FV Community News V1.2
Posted by Frank on October 31, 2008
Finally, after a lot of programming the time is here. It’s the time for another update of my Community News plugin. This version includes a better way to protect you from being spammed, image uploading, edit submissions and more…
Spam Protection
While I was looking how my plugin works on different sites, I noticed that a lot of spam was coming through the default spam protection, build-in since version 1.1. (This means the default protection without captcha) Personally I hate those no-life spammers, throwing a whole lot of crap to your blog and from the beginning I use Akismet om my blog to protect myself, witch works pretty good. So I decided to build this great peace of spam-killing code into my plugin.
To accomplish this I used the Akismet PHP4 class, written by Bret Kuhns. Submissions will be marked as spam, just like comments, if Akismet finds a message to be spam. This way you can still approve submissions that aren’t spam, but are marked as if they are.
Image Uploading
Another new feature is the possibility to let submitters upload an image along with their submission. I received a request for this, and thought: “Hey that’s a good idea!”. The image field is not required, and therefor you could setup a default image that is used when people don’t upload one. You are also able to configure the maximum sizes for an image (width and height separated).
Note that it could happen that you have to create the upload folder manually. If so, the plugin let you know. Just create a new folder in your WordPress root folder called ‘wp-fvcn-images’, then chmod it to 755 and everything should work fine.
To add the images to your list of submissions, you could use the new %submission_image% tag. This tag will change into the location of the image, so to add a new image, in its img tag use something like this:
<img src="%submission_image%" alt="" /> |
Note that when people upload an image they can’t use AJAX, because JavaScript can’t access the image. Here is taken care of automatically.
My Submissions Page
Want to let submitters view their own submissions? Now that is possible with the new ‘My Submissions’ page. This is an optional page you could enable where registered users of your blog could view and submit their submissions.
Edit Submissions
I also received a request for this one. So from now on you can edit the submissions. Note that the ‘Edit Submissions’ page is already created with and for WordPress 2.7. If you are using the 2.7 nightly-builds you won’t notice, but else you will see that the box with the Save button looks a bit crapy. I have thought a while about this one, but since 2.7 will be released within a few weeks, I think it isn’t worth the effort to make it look good in 2.6 and 2.5.
Dashboard Widget
Another 2.7+ feature is a dashboard widget. It looks almost the same as the comments widget and also has the same features. You could simply Approve, Unapprove, Spam or Delete a submission with one single click while your at the dashboard page.
Other Fixes
More little bug-fixes have been applied. A small list:
- The AJAX didn’t work when there was a ? in the URL, now it does work.
- The settings page is separated in different tabs for a better usability.
- Some problems with the function that shortens up the submission text are fixed.
- You can now add a description if using the widgets.
- The number of unmoderated submissions is added to the admin menu.
- Link actions are added.
- Some problems occurred when you have modified the location of your wp-content folder, this is fixed.
- The ‘Post URL’ field isn’t required anymore. (Had a request for this)
- You now can override the template settings in your theme pages, instead of vice versa.
- Some fixes are applied to the RSS feed.
- Problems with the admin menu are fixed.
- The reloading of the captcha is improved.
That’s about it 🙂
Any suggestions? Please leave a comment.
A website is the window to the soul of an Internet business as well as the people behind it. It may have a positive or may be a negative effect on your end result…
First your plugin is terrific but there is something i wanna ask. Relating to the edit page on the admin site of the submission, I didn’t see any submit button or save button there. Could you help me sir ?
often get overloaded with number of projects resulting into Stress! A client does not care how many projects you got to deliver, he is only bothered about his own project, as he is paying for it.
Organizations with their different objectives always look for a customized CMS solution. At PixelCryons, professionals with hands-on experience will not only integrate WordPress with your website, but also gives your business all required customized solutions.
One more thing…how can I make the submission links open in a new window instead of taking visitors away from my web site in the same window?
Thanks
Love your plugin! One little problem…everything seems to be working OK, except that when I have a pending submission and I try to edit it, there is NO button to save the edits! So, I cannot make any edits. I hate typos and want to be able to fix any that my members may submit 😉 Any suggestions? I have the latest version of WordPress (can’t recall what that is right now) and your plugin Version 1.3.1
Thanks!
Thank you.
Very nice! You are doing fine with these quality plugins! 🙂
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