Plugins tested in WordPress 3.0

Posted on July 20, 2010 | Filed Under Verse-O-Matic, WP-Members, WordPress

I have completed testing of my plugins with WordPress 3.0. Both WP-Members and Verse-O-Matic are fully compatible with WP 3.0.

There are some upgrades I am working on for both of these, although I’m not sure when I’ll get them done.

Also, on a side note, it has been difficult to provide support for the WP-Members plugin lately as there has been a great deal of confusion regarding which plugin is being discussed.  Starting around 2008, a number of commercial developers decided (either intentionally or unintentionally – I have no idea) to hijack the name WP-Members for their own use.  There are now a few iterations of this.

Since I released WP-Members in 2006 (the free plugin available through the WP plugin repository), several other “commercial” plugins have been released with similar names, WP Member (at least 2 of these), WP Member Site, and, most frustratingly, WP-Members (although not my freely available plugin).

Naturally, when someone comes to wordpress.org for support, it is assumed that they are speaking of the free, open source version that is available at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-members/.  The really frustrating part is when these people are upset because they can’t get any response from the company’s support, or they are having problems – it then get confused with “The Original” WP-Members.

These commercial developers could save everyone a lot of confusion by changing the name to something dissimilar. “The Original” WP-Members will remain a free plugin.  I do provide consulting and customization services, but the core plugin will remain free.

In the Commercial vs. Free plugin debate, I fall on the side of support in allowing the commercial community to exist.  I know there is debate whether that is compatible with GNU licensing since WP is free.  I believe that is can certainly be consistent with the license.  I just want these guys to put some thought into their product branding and avoid conflicting with other developers.

Verse-O-Matic adds “Verse of the Day” (VOTD) RSS feeds

Posted on October 13, 2009 | Filed Under Verse-O-Matic

I have released an upgrade to the Verse-O-Matic that adds two “Verse of the Day” (VOTD) RSS feeds as options.  These options are available in the plugin admin panel and do not store the verses locally.  Read this post »

Verse-O-Matic 4.0 released

Posted on September 19, 2009 | Filed Under Verse-O-Matic

I have (FINALLY) completed an upgrade to the verse-o-matic plugin.  This upgrade fixes the installation issues that were experienced from WP 2.5.  Any deprecated actions, hooks, or filters have been updated.

I have only tested this on WP 2.8.4 so if you are using a version of WP earlier than 2.8, I suggest you upgrade your WP installation.  This would not just for my plugin, but to protect yourself from any recently fixed security issues.  WordPress has become quite popular and as a result, it has become a favorite target of hackers.  Keeping your WP installation up to date will help protect you from security flaws.

Note: I am always happy to help with support if I can, but unless you are pointing out a bug in the program, I can’t always get to every issue.  Paying clients and churches take priority.

Download Verse-O-Matic 4.0.0 here.

Rebuilding my plugins

Posted on February 28, 2009 | Filed Under Verse-O-Matic, Web, WordPress

I will be rebuilding the Verse-O-Matic and the Affiliate Cloak (ClickBank) plugins.  Around WP version 2.5 some changes were made that caused the installation of these plugins to not work correctly.  Long story short, it centers around the installation of a database table that each of them use.

I will probably utilize the wp_options table rather than put in a new table.  With that, I probably will include an option to completely uninstall the plugin, including emptying the values from the wp_options table.  (Don’t you just hate it when plugins leave huge amounts of data in your database even after you’ve uninstalled them?  I know I do.)

Anyway, this has been bugging me for some time, but I just have not had the time to work on the project.  But I really want to get it fixed so these are useable plugins.  Then I’ll get them moved over to WordPress.org.

Issues with the Verse-O-Matic

Posted on May 20, 2008 | Filed Under Verse-O-Matic

There have been some issues with the Verse-O-Matic that have not been addressed.  I’m not sure at this point if it is due to changes in WP that have not been accounted for, deprecated functions in PHP (I know there are some in the script), or if it is with MySQL.  Regardless of where the issues lie, I will be releasing a fixed version to address the issues with the plugin.

However, note that this fix will be tested on and compatible with the most current version of WP (currently 2.5.1).  It is important to keep up with the changes in WordPress to make sure that your blog is secure and running smoothly.  While the fixes may work on earlier versions of WP (it has certainly been fine in the past), I cannot guarantee that it will for certain.