WP-Members 2.7.6 Release Announcement

If all goes well with testing, I will be releasing WP-Members version 2.7.6 tomorrow evening.  I expect this will wrap up the 2.7 release cycle, moving us on to the 2.8 project list.  Read on for more information on what is included in the 2.7.6 release. 

Some exciting updates in this release:

• Added ability to use same redirect_to querystring that WP uses in the wp-login form.  This allows more seamless replacement of the wp-login.
• Added a new page shortcode for password reset/change [wp-members page=”password”].  If the user is logged out, it works the reset forgotten password functionality.  If the user is logged in, it will offer the change password functionality.  These functions do also remain in the members-area page shortcode as well, but now can be placed in a stand-alone location as well.
• Added a new page shortcode for the user edit page [wp-members page=”user-edit”].  This needs to be used if the user is logged in and can be used with the login status shortcode.
• Removed $content global from the page shortcode function.  This should correct the double form issue when used with plugins/themes that filter $content.
• Added do_shortcode to the page shortcode call.  This should allow the page shortcodes to be used in conjuction with other shortcodes on the page (although this is not necessarily recommended).
• Added translations for Russian, Slovak, and Hindi.
• Moved _OLD forms to wp-members-deprecated.php.  These forms can still be used, but will be deprecated in a future version.  It is highly recommended that users still using legacy forms begin converting to the _NEW forms.

The addition of redirect_to to the login form gives users the ability to seamlessly replace the wp-login with the login_enqueue_scripts action.  Here’s an example you could add to your functions.php file that supposes you want to redirect all requests to the wp-login to a page with the slug “login” that would contain the [wp-members page=”login”] shortcode (obviously change the domain accordingly):

add_action( 'login_enqueue_scripts', 'redirect_my_login' );
function redirect_my_login() {
wp_redirect( 'http://mydomain.com/login?redirect_to=' . $_GET['redirect_to'] );
exit;
}

The reworking of shortcodes and the addition of some new ones allows more flexibility with the shortcodes than in the past.  It allows for the use of more than one of the “page” shortcodes on a single page, allows for nested shortcodes (such as putting page shortcodes within the logged in/out status shortcodes).  In my opinion, this is probably the most powerful update in this release.

The new shortcodes break out some of the functions of the members-area page to be used separately as needed/desired.