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.