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!