins available for Post by Email, Post Preview, Topic Description and File Uploads Viewer. And that does not include the major updates to the Subscriptions (forum subscriptions and daily/weekly digests) and File Uploader plugins. Oh, and another little secret, the Polls plugin (will let you add polls to a forum post) is well into development and coming along nicely. Don’t be surprised to see it debut on our support forum a bit after 5.1 to get some additional live testing.

Another new feature we finished up this week was a new panel in the Permissions Admin for adding a new auth. An auth is a singular permission for something. A group of auths (view_forum, reply_topics, etc) makes up a permission set. Permission sets are applied to a forum with a usergroup to control access to that forum. So now you can add your own auths. Now, by default, core or plugins wont know about or use this auth except for adding it to permission sets. But, you can use this new auth in your SP theme or in a plugin or to control access to a profile tab or menu. This ability to add an auth has existed in the API, but the admin panel now makes it easier and handles the API for you.

As usual, we had a few bug fixes make their way into 5.1 this past week (or was it two weeks?) including correcting an issue in loading js in footer if that option was selected, correcting an issue with users not able to update their display name in the profile and a few others. As always, feel free to check our 5.1 Bug Tracker page to keep abreast of all the changes.

Okay, guess I had better get back to the testing of 5.1 so we can meet our date! See ya next time!

The last week, while still mainly dedicated to creating our forthcoming 5.1 release, has also seen us concentrating on a couple of issues of catchup – things that were possible in previous versions but were missed in version 5.

The first has revolved around uploading. Those of you who may remember the old File Manager will most likely remember it for being clunky, long winded and not really that intuitive. Judging from feedback, it was possibly the number one feature that was most disliked. It was actually very good at doing what it was supposed to do, but we have to admit is wasn’t the easiest tool to use. When it also became apparent that there were security flaws, it was not a hard decision to drop it when V5 was being constructed. And we are very happy with the new uploader we have adopted in it’s place and – again judging by feedback – so are most of our users.

But as one user aggressively pointed out – if you wanted to re-use an uploaded image or file then you had no way of looking it up. And the same applied to accidentally deleting an image in a post while you were writing it! We knew about this shortfall and have always intended to address it but were now spurred into bringing this development forward. So enter the new Uploads Viewer plugin, the first embryonic version of which is available on this site if you need it and which will be available with our 5.1 release or very soon afterwards.

The other catchup is a bit more technical and embarrassing. We have often said that we believe strongly that the WordPress API (Application Programming Interface) should be used at all times and that all plugins should stick to the rules. Unfortunately, we have come to find that in one important area, we had not done so. As those who know the WordPress API, Simple:Press displays your forum in the filter known as ‘the-content’ – a filter specifically designed to let plugins add items to your posts or pages. While we had continued to use this filter in version 5 we were not using it properly which, in a very small handful of cases, was not giving the expected display of the page.

Our motives for this bypass of the strict API were good – improved perception of performance of page loading. But at the expense that the occasional user would have display problems. We are pleased to report that we have what we believe is an easy fox for that and its currently being tested by a couple of effected users. And for the vast majority of users of course, things are just fine so this new change will become an option.

Other than that there have been the usual round of small bug fixes and small but useful enhancements and at the moment 5.1 is on course. We are aiming for some time around the end of May with a beta. But of course I didn’t tell anyone that.

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Time for another quick 5.1 update. Progress on the version continues nicely. As always, you can view all the 5.1 happenings on our development and bug tracking pages.

In this update, I thought I would cover a couple of API changes were are making in 5.1.

API’s (Application Programming Interface) are hooks available to Simple:Press plugin developers to allow their Simple:Press plugin to interact with core Simple:Press functions. These work similarly as the  WordPress Plugin API hooks do.

Normally, we resist making any API changes because it can break plugin or theme compatibility. We have chosen to make these changes in 5.1 because the base APIs were just introduced in 5.0 and its not likely that they have been used outside of core or our plugins.  If this turns out to not be the case, we can easily help you make the changes in your plugins.
The changes are being made because the current APIs turned out to not be the most efficient of design. Not from a performance stand point but from a usability perspective. Plugins had to do several steps to utilize them. These changes will make them easier to use.

The two APIs we are making slight modifications to are the sfmeta and member data APIs.
The sfmeta API is used store generic data for the forum in a WordPress user meta style table. Our smileys, forum ranks and a few other functions make use of the sfmeta API. The member data API is an API for reading or writing data from the sfmembers table in the database. It’s use is pretty widespread in core and plugins.

The change to sfmeta is how the meta value is stored in the database. Previously, the data was stored in whatever format the user sent to the API. So if you wanted to store an array or object, you had to do the serialization yourself before sending the data to the API – or unserialize yourself when receiving data from the API.
Now, the API will automatically handle data preparation both when sending and receiving data. This simplifies and reduces code in each usage and you don’t have to worry about the format of the data and deal with serialized arrays.

The change to the member data API is along similar lines of sfmeta.
While the member update has always handled the serialization (or unserializing) of data, it did so with a bunch of ‘IF’ statements on specific columns of data (a prior knowledge) in the sfmembers table. When plugins add columns of data in the sfmembers table, they had to handle the serialization of data themselves via a filter. With the API change, we have added the logic to determine the serialization in the API itself.
Now, as with sfmeta, users can now send and receive data objects to and from the API and not worry about serialized arrays. Those filters in plugins for handling serialization are no longer required.

It may not sound like much but changes had to be made to all the per-existing plugins and Simple:Press core files ,which took some effort, but in the long run both of these API changes will make everything easier for both you and us.

Hopefully, the change is early enough in the post 5.0 release era that it will not affect any user plugins. If it does, please let us know and we will help you get the new API usage in place.

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So – as promised – it’s time for another status update on our progress with the 5.1 developments.

We listen very carefully to the requests our users make and when features come up again and again we do – whenever possible – attempt to prioritise those to the top of the list. And that is why Subscriptions are having such a big makeover this time around. They are surely the number one item that comes up in the forums.

As we mentioned in the previous update the last task to be coded up was the digest and the good news is that this is now on our test server and looking good. If all goes well in our internal tests we will turn that feature on here fairly soon so you can try it out.

Another new plugin – and another often asked for feature – also went live on our site this week which some of you may have noticed – a proper Post Preview that will – if all goes to plan – allow you to view what your post will look like when published before you hit the submit button.

There has been progress too on the planned Post by Email plugin. Being able to post replies to existing topics from subscription emails and admin notification emails is well into testing and we now have a cohesive plan of action to implement the starting of new topics etc. Hopefully we will be able to announce more on this new plugin in the next update.

But 5.1 – like any release – is not just about the big ticket items. There are always a host of smaller developments, many of which you don’t even see as they have no UI but that make a big difference to what is going on behind the scenes. We have some of those in the pipeline as well. Notably this week, the Gravatar Cache plugin has been updated and should now speed up even more the display of Gravatars for those that use them. We also hope we have at last resolved the sometimes erratic positioning of popup images and, as a bonus stopped images bigger than the users screen slipping out of sight. And the Profanity Filter plugin has had a change to allow you to define a single term to replace multiple unwanted words.

In the category of things you don’t see but that make a difference, a new Post API has been created to centralise the creation of new topic and posts which is also available to plugins. This simplifies the process and removes a lot of redundant code.

Finally this time around, a couple of other smaller items that are important and requested have got the green light. The first is the ability to move the TinyMCE editor CSS to your theme so you can freely customise it. And – the ability to upload media and other files when editing a post which has been added to the uploading of images.

That’s not bad progress in just a week!

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With the 5.0.5 release behind us, we are now in full swing on development of 5.1. This is the first post 5.0 release that will include a bunch of new features. We want to try to keep you up to date with our 5.1 status.

With support for updates from within the WordPress Admin, we want to try to do more focused, shorter release cycles in the future. Our plan would be for a 2 or 3 month development cycle on these releases. We will also give development status updates on twitter, so be sure to follow us or track the development on our 5.1 development and bug tracker page.

Now, on to the 5.1 status…

One focus in 5.1 is some long needed and requested updates to some of our plugins. Subscriptions, Watches, Blog Linking, Topic Status and Admin Bar will all be getting our attention. The Subscriptions plugin has been one focus early on here. Here are some of the key and major changes:

• Now (along with Watches) features a subscription management page in each user’s profile
• Subscription notification emails will now include the post content
• Users can now subscribe to a forum provided the forum admin enables this feature
• New posts from the admin bar now fire subscription emails
• Subscription digest reports (daily or weekly)

All of those features are now in testing except for the digest reports which are in early stages of planning and design – exciting times for Subscriptions!

Another key feature that has already been added to 5.1 is upload panels for Simple:Press plugins and themes. So in the future, if you want to add a new Simple:Press plugin or theme, you can do it right from within the Simple:Press admin menus. Also already complete is a WordPress Role to Simple:Press User Group mapping tool. For quite some time, we have supported mapping WordPress Roles to Simple:Press User Groups but it only took effect on new users or WordPress Role changes. If you already had an established user database with Roles, you had to manually move those users into the proper Simple:Press User Group. With this new tool, it can be done for existing users too.

Recently, we had a user suggest a delete button on topic view just like an edit button. Doh! We had never thought of it nor had it been suggest before, but now its in 5.1!

And I will leave you with this last tidbit. Currently in development and testing is a new plugin that will allow you to post by email. It is primarily, at least initially, designed for replying to admin or subscription notification emails. I will save the details for another blog post here shortly, but this new plugin will be ready by the 5.1 release.

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