• v13.04
• v13.02
• v12.12

Status

Current phase is: Released

• Feature set scope complete (see below), but may change during development.
• Development phase completed.
• Testing phase complete.
• Final cleanup complete.
• Released: 9th May (4:20pm GMT).
• Admin Guide: Available online.

To download the current release candidate, please read the manual upgrade instructions below.

Please see notes on the release schedule for more information.

Scope of v13.05

A summary of the release changes is available in release.txt.

_____Enhancements_____

CORE

* Choose to exclude JWPlayer (large javascript file) in Manage->Settings
* Added “Everyone” to Manage->Thesaurus, for example, change to “Community”

PROFILE

* Choose which extended fields to include in advanced search
* Set default privacy level of new members via Options->Profile

FORUM

* Topic post/reply lock countdown shown (admin’s can always delete)
* Forum topic post/reply lock countdown

GROUPS

* Group admin can set maximum number of members
* Set default maximum number of members per group on Group admin page

_____Bug_Fixes_____

* Fixed upload of non-images (uses Manage->Settings->extensions)
* Backslashes on community settings (text field)
* Events in calendar view now defaults to current month

What you should do after upgrading

To be sure of a clean upgrade, you should do the following after upgrading an existing WP Symposium installation:

• Visit the Installation page
• If you don’t want the inbuilt profile/group page templates (and use the custom templates), select them on the Options->Profile and Options->Group settings.
• If you’re using the CubePoints WP Symposium module, update to the latest version.
• If using custom templates and you’re experiencing problems, reset your templates. Don’t forget to save them!

Core

If you don’t allow user to upload video files on your site, which is likely as you’ll be paying high bandwidth costs, then exclude JWPlayer in Manage->Settings.

“Everyone” added to Manage->Thesaurus, so you can change it to something like “Community” or “Site Members”.

Profile

On Options->Profile, you can select which fields are included in the advanced search. Note that you can only include checkboxes and lists. Be sure to set up your choice for the first time after upgrading.

Default privacy levels for new members can be set via Options->Profile. Be sure to consider privacy implications if setting less private.

Forum

Topics and replies now display the time left before they are locked from further editing. Note that admin’s can always delete.

Groups

Group admin’s can set the maximum number of members permitted in a group, via group settings.

How to manually upgrade to a release candidate

It is very important (actually vital) when manually installing (or installing a release candidate), to:

1. take a backup of your current wp-symposium plugin folder and database (“just in case”)
2. delete the current wp-symposium plugin folder via FTP - do not delete via WordPress admin->Plugins->Installed Plugins as this will delete all your WP Symposium content!!!
3. upload the contents of the download into your plugins folder (so that you have new wp-symposium folder with everything of inside of it and not old files hanging around)
4. re-activate the single WP Symposium plugin

If you are manually installing the same version (ie. you are installing a newer release candidate, for example), then you can skip steps 1 and 2. If you are upgrading from v12.10 to v12.11 (for example), then you should perform steps 1 and 2.

The download version is suffixed with NB for nightly build during development phase, or RC for release candidate during testing phase. If no suffix, current download is the same as available via wordpress.org.

Upgrading via WordPress admin

Note: this is only applicable to the live release.

Reporting errors

A dedicated forum area is available to report bugs found with this release.

Admin Guide

The admin guide has been updated to cover the current download, including the new way of activating WP Symposium features (previously plugins). It’s available as a PDF to download (19MB), but is being moved to an online version.

Support non-English languages

Is your site German? You should pop over to Thomas’s German group, which includes support for translations into German.

Previous Versions

Older versions of WP Symposium are available at the bottom of the download page.

There are those who use WordPress that feel a technical urge to develop a WordPress plugin, but as far as they know PHP might as well be the acronym for “Pot Head Pixie” ^[5], and to do so would require programming skills. But, through an approachable style, and practical steps that deliver results, it’s possible. Really? Yep, honest!

Variables? Loops? Arrays? Huh?! Don’t Panic! This black art, over a series of articles, will start with the development of your first plugin, through to arming your with know-how that will let terms like these trip of your tongue as easy as getting a cat to ignore you.

Remember, don’t panic. (Have you not read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? Do so. Now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker’s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy) ^[7]

Remember, that’s…

Don’t Panic!

Okay, with the first and probably most useful piece of advise ever provided handed over to you, and now tucked away in your toolbox, let’s take a moment to consider what you’re thinking of doing.

1. WordPress is a web application (simply put, it’s software that does something online, for example, on or for a website). Now the clever people at Automatic (who make WordPress, read more about them should you wish at http://automattic.com)^[1] have made WordPress so that other people, like you and me, can extend it with… plugins. Wahoo!

Not scared off? Awesome, that’s a good sign.

2. So you want to “extend” WordPress, by making a plugin. Now, sit down, as this next sentence could cause a little alarm (this is a good moment in time to remember the advice provided earlier). A plugin is a little web application all of it’s own that, erm, “plugs in” to WordPress. And as it’s a web application, it has to be created in a programming language.

Nerd’s-ville!! Embrace the idea that you’re going to write some code. Accept it. And move on safe in the knowledge that once you start, it’s very hard to stop. It’s a one-way street, it’s addictive, and if you get the bug… well, that’s a topic for another discussion. Be prepared to use strange forms of language when you tell your family and friends that you’re “in the zone”. Kind of cool.

3. Now, you’re going to need to be running WordPress somewhere. You’ve got two choices: on your own computer, or on a webserver on the internet. I’m going to assume you’ll use your own computer (after all, you’ve probably got one…), and a couple of rather handy articles have been penned by those friendly chaps at WPMU.org, discussing free (oh, yes, free) software for you to do so:

• Set up WordPress on your Mac (tutorial): http://wpmu.org/wordpress-for-mac-install-locally-mamp-tutorial ^[9]
• Or, on Windows (tutorial): http://wpmu.org/install-wordpress-locally-on-windows-with-xampp ^[10]

4. If you’ve taken a look at the above tutorials, go ahead and set up your development environment. You need not understand the technical terminology but I’m going to have faith in you and assume you’ve got WordPress up and running locally for the rest of this article. Bit of a cheek, sorry, but use the above links to get this task done, ahem.

Know where your wp-content/plugins folder is!

When you were setting up your development environment you would have installed and decided where to put it on your hard disk. Now, I use a Mac generally, so the following screenshots will be Mac-like, but the principle is the same for all you Windows peeps. Here you can see my file system, and my installation of WordPress. You’ll also see there are some folders underneath. I’m not going to go off at too much of a tangent, but suffice it to say you need to know where your plugins folder is, which is within your wp-content folder. (Read that book yet? Well, if you have, I accept and dutifully agree that also knowing where your towel is, is up there in terms of importance).

Here’s my file system, confirming to me I know where my plugins folder is:

File system location of plugins folder

Why on earth do you need to know where this folder is? Why for the love of everything holy should you care? Well, my dear developer, this is where you are going to put your plugin. And this, oh coding maestro, is what we are going to do next.

(Remember, don’t panic…!)

Let’s make the plugin! Wahoo!

Now, you are going to need something with which to make your plugin. A plugin is written code – and code can be written in something as simple as a text editor. In fact many developers prefer the simplicity of text editors to expensive software applications. And that’s all you’ll need for now, and as well as MAMP/XAMPP, they are also free. Good, eh? When you sell your plugin for millions, that’s a 100% profit margin. Yummy.

So take your pick. If you’re on Windows, even Notepad will do the job, but you may want to check out EditPlus++^[2] (http://notepad-plus-plus.org), and on Mac you can use TextEdit, but take a look at my favourite, EditRocket^[3] (http://www.editrocket.com). It’s a very subjective topic, something for another article, but just don’t use anything that formats text, like Microsoft Word.

Time is previous, especially now you’re coding. So, let’s not waste any more time, crank up your editor of choice and type in the following. Don’t worry what it is for now, I’ll explain in a moment.

Yes, it’s an image; you can’t copy and paste the text. That’s intentional; you’ll never learn anything by copying and pasting. You need to type, make mistakes, find the mistakes (bugs) and correct them. It’s the way to learn to code.

First lines of plugin code to enter

Spot the PHP on the first line? The mention of it in the first sentence of this article wasn’t a random co-incidence! It’s the programming language you’re using. Google “PHP” for more information. But the key thing is that at the top of your PHP file you must have <?php and at the end you must have ?>. Now, the word must is key here, it’s not optional, it’s 100%, totally, completely mandatory. All your code will be placed between them.

So, what have you entered? Well, it’s one big comment – a comment being a note within the file, it won’t do anything. But it’s important, as you’ll see shortly. The comment starts with /* and ends with */.

What you’re creating here is a file that WordPress will be able to “plugin” to extend itself, and your web server (that’s MAMP or XAMPP), will interpret and do what you tell it to. This is the start of your first computer programme! Pat yourself on the back, take a bow, and feel smug.

So, the comments… Well, these are important for WordPress to know that what you’re creating is a plugin. Whilst normally, your comments can say anything you want (they’re normally for your benefit), in this instance, each line must start as shown. Most are self-explanatory, and to be honest, right now, if you don’t understand something it will either become clear; or not be essential in your early days of coding.

But we want to finish our first plugin and get it on our (local) website. So, extend your file to the following, being careful to copy it exactly as shown. And no, you can’t copy and paste, get used to typing. Seriously.

First lines of code in the plugin

I hear you… What, for all the tea in china, does that mean? (Don’t panic).

The best thing to do is see what it actually does. But, this is the first version of your plugin completed. So go ahead and save it. Where? Yep, that plugins folder! Save it, and call the file “helloworld.php” (the .php is important), inside that plugins folder:

Save in your plugins folder

What’s inside your plugins folder will differ from what you see above, depending on what plugins you have installed on your WordPress setup. But the important thing is that your file is placed inside the plugins folder.

Activate your plugin!

The moment of truth, this is it. Go to your (local) WordPress website, log in as the admin user, and if not there already go to the admin dashboard (probably at something like http://localhost/wp-admin).

Click on plugins, and look down the list, and – with a fair wind, accurate typing, and a quick pray – your plugin will be listed:

Activate your plugin

Wahoo! Remember those comments? You can now see where and why they matter, and click on “Joe Bloggs” or “Visit plugin site” to see where the URI’s come into play.

Key lesson now – serious point. Coding is about playing. Trying things out. Breaking your code. Fixing it. Improving it. So play around with the comments and see how it changes on your plugin page. Really. Give it a go and then come back to carry on.

Do you manage to break it? Change it? Righty ho, go on then… activate your plugin!

When you do, and assuming you’ve no bugs in your code (if you do, go back and compare what is shown above with what you’ve got in your text editor), your plugin will activate.

But, now what, where does it show? How do you get it on your site.

Adding your plugin to your site

Take a look back at your code. See that line 19? It’s doing what it says, adding a shortcode (‘add_shortcode ‘) to WordPress that can be used on a WordPress page.

Create a new page in WordPress, and before putting anything in the page content, make sure it’s visible on your site. Depending on your site, you may need to create/amend a Menu via “Appearance”->”Menu” on the admin dashboard.

Assuming you can see your page on your (local) website, via the admin dashboard, edit your page (via Pages on the menu). In the content, just enter your WordPress shortcode that is also in line 19 of your plugin code.

Wait! What’s a shortcode? If this is new to you, it’s how you use functionality provided by plugins. WordPress defines a shortcode as:

“A shortcode is a WordPress-specific code that lets you do nifty things with very little effort. Shortcodes can embed files or create objects that would normally require lots of complicated, ugly code in just one line. Shortcode = shortcut.”
http://en.support.wordpress.com/shortcodes ^[8]

Your plugin created a shortcode, namely [myshortcode], so when you edit your new page, just put [myshortcode] in the content – nothing else.

Add your shortcode to a WordPress page

Save your page, and go and take a look on your website, it should look something like the following (accept your WordPress theme might make the overall page look and feel different):

Your WordPress page showing plugin output

See there, right below the page title that you entered when you created the page? The words “Hello World”? That’s your plugin sending that to the screen! Pretty cool huh?

You, my fine coding friend, have just created your first computer program, and your first WordPress plugin. Not bad!

Before coming to an end, try extending your plugin with the following change:

Add some more code to your plugin

Just save the file (save over the top of your existing file), and go back to the page on your (local) website to see the change:

Additional output from your plugin

With that last change, you can see how you can add more in the way of output, using standard HTML, to show on the screen. Don’t know HTML? Well, check out http://www.w3schools.com/html ^[6] that has a wealth of useful information, examples, and tips for you.

Next Steps

So that’s it. You’re now part of the coding community. It’s a never-ending road, you will never know everything, there is always something to learn, and should you so which, you will learn daily. In future I’ll cover where you can go for help. There are so many people who will gladly help you out, for free, on any topic (coding that is, your life generally is out of scope). They’re generally a friendly bunch, and not all Cola guzzling, pizza scoffing, sci-fi nerds! Well… ahem. Mostly.

The next part of this series of programming from scratch for WordPress will expand on what our plugin does, in particular the next part will:

• Display information about the current logged in user;
• Start building up some useful PHP skills. (Want a teaser? Variables. The building blocks of programming.)

And remember, when things don’t work, and you feel like you’re going crazy, and you’re hopelessly late for bed… don’t panic. And drink tea, tea is good.

By the way, PHP stands for PHP: Hypertext Pre-processor ^[4], and is a recursive acronym….

Simon Goodchild
April 2013

Word count = 2076

References

1. Automattic http://automattic.com (accessed 18/04/2013)
2. EditPlus++ http://notepad-plus-plus.org (accessed 18/04/2013)
3. EditRocket http://www.editrocket.com (accessed 18/04/2013)
4. PHP.net http://php.net/manual/en/faq.general.php (accessed 18/04/2013)
5. The Free Dictionary, Definitions of PHP http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/PHP (accessed 18/04/2013)
6. W3schools.com http://www.w3schools.com/html (accessed 18/04/2013)
7. Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker’s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy (accessed 19/04/2013)
8. WordPress.com http://en.support.wordpress.com/shortcodes (accessed 18/04/2013)
9. wpmu.org, Set up WordPress on your Mac Tutorial http://wpmu.org/wordpress-for-mac-install-locally-mamp-tutorial (accessed 18/04/2013)
10. wpmu.org, Set up WordPress on your Windows Tutorial http://wpmu.org/install-wordpress-locally-on-windows-with-xampp (accessed 18/04/2013)

About the author

Simon is been programming for over 25 years as well as providing management and technical consultancy services.

He developers and manages WP Symposium (www.wpsymposium.com), lives in the UK, loves WordPress, and drinks tea.

Quite a lot of settings. But, as written on the cover of the greatest selling book in the history of the universe, don’t panic. (You haven’t read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy? Read it. Now.) This just means that there are options for you to play with. However, there are a few that you will want to get right. Some are a little techie, but nothing that you can’t handle.

Script Time Out

Sets how long it is before a WP Symposium page script times out. Set to 0 if you don’t want a limit, or are not sure what the hell a script time out is.

WP Symposium ships with both uncompressed and compressed JavaScript and Stylesheet (CSS) files. The uncompressed can be read and edited but are larger, and so slower to load. Minimized can’t easily be read, but load faster as they are smaller. So which to use? Well, if you have to ask, choose Minimized.

Widgets are shown in the WordPress sidebar (a WordPress thing, not a WP Symposium thing). Check out the Widgets chapter for more information. If you want the widget contents to be shown with your page content then uncheck this option. If you want your page to load, and then the widgets content to appear after (which may give the perception of a fast page load), check this option. Why not always use AJAX? Well, it increases the number of separate calls to your server, so may have a slightly higher impact on your server. Try both, see which you prefer. I would tend to stick to non-AJAX mode for widgets, otherwise the AJAX-loading image can appear a few too many times.

• v13.02
• v12.12

Status

Current phase is: Testing Phase

• Feature set scope complete (see below), but may change during development.
• Development phase completed.
• Testing phase started.
• Final cleanup not yet complete.
• Release date: Not set.
• Admin Guide: Available online.

To download the current release version, please read the manual upgrade instructions below.

Please see notes on the release schedule for more information.

Scope of v13.04

A summary of the release changes is available in release.txt.

_____Enhancements_____

CORE

* Replaced the file upload routine (Uploadify) to avoid use of Flash (modern browsers recommended)
* File upload can now be used on iPhone, iPad, etc (as not using Flash)
* Login prompts link to login page, with redirect back to referring page
* New “Settings” option to switch WYSIWYG editor image dialog to use WordPress media manager images
* Added audit function for developers (activate via Manage->Settings, analyse via Manage->Audit)
* Added search to Manage->Forum Posts admin page (search the topic/reply post text)
* Quickly change forum topic categories via Manage->Forum Posts admin page

PROFILE

* By default, profile page now uses a in-built layout (for theme compatibility)
* Switch back to templates on Options->Profile (first option)
* Moved horizontal tabs to be part of “Profile”, out of “Profile Plus” (in free version)
* Changed default style of horizontal menu to “tabs” (can be styled, will post article on blog)

PROFILE PLUS

* Embed YouTube videos in activity (select via Options->Profile Plus)

FORUM

* New YouTube button on WYSIWYG editor toolbar

EVENTS

* Display global list of events as a calendar (select via Options->Events)

GROUPS

* By default, group page now uses in-built layout (for theme compatibility)
* Switch back to templates on Options->Groups (first option)

MOBILE

* Completely overhauled, more improvements to come in future releases

_____Bug_Fixes_____

* Carriage returns on forum editing and replies (WPMS)
* Font family/size dropdown list was not displaying when editing existing forum posts
* Payment button was showing when no payment due on Events
* Various minor miscellaneous fixes

What you should do after upgrading

To be sure of a clean upgrade, you should do the following after upgrading an existing WP Symposium installation:

• Visit the Installation page
• If you don’t want the inbuilt profile/group page templates (and use the custom templates), select them on the Options->Profile and Options->Group settings.
• If you’re using the CubePoints WP Symposium module, update to the latest version.
• If using custom templates and you’re experiencing problems, reset your templates. Don’t forget to save them!

Profile and Group page now uses in-built layout

To improve the issue of compatibility with themes, by default an in-built layout is now used for the profile page. If you are using templates, no problem, re-activate them for the profile page on Options->Profile, and on the Options->Groups, and you can continue as before

Profile Page “tabs” (horizontal) menu styles

This has been changed to reflect tabs, as used on the Mail page, etc. You can re-style easily, by putting your own styles in Styles->CSS, here’s an example (with some awful colors) as an example:

/* Top level */
ul.__wps__dropdown li {
    background-color: red !important;
    color: white !important;
    width: 100px !important;
    font-family: courier !important;
    font-size: 18px !important;
    border: 0 !important;
    border-radius: 3px !important;
}
ul.__wps__dropdown li:hover {
    background-color: orange !important;
}

/* Second level */
ul.__wps__dropdown li li {
    background-color: green !important;
    width: 200px !important;
    color: yellow !important;
    font-family: helvetica,arial !important;
    font-size: 14px !important;
    border: 0 0 1px 0 !important;
    border-radius: 3px !important;
}
ul.__wps__dropdown li li:hover {
    background-color: blue !important;
    color: white !important;
}

#__wps__menu_tabs_wrapper {
    display: none;
}

ul.__wps__dropdown li.__wps__dropdown_tab_on { background-color: pink !important;}
ul.__wps__dropdown li.__wps__dropdown_tab_off { background-color: yellow !important; }

/* Line below the tabs, hide it */
#__wps__menu_tabs_wrapper { display:none; }

Inserting images into the WYSIWYG editor

From v13.04 NB7, there is a new setting under Manage->Settings that allows you to change the TinyMCE editor “image” toolbar button.

You can instead select an image from the WordPress media library, via a dropdown list. So you would first upload your image to the WordPress media library (via WordPress admin), and can then select it for use in the editor.

This is useful for site editors who want to include images in, for example, in an Event “more information”, but do not want to link to an image elsewhere and/or FTP images to their server.

I would suggest that site admins exclude “image” from the WYSIWYG toolbars on the forum options (as users should be attaching images anyway, rather than linking to them elsewhere) – but the button will always show on the events editor for use, whether you are linking via a URL or using images from the media manager.

Adding YouTube button for profile activity

Part of Profile Plus, simply activate on the Options->Plus.

Adding YouTube button to the WYSIWYG editor

You can select which buttons are on the WYSIWYG editor tool bar in Options->Forum. Reset to full or minimal and you will see “youtubeIframe” added to the list of buttons. Or add “youtubeIframe” manually to your list of buttons.

How to manually upgrade to a release candidate

It is very important (actually vital) when manually installing (or installing a release candidate), to:

1. take a backup of your current wp-symposium plugin folder and database (“just in case”)
2. delete the current wp-symposium plugin folder via FTP - do not delete via WordPress admin->Plugins->Installed Plugins as this will delete all your WP Symposium content!!!
3. upload the contents of the download into your plugins folder (so that you have new wp-symposium folder with everything of inside of it and not old files hanging around)
4. re-activate the single WP Symposium plugin

If you are manually installing the same version (ie. you are installing a newer release candidate, for example), then you can skip steps 1 and 2. If you are upgrading from v12.10 to v12.11 (for example), then you should perform steps 1 and 2.

The download version is suffixed with NB for nightly build during development phase, or RC for release candidate during testing phase. If no suffix, current download is the same as available via wordpress.org.

Upgrading via WordPress admin

Note: this is only applicable to the live release.

Reporting errors

A dedicated forum area is available to report bugs found with this release.

Admin Guide

The admin guide has been updated to cover the current download, including the new way of activating WP Symposium features (previously plugins). It’s available as a PDF to download (19MB), but is being moved to an online version.

Support non-English languages

Is your site German? You should pop over to Thomas’s German group, which includes support for translations into German.

Previous Versions

Older versions of WP Symposium are available at the bottom of the download page.

Why would you want to do this?

Possible scenarios include:

1. You are not using a custom menu (just the default WordPress menu)
2. You don’t want a separate menu for logged in and logged out users when using custom menus
3. You don’t want to have to worry about adding it yourself!

How to do it?

Simply copy the following into your theme’s functions.php file:

// Add login and logout to custom menu automatically
function __wps__add_nav_menu_items( $items, $args ) {
  global $current_user;
  if ( is_user_logged_in() ) {
    $items .= '<li id="menu-item-logout" class="menu-item menu-item-logout"><a href="'.esc_url( home_url( '/' ) ).'wp-login.php?action=logout">'.__('Logout', WPS_TEXT_DOMAIN).'</a></li>';
  } else {
    $items .= '<li id="menu-item-login" class="menu-item menu-item-login"><a href="'.esc_url( home_url( '/' ) ).'wp-login.php?redirect_to='.urlencode($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']).'">'.__('Login', WPS_TEXT_DOMAIN).'</a></li>';
  }
  return $items;
}
add_filter('wp_nav_menu_items','__wps__add_nav_menu_items', 10, 2)

// Add login and logout to default WordPress menu
function __wps__add_page_nav_menu_items( $items, $args ) {
  $items = str_replace('</ul></div>', '', $items);
  global $current_user;
  if ( is_user_logged_in() ) {
    $items .= '<li id="page-item-logout" class="page-item page-item-logout"><a href="'.esc_url( home_url( '/' ) ).'wp-login.php?action=logout">'.__('Logout', WPS_TEXT_DOMAIN).'</a></li>';
  } else {
    $items .= '<li id="page-item-login" class="page-item page-item-login"><a href="'.esc_url( home_url( '/' ) ).'wp-login.php?redirect_to='.urlencode($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']).'">'.__('Login', WPS_TEXT_DOMAIN).'</a></li>';
  }
  $items .= '</ul></div>';
  return $items;
}
add_filter( 'wp_page_menu', '__wps__add_page_nav_menu_items', 10, 2 );

How does it work?

There are two functions here, each used with a WordPress filter:

1. __wps__add_nav_menu_items (wp_nav_menu_items filter)
2. __wps__add_page_nav_menu_items (wp_page_menu filter)

Adding to the custom menu

If a custom menu has been set up, the first function, called by using the wp_nav_menu_items filter will append either a Login or Logout menu item. Feel free to change the hyperlink if you want the menu item to go somewhere else. The check for is_user_logged_in() will determine whether Login or Logout is added. Note that the redirect parameter will take the user back to where they came from.

If you want to change the position on the menu, you will need to play around with how the HTML string ($items) is parsed.

Adding to the default WordPress menu

This is used when there is no custom menu, and therefore uses a different filter (wp_page_menu). It also has to parse the menu HTML as it differs slightly. Again, feel free to change the URL of the hyperlinks added if you want. Note that the redirect parameter will take the user back to where they came from here too.

Again, if you want to change the position, you will need to change how the HTML string ($items) is parsed.

As this may depend on your site theme and other plugins, the CSS may vary, but below is an example of CSS that have been tested with the TwentyTwelve theme.

So, you may need to tweak the CSS to match your site, but have fun giving it a go! Just copy and paste the CSS into WordPress admin->Symposium->Styles->CSS.

TwentyTwelve Theme

/* Profile header */

#profile_header_div {
    min-height:200px;
}

#profile_photo {
    position: relative;
    margin-left:400px;
}

#profile_photo .avatar {
    transform:rotate(7deg);
    -ms-transform:rotate(7deg); /* IE 9 */
    -moz-transform:rotate(7deg); /* Firefox */
    -webkit-transform:rotate(7deg); /* Safari and Chrome */
    -o-transform:rotate(7deg); /* Opera */
    position: absolute;
    right:0;
    top:10px;
    width: 160px !important;
    height: 160px !important;
    border: 8px solid #efefef !important;
    border-radius: 0 !important;
    box-shadow: 3px 3px 5px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5);
}

#profile_name {
    margin-bottom:0 !important;
}

#profile_details {
    clear:both;
    margin-left:0 !important;
} 

#profile_label {
    clear: both;
    margin-bottom:10px !important;
    margin-top: 10px !important;
}

.__wps__profile_page_header_ext_value {
    max-width:300px;
}

Most problems appear with one of the following, or something similar:

• the Panel isn’t showing friends online, or
• the flashing “please wait” image just keeps flashing and nothing is displayed.

This suggests that there is a problem with Javascript on your site.

Make sure you have the latest version installed

With every release, bug fixes if needed will be included. Keep your version up to date (it’s also hard to support older versions of code…..). The latest version can be found on thedownload page.

Install Firefox/Firebug

Make sure you are using the Firefox browser, with the Firebug add-in installed and enabled – it will tell you if there is a Javscript error and where the error is.

Steps to follow

1. First visit the Installation page to make sure the internal settings are updated
2. Change your theme to TwentyEleven
3. De-activate all non-WP Symposium Plugins
4. Does it now work?
5. If it does, re-activate your plugins one at a time, testing after each one is re-activated – when things stop working you’ve found a plugin that is clashing
6. If all your plugins re-activate and you are still okay, change your theme back – does the problem now occur?

At some point in the above process, Firefox/Firebug may tell you that your have a Javscript error. An example of a common error is something like:

.autocomplete is not a function

The problem is that a plugin or your theme is loading a version of jQueryUI that does not include a function (autocomplete in this example). It may be a different function, but the above is quite common.

Using any plain text editor find out where in your plugin or theme jQueryUI is being loaded by searching the .php files in your plugin folder (under wp-content/plugins) for “jquery-ui”. Then comment out the line with two backslashes at the start of the line (//) and save the file. WP Symposium can then load the latest version of jQueryUI with an up-to-date set of functions.

For example, the file being loaded will look something like the following (although with an older version number):

jquery-ui-1.8.11.custom.min.js

Duplicate WP Symposium plugins

Easy to solve, follow these instructions on the WP Symposium blog.

Permissions

Some web servers can be tight on the correct permissions of files and folders. For example, “page not found” can be reported if permissions are not correct (either too secure or not secure enough).

This is just a quick overview, read more about server permissions, ls and chmod.

To see if you are getting the “page not found” problem, use Firefox with the Firebug plug-in installed and on the Console screen you will see red error saying “page not found” when the files are actually there.

Using an FTP client or command line access, check that plugin .php, .js and .css files (all files) are 644 (that means readable and writeable by your site admin, readable by groups and others). Folders (directories) should be 755 (that means readable, writeable and executable by your site admin, readable and executable by groups and others).

When copying files to your server, they may have been set as 777. This will cause problems with access (pages reported as “page not found”) and is very insecure for your site.

Each FTP client will allow you to check and change permissions in a different way. Read about how to use FTP clients to change file permissions.

If using a Unix (Linux, Ubuntu, Redhat, etc) server you can check permissions with the command “ls -l” – you are looking for the left column which will look like “-rw-r–r–” for files (which represents). If they are “-rwxrwxrwx” they are 777. To change them to 644 enter the command “chmod 644 *.php” or “chmod 644 *.js” (for example). To change folders, use the command “chmod 755 ajax” (for example to change the permissions on the ajax folder).

You can also recursively change permissions. Go to your plugins folder and use the following commands:

find . -name \*.js -type f -print -exec chmod 644 {} \;
find . -name \*.php -type f -print -exec chmod 644 {} \;
find . -name \*.css -type f -print -exec chmod 644 {} \;
find . -type d -print -exec chmod 755 {} \;

Windows Permission

You need to give “Write” permission to your plugins directory.

This must also be done for your images and temp directory. If using IIS7 the users requiring permission are: IUSER, IIS_USER, and NETWORK SERVICE.

Assumptions

I’m going to make the following assumptions:

• You have the latest version of WordPress installed somewhere and you can login as an administrator
• You know your administrator username and password
• Your WordPress installation has access to the internet (you’re not sitting in a coal mine)
• You are reasonably okay using websites and know how to navigate around the WordPress admin dashboard (but don’t worry if you’re not an expert, you don’t need to be)
• You are using a single-install version of WordPress (ie. not multi-site, please see the Multi-site chapter for more information if you are).
• You are using the TwentyEleven theme and no other plugins (you can keep Hello Dolly and Akismet as they come with WordPress.

Getting and Installing

The most straightforward way to install WP Symposium is via the WordPress admin dashboard. Go to Plugins -> Add New and do a search for Symposium.

This will allow you to search all of the plugins currently stored on the WordPress repository. There are a lot. I mean a lot!

Right now, this is the current count:

22,735 PLUGINS, 385,483,269 DOWNLOADS, AND COUNTING

Now that’s a log of plugins, and a lot of downloads. It’s one of the reasons why WordPress is so popular. If you’re particularly interested, you can get the latest number for the above at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins!

So doing a search for symposium, you get the following results (or something very similar):

You want to click on Install Now, and WP Symposium will be downloaded and installed into your WordPress installation. When downloaded, go ahead and activate the plugin.

The first time you install WP Symposium, it creates a bunch of tables in your database and so takes a little longer. Upgrading doesn’t take so long. After activating, you will be returned to the WordPress dashboard.

Whenever you install or upgrade WP Symposium a welcome message is shown saying hello, and reminding you to visit the installation page to complete the installation/upgrade, along with some other helpful information that you can read now or later. Click on the “Dismiss” button to hide the welcome and visit the installation page.

You can re-display the welcome message at any time via the menu item WP Symposium -> Welcome/help message.

 Your first step after installation

Your installation page verifies your WP Symposium installation, and allows you to set up pages within your social network.

The installation page is divided into three main areas:

1. The activated features (and activate those you want)
2. The activation code
3. A set of tools to help check your installation

The activation code

This is not something you need to worry about at the moment. If and when you decide to use certain WP Symposium bronze features, to avoid having a polite notice shown at the top of your website, you will need to enter an activation code.

See the chapter on Bronze membership for more information.

The Activated Features

After your initial installation, you will have no features activated. This is normal. We need to activate some of the WP Symposium features so they can be used on your website. So…

Activating WP Symposium features

Go the your WP Symposium Installation page, via the admin dashboard menu -> WP Symposium -> Installation. You will see a number of features, some of them in a section marked “Bronze member features”.

If you are using a brand new WordPress installation, your list will probably look something like that shown below. 

The only feature activated is the “core” (which is always activated), which is all well and good, but won’t allow you to do anything. So we need to activate some of the others. We are going to focus on the basic features just for now, so click check “Activate” for the following and click on Update.

• Profile
• Forum
• Members Directory
• Mail

Those four features will allow you to get your social network up and running.

So we now need to add them to our website.

Adding WP Symposium features to your website

WP Symposium features are added to WordPress pages. With a clean WordPress install there are no pages that currently exist (other than the Sample page). Hence the drop down lists that are shown beside each WPS feature only has Sample page listed.

That’s fine; we are going to create a new page for each of our WP Symposium features.

To do that, click on the New Page button beside Forum.

This will instruct WordPress to go away, create a new page, and put the shortcode [symposium-forum] on to that page. It happens quickly and then your list of WPS features will look like this.

Note that the New Page button (and drop-down list) has been replaced with a link to your new page, and an [Edit] link allows you to edit the page that was created.

Also notice that the status column to the right shows that WP Symposium has updated it’s internal reference to the new page. That’s a good thing as it’s used elsewhere throughout WP Symposium, not that you need to worry about that.

So, let’s take a look at the page that was created. Click on the Edit link as shown below.

You will be taken to the WordPress page edit screen, where you can see the shortcode has been entered for you (for the forum in this example).

Removing WP Symposium from a page

If you followed the previous section, you will be looking at a new WordPress page with the WP Symposium forum shortcode in its content.

If not, then get to one of your existing WordPress pages with a WP Symposium shortcode in the content, and we will carry on together!

To remove the forum from this page, simply remove the [symposium-forum] shortcode and click on Update.

Now, what you must do, which is very important whenever you remove or manually add a WP Symposium shortcode to a page is re-visit the WP Symposium -> Installation page.

When you re-visit the page, you can see that WP Symposium has updated its internal information with the change your made, and that you are now prompted once again to add the forum to a new or existing page.

Completing the initial set of pages

Having added the forum in the previous section – go back and do it if you skipped ahead! – we can now add the other features. On the WP Symposium -> Installation page click on the Add New button for each of the remaining features so you end up with a list similar to the following.

Note that I’ve tidied up my Permalinks. See the next chapter “Tidying up your WordPress installation”.

You now have all four features (forum, profile, mail and member directory) set up and ready to use.

Go to your website and marvel at your creation. Your home page will probably be set to the blog, like WordPress does, we’ll tidy that up in the next section.

But your menu should look like this.

Clicking on Forum, Mail, Members and Profile and you should see your social network come to life!

Well, with you as the only member it’s not exactly kicking with activity yet, but the building blocks are now in place. Also bear in mind that the screenshots below may not match exactly with yours as there are changes from time to time, but you get the idea.

Pat yourself on the back.

Branching out a bit here, as this isn’t really about WP Symposium, but more about WordPress itself. However, it will make your WP Symposium installation a little more conducive to a social network.

• As the network super admin user, you can “network activate” each the features
• The forums are specific to each site in your network, everything else is shared among them
• If you enter a Bronze activation code, it will apply to all of your sites
• Site admins do not see the activation code input area, or the network activation column

• It allows you to activate the various features (profile, forum, groups, etc)
• It verifies your installation
• It updates internal WP Symposium information on “where” your components are.

The third point is very important. Always re-visit the installation page after adding, removing or changing a WP Symposium shortcode. For example, if you manually add a shortcode, or manually remove a shortcode to/from a WordPress page, re-visit the Installation page.

This is a new section, and hence rather small! However, it will grow as “terms” are added. It allows you to change particular words to match your own site. For example, replace Friend/Friends with Colleague/Colleagues.

At the moment, you can only redefine “Friends”.

Note that you need to enter a singular and plural version, for example Buddy/Buddies, Colleague/Colleagues or Mate/Mates.

Essentially, you can play around with HTML (and hardcoded CSS) for the following (including the necessary shortcodes as displayed alongside each template).

• Profile Page Header
• Profile Page Body
• Page Footer
• Mail Page: Tray Item
• Mail Page: Message
• Forum Header
• Forum Categories (list)
• Forum Topics (list)
• Group Page
• Group Forum Topics (list)
• WP Symposium Emails

Shortcodes

Shortcodes are replaced by dynamic content produced by WP Symposium. The shortcodes are specific to each template, and as such as listed alongside each template textarea.

For example, in the “WP Symposium Emails” template, the following shortcodes are used by default:

Shortcodes should also include the square brackets. [message] is correct but message is not.

Including extended fields in the profile header

If you have activated the profile plus feature, you can automatically insert extended fields with the shortcode [ext_xxx] where xxx is the slug of the extended field.

For example, if you have an extended field with a slug called ‘gender’, then you can insert [ext_gender] into the profile page header template. An example is below.

Rather than go into detail for all the above, I’ll pick a couple of examples as a way of demonstrating how you would look at changing any of them.

Changing the email template

A number of “things” cause WP Symposium to send real e-mails to members, such as forum topics and replies. You can tailor this to match your site.

You would do this with the “WP Symposium Emails” template.

Remember for emails, you are effectively creating a web page that is viewed by the email browser, hence the inclusion of hardcoded styles. The default styles include a body colour and a border around the content.

Changing the site footer

It’s nice to display the WP Symposium footer, but you don’t have to. And you can replace it with one of your own, that is display at the bottom of every page.

If you don’t want a footer at all, enter a single space. Make sure to put in the space, if you leave the field blank, the default will be used instead.

Switching the profile page menus

With Profile Plus activated, you can specify whether the menu on the profile page is displayed vertically or horizontally (with drop down menus).

You should first select the version you want on the WP Symposium->Options->Plus screen, and then come to the templates page to change the template. You will also see the method of managing the menu items change on the WP Symposium->Options->Profile screen change.

Including extended fields in the profile page header

The following is the profile page header template, with some extended field slugs (gender, colour and hobby) included that are converted into the extended field information. Note: you need profile plus feature activated for these to be available.

<div style='float:right'>[poke]</div>
<div style='float:right'>[follow]</div>
<div id='profile_name'>[display_name]</div>
<div id='profile_header_div'>
<div id='profile_label'>[profile_label]</div>
<div id='profile_header_panel'>
<div id='profile_photo' class='corners'>[avatar,200]</div>
<div id='profile_details'>
<p>[location]<br />[born]</p>
[ext_gender]
[ext_colour]
[ext_hobby]
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div id='profile_actions_div'>[actions]</div>

• See which of your friends are online
• Chat Windows (for one to one chat between members)
• Notify you of new mail (unread)
• Notify you of new friend requests
• Set your presence as offline
• Logout

Accessed via WP Symposium -> Options -> Panel.

Show all members

Depending on the size of your site, you may prefer that members can see everyone else, or just their friends.

Enable chat windows

Switches the private one-to-one chat windows on or off.

Polling intervals

Checking for new chat can put a load on your server, which may be particularly relevant if it’s one of the cheaper shared hosting options.

To reduce the load on your server, include the number of seconds to check for new mail, friend requests, and how often your site checks for new chat responses.

On typical hosts, values of 120 and 10 should be sufficient.

Sound notification

User’s can change the sound notification when chat messages are received (or choose no sound) via their profile page. A number of sounds are included as .mp3 files in the ajax/chat/flash folder.

You can add more .mp3 files to the list by placing the .mp3 files in the above folder. Ensure that any spaces in the filename are replaced with an underscore (so “new sound.mp3” would become new_sound.mp3). The underscores are replaced by spaces when shown to the user in the drop down list on their community settings.

Other chat options

There are companies who are dedicated to chat options for your site. The following are two (Cometchat and Evolve), but there are more (a search with Google will produce a list). However, both have been validated as compatible with WP Symposium.

Getting Cometchat

The Cometchat product can be downloaded from their website.

Integrating Cometchat

Purchase version 4 or version 5 for WordPress.

Follow the installation instructions, and once installed and working ok, backup the Cometchat folder.

Then:

1. Make a copy of integration.php from your Cometchat folder (you’ll need this)
2. Download this file (integration.wps).
3. Rename it to integration.php and put it into the Cometchat folder
4. Edit the file and put the licence information from your original integration.php at the bottom of the file (that you took a copy of in step 1)
5. If, and only if, you need to, change any other settings from your original integration.php file, maybe MySQL port (DB_PORT), for example.

Customising who appears “Who’s online”

You can choose whether to include only a member’s friends in the “Who’s Online” list, or everyone on your site.

In the downloaded integration.php file, look for the line that starts “function getFriendsList”, and below it you will see two options:

• $max_members_shown = 50;
• $show_only_friends = true;

You can change these values to reflect what you want the “Who’s Online” to show.

There are a number of shortcodes that can be used throughout your WordPress site. To use a shortcode (eg. [symposium-galleries]) add it to any WordPress page.

This allows you to set up other pages, and link to them or add them to your WordPress menu.

Where examples are shown, the code should be added at the top of your theme’s functions.php file (after <?php).

If you are using more than one function, make sure your function names are all different and unique on your site.

__wps__email_body_filter

__wps__email_header_filter

__wps__integrity_check_hook

__wps__my_events_page_filter

__wps__events_shortcode_filter

__wps__forum_newtopic_filter

__wps__forum_newreply_filter

__wps__forum_replies_filter

__wps__forum_topic_header_filter

__wps__forum_categories_header_filter

Where: Before list of gallery albums
Example: Insert message above gallery albums

function my_own_function($html) {
          $help = "<div style='font-style:italic;margin-bottom:10px'>”Please only upload photos that are your own, or for which you have permission to share.</div>";        
          return $help.$html;
 }
 add_filter('__wps__gallery_header', 'my_own_function');

__wps__group_header_filter

Where: As the horizontal menu structure is processed
Example: Adds a link as a menu item, for a specific action, in this case go to Google website. “Go to Google=myaction” would be added to the menu structure.

function my_own_function($title, $value, $gid, $member_of, $group) {
   if ($value == 'myaction')
     return '<li onclick="document.location.href = \'http://www.google.com\'">'.$title.'</li>';
 }
 add_filter('__wps__group_menu_tabs', 'my_own_function', 10, 5);

__wps__lounge_filter_top

__wps__sendmessage_filter

__wps__directory_member_filter

__wps__member_header_filter

__wps__send_poke_filter

__wps__wall_newpost_filter

__wps__wall_postreply_filter

__wps__wall_postreply_involved_filter

__wps__add_extended_field_filter

Where: At bottom of profile menu
Example: Add banner to top of profile page

function my_own_function($html, $uid1, $uid2, $privacy, $is_friend, $extended, $share) {
          $banner = '<div style="margin-bottom:10px;color:red;">';
          $banner .= 'Please take a look at the new forum!!!';
          $banner .= '</div>';
          return $banner.$html;
 }
 add_filter('__wps__profile_header_filter', 'my_own_function', 10, 7);

Where: At bottom of profile menu
Example: Add link to bottom of profile menu to forum (“/discuss” only included as an example, will probably need changing)

function my_own_function($html, $uid1, $uid2, $privacy, $is_friend, $extended, $share) {
          $html .= '<a href="/discuss">Go to Forum</a>';
          return $html;
 }
 add_filter('__wps__profile_menu_end_filter', 'my_own_function', 10, 7);

Context: By default, if day, month and year have been entered, the profile born date will follow the format as set in Profile options. If not all are available, a more generic format is used. However you can re-format the output yourself.
Where: Display of member’s date of birth in profile header
Example: This example will re-format to British display, and show separate year of birth and age (based on information available or not shown).

function my_born_format($default, $day, $month, $year) {
         $return = '';    
         if ($day) {
                  $end_char = substr($day, strlen($day), 1);
                  switch ( $end_char ) {
                           case '1':
                                    $th = 'st';
                                    break;
                           case '2':
                                    $th = 'nd';
                                    break;
                           case '3':
                                    $th = 'rd';
                                    break;
                           default:
                                    $th = 'th';
                                    break;
                  }                
                  $return .= $day.$th.' ';
       }
       if ($month)
                  $return .= __wps__get_monthname($month);            
         if ($day || $month)
                  $return = 'Birthday: '.$return;                              
         if ($year) {
                  if ($return != '')
                           $return .= '<br />';
                  $return .= 'Born: '.$year;                 
                  if ($day && $month) {
                           $now = new DateTime("now");
                           $dob = new DateTime($year.'-'.$month.'-'.$day);
                           $interval = $dob ->diff($now);
                           $years = $interval->format('%y');
                           $return .= ' ('.$interval->format('%y').' years old)';                 
                  }
         }
         return $return;  
}
add_filter( '__wps__profile_born', 'my_born_format', 10, 4 );

Where: At end of profile menu
Example: Rename All Activity menu text to News Feed

function my_own_function($html, $uid1, $uid2, $privacy, $is_friend, $extended, $share) {
          $html = str_replace('All Activity', 'News Feed', $html);
          return $html;
 }
 add_filter('symposium_profile_entire_menu_filter', 'my_own_function', 10, 7);

Where: As the horizontal menu structure is processed
Example: Adds a link as a menu item, for a specific action, in this case go to Google website. “Go to Google=myaction” would be added to the menu structure.

function my_own_function($html,$title,$value,$uid1,$uid2,$privacy,$is_friend,$extended,$share) {  
    if ($value == 'myaction') {
       $html .= '<li onclick="document.location.href = \'http://www.google.com\'">'.$title.'</li>';
    }
    return $html;
 }
 add_filter('__wps__profile_menu_tabs', 'my_own_function', 10, 9);

__wps__add_wps_personal_filter

__wps__friendrequest_filter

__wps__friendaccepted_filter

__wps__profile_wall_header_filter

__wps__profile_settings_before_ef_hook

__wps__profile_settings_hook

Current phase is: Released

• Feature set scope complete (see below).
• Development phase complete.
• Testing phase complete.
• Final cleanup complete.
• Release date: Wednesday 13th February.
• Admin Guide: Available online.

Please see notes on the release schedule for more information.

Scope of v13.02

A summary of the release changes is available in release.txt.

_____Enhancements_____

PROFILE
* Include Extended Fields in profile page header [1]
* Date of birth format can now be set via profile options (if day, month and year have all been set)
* Added __wps__profile_born filter to allow formatting of date of birth/age on profile page
* Added profile_activity_image and profile_activity_gallery_first_image classes to allow control height

FORUM
* New forum topic form defaults to current category
* Admin’s can now create new forum topics even if blocked to other users
* Added ‘Everyone’ option to overall forum view/reply/comment permissions
* Disabling replies now also disables comments
* Message shown at bottom of forum topic if replies not allowed

MAIL
* Bulk options now provided (reset your “Mail Page: Tray Item” template)
* Delete selected mail items
* Mark all mail as read (inbox only)
* Delete all mail
* Recover all deleted mail
* Small improvement to layout of mail message

BRONZE: PANEL (CHAT) [2]/[3]
* Chat windows completely re-written for stability
* Smileys supported and URLs (that start with www.) converted into hyperlinks
* New messages cause sound notification and title bar colour change
* Chat windows can be turned into a separate browser chat window (so can leave the site/move around)
* User’s can select their own notification sound via the profile community settings
* Click on chat name to go to their page

BRONZE: PROFILE PLUS
* Post an image to your activity (optional feature, set on ‘Plus’ admin options)
* Simplified management of vertical menu when scrolling (just one value now)

BRONZE: GROUPS
* Horizontal menu with drop-down items now available for group page (activate on ‘Plus’ admin options)

BRONZE: REPLY BY EMAIL
* Displays next scheduled run time on admin options page
* Added option in admin to check for waiting replies, but not actually process them
* Added option to delete all from POP3 mailbox (to clear out)
* Improved flow for email notifications

BRONZE: FACEBOOK CONNECT
Updated admin page with examples
Replaced method of retrieving Facebook User ID

CUBEPOINTS SUPPORT
* Full support for CubePoints, see http://www.wpsymposium.com/2012/02/wp-symposium-cubepoints-module

OTHER
* Tested up to WordPress v3.5.1
* Added URL to “Report” sent to site administrator
* Removed border on DIV in default email template (as looked odd when replying to forum via email)
* Moved inclusion of javascript translations to bottom of <body> tag, just before it’s closed
* Added additional reminder after installation/upgrade to visit installation page
* Moved translations from dialogs.php to localized string (to avoid putting into DOM)
* Moved PDF admin guide to online pages at www.wpsymposium.com
* Added WPS icon to admin menu

_____Bug_Fixes_____

* Fixed link between extended fields and WordPress metadata (see note #1 below)
* Improves stablity of table creation on installation
* Ensures a 100% removal of WPS when uninstalling (all options, usermeta data, tables, etc).
* Corrected www.wp__wps__.com in powered-by messages to www.wpsymposium.com
* Fixed warnings when running WordPress in debug mode
* Fixed bug for editing starting post in the forum
* Fixed bug with WYSIWYG editor width
* AJAX versions of widgets now loading okay, and not holding up page load
* Default friends are now actual friends, not just a request
* Gallery on WPMS installation bugs fixed
* Events on WPMS installation bugs fixed
* Friendship messages now sent from all requests
* Other minor fixes

_____Notes_____

1. Remember that in WPMS installations, extended fields are network wide
2. The Panel (chat) is now a Bronze member feature
3. Chatroom no longer exists as part of the Panel

What you should do after upgrading

To be sure of a clean upgrade, you should do the following after upgrading an existing WP Symposium installation:

• Visit the Installation page
• Reset the profile header, profile body page, group page templates and Mail Page: Tray Item. Don’t forget to save them!

New chat windows

Previously, on some installations, chat windows would close occasionally. Therefore, the chat has been re-written. Please note:

• Totally new ‘chat’ engine
• Modern chat design
• Chat window can be opened in a separate pop-up window
• Chat can be cleared
• The chatroom has been removed
• Unlimited chat windows
• The Panel is now a Bronze subscription feature
• Recommended minimum polling interval on options is 10 seconds, but can vary depending on host

Including extended fields in profile header

Simply add [ext_xxx] to the profile page header template, where xxx is the stub of the extended field, eg:

<div style='float:right'>[poke]</div>
<div style='float:right'>[follow]</div>
<div id='profile_name'>[display_name]</div>
<div id='profile_header_div'>
<div id='profile_label'>[profile_label]</div>
<div id='profile_header_panel'>
<div id='profile_photo' class='corners'>[avatar,200]</div>
<div id='profile_details'>
<p>[location]<br />[born]</p>
[ext_gender]
[ext_colour]
[ext_hobby]
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div id='profile_actions_div'>[actions]</div>

How to manually upgrade to a release candidate

It is very important (actually vital) when manually installing (or installing a release candidate), to:

1. take a backup of your current wp-symposium plugin folder and database (“just in case”)
2. delete the current wp-symposium plugin folder via FTP - do not delete via WordPress admin->Plugins->Installed Plugins as this will delete all your WP Symposium content!!!
3. upload the contents of the download into your plugins folder (so that you have new wp-symposium folder with everything of inside of it and not old files hanging around)
4. re-activate the single WP Symposium plugin

If you are manually installing the same version (ie. you are installing a newer release candidate, for example), then you can skip steps 1 and 2. If you are upgrading from v12.10 to v12.11 (for example), then you should perform steps 1 and 2.

The download version is suffixed with NB for nightly build during development phase, or RC for release candidate during testing phase. If no suffix, current download is the same as available via wordpress.org.

Upgrading via WordPress admin

Note: this is only applicable to the live release.

Reporting errors with v13.02

A dedicated forum area is available to report bugs found with v13.02.

Admin Guide

The admin guide has been updated to cover the current download, including the new way of activating WP Symposium features (previously plugins). It’s available as a PDF to download (19MB), but is being moved to an online version.

Previous Version

Older versions of WP Symposium are available at the bottom of the download page.

We will be on the move to a new server starting on December 3^rd thru the 11^th 2012.

The move should not take this long we are just giving enough time so if there are any problems we can iron them all out before we go live.

During this time period posting in the forums will be closed. You will be able to read everything there as per normal.

You will   be able to use the contact for in case of a dire emergency to Contact us.

We do not plan of a new release until after the move as we want to make sure all is working well with the site and that no one will have a problem.

This notice period is required so that anyone with current issues can prepare, and ask advise prior to the lock-down!

Current phase is: Released

• Feature set scope is frozen, see below.
• Development phase completed.
• Testing phase is complete.
• Final cleanup is complete.
• Release date: 18th December.

Please see notes on the release schedule for more information.

What is v12.12 doing (scope)?

v12.12 is doing two main things:

1. Addressing the problem multiple plugins cause on the WordPress repository. I am sorry that I can’t include any of the items queued for development, but I want to make the change a single discrete change, after the “challenges” some faced with the upgrade to previous version (no changes here like that one). However, it’s an important change and some may say over-due….
2. Despite testing on the BETA versions we were caught out with changes to WordPress 3.5 itself, and the TwentyTwelve theme. v12.12 ensures compatibility with both.

v12.12 also:

• Updates the Profile Page Header template – make sure you refresh it and save (see below)! If you have made changes to this template, you should take a copy of your previous version first “just in case”.
• Improves the layout of the Alerts page, and adds new parameter to [symposium-alerts] shortcode.
• Can now update templates across all sites in multi-site installation
• Fixes numerous bugs
• Reduces the plugin size be excluding TinyMCE plugins not actually used by WP Symposium and reducing the size of the screenshots supplied for the WordPress repository

In summary, the important points for v12.12 are:

• WP Symposium is a single plugin
• features (formally individual plugins) are activated on the installation page
• technically works the same way, but works better with the WordPress repository
• features can be network activated by super admin users
• the Bronze activation code applies to all networked sites

Profile Page Header template?

After resetting, it should look like the following. You can copy and paste the version below to make sure!

<div style='float:right'>[poke]</div>
<div style='float:right'>[follow]</div>
<div id='profile_name'>[display_name]</div>
<div id='profile_header_div'>
<div id='profile_label'>[profile_label]</div>
<div id='profile_header_panel'>
<div id='profile_photo' class='corners'>[avatar,200]</div>
<div id='profile_details'>
<p>[location]<br />[born]</p>
<div id='profile_actions_div'>[actions]</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

Upgrading via WordPress admin

Manual upgrade

It is very important (actually vital) when manually installing (or installing a release candidate), to:

1. take a backup of your current wp-symposium plugin folder and database (“just in case”)
2. delete the current wp-symposium plugin folder via FTP - do not delete via WordPress admin->Plugins->Installed Plugins as this will delete all your WP Symposium content!!!
3. upload the contents of the download into your plugins folder (so that you have new wp-symposium folder with everything of inside of it and not old files hanging around)
4. re-activate the single WP Symposium plugin

If you are manually installing the same version (ie. you are installing a newer release candidate, for example), then you can skip steps 1 and 2. If you are upgrading from v12.10 to v12.11 (for example), then you should perform steps 1 and 2.

The download version is suffixed with NB for nightly build during development phase, or RC for release candidate during testing phase. If no suffix, current download is the same as available via wordpress.org.

What to expect after applying the upgrade

After upgrading, you should return to your plugins page, and you may see this:

This is expected as there is now only one plugin as described above – refresh your plugin page and the warnings will not show again.

Reporting errors with v12.12

There is a dedicated forum category for this purpose, please post v12.12 specific bugs and issues there, thank you.

Admin Guide

The admin guide has been updated to cover the current download, including the new way of activating WP Symposium features (previously plugins). It’s available as a PDF to download (19MB).

Previous Version

Older versions of WP Symposium are available at the bottom of the download page.

Robert has been on the internet for over 12 years now. During this time he has worked with numerous developers of site plug-ins and more, and having over 10 sites of his own knows some of the problems that can arise for you.

He has been associated with the developer at Caseproof for 3 years, of which he was heading up the support department there. He has also helped with development of their products along with developers of numerous other plug-ins and themes for WordPress.

Fortunately for us all, Robert loves working with WP Symposium and being able to help members as much as possible.  He might not get it right first time every time and may ask a lot of questions, but work with him as he’ll be doing that in order to offer his best support and learn about your website and how you use WP Symposium.

He is going to be working here to help with support of WP Symposium, which he has been testing and using from the start of the adventure! He runs “WPS” on all of his sites, and will therefore share the upgrades, new feature developments and testing with you.

He is normally on line from about 7AM EST till 10 or 11 PM  every day except the weekends. Every support problem and question is received by email to him and his computer yells at him when they arrive so he can answer in a timely fashion. He may not be able to answer instantly, but will answer as soon as he can, so we can keep you up and running.

Says Robert: “I am looking forward to a long and lasting relationship with everyone here. Please make me a friend so things can be run a little faster if and when you might have a problem. Being friends make things easier for both of us. :)”.

Please welcome Robert on board!

Simon.

Activate the horizontal menus

With Profile Plus activated, on the WP Symposium->Options->Plus screen you can specify whether the menu on the profile page and group page is displayed vertically or horizontally (with drop down menus).

Once changed, visit the WP Symposium->Manage->Templates and switch the Profile Page Body template and the Group Page template by clicking on the link below the template area (and save!):

Set the new menu items

Go to the Profile options page to set and save your new Profile menu. Note that you can change any of the menu items (but leave the value to the right of the equals sign).

Finally, go to the Groups option page to set and save your new Group menu.

Styling the menu

The profile and group page will now display the horizontal menu with down-down items, for example:

By default, it’s neutral in terms of styles, and you may want to liven it up a bit and have it match your own site styles.

Easily done with a little CSS, go to WP Symposium->Styles->CSS and enter the following. Note the colours are fonts and awful – but they are used to show the change!!

/* Top level */
ul.__wps__dropdown li {
    background-color: red;
    color: white;
    font-family: courier;
    font-size: 18px;
}
ul.__wps__dropdown li:hover {
    background-color: orange;
}

/* Second level */
ul.__wps__dropdown li li {
    background-color: green;
    color: yellow;
    font-family: helvetica,arial;
    font-size: 14px;
}
ul.__wps__dropdown li li:hover {
    background-color: blue;
}

And the profile menu now looks like this (yuk!!):

Change the colours, fonts and other styles to make things a little more palatable!

Adding menu items

If you want to add menu items, you do so via filters, by adding a small bit of code into your theme’s functions.php file. Examples are included in the admin guide. Search for “__wps__profile_menu_tabs” and “__wps__group_menu_tabs” in Appendix 1. But as quick examples to add a link to Google on the Profile and Group menus when the action (to the right of the equals sign on the menu items):

// Profile page menu item
function my_own_function($html,$title,$value,$uid1,$uid2,$privacy,$is_friend,$extended,$share) {  
   if ($value == 'myaction')
      $html .= '
'.$title.'
';
   return $html; 
}
add_filter('__wps__profile_menu_tabs', 'my_own_function', 10, 9);

// Group page menu item
function my_own_function2($html, $title, $value, $gid, $member_of, $group) {
  if ($value == 'myaction2')
    $html .= '
'.$title.'
';
  return $html;
}
add_filter('__wps__group_menu_tabs', 'my_own_function2', 10, 6);

Hosting

Hosted with www.hybrid-sites.com.

Theme

Using Figero theme.

Plugins

Excluding the WP Symposium plugins:

• Akismet (anti-spam)
• Ban Hammer (this plugin prevent people from registering with any email you list.)
• Bulletproof security (security plugin)
• Capability Manager (rarely used, but handy to manage user capabilities and roles)
• Cron GUI (handy tool to check WordPress scheduled tasks)
• CubePoints (user reward system, for which there is a WP Symposium module)
• Display Widgets (Adds checkboxes to each widget to show or hide on site pages)
• Features Posts Scroll (a basic javascript based scrolling display of post titles and thumbnails)
• Formidable (quickly and easily create drag-and-drop forms)
• Global Hide/Remove Admin Bar Plugin (easily add a global option to hide/remove the new Admin bar in WP 3.1+)
• Login Logo (replace logo on WordPress login page)
• Optimize DB (tool used occasionally to check on WordPress database)
• Syntax Highlighter MT (used when displaying code in posts)
• Ultimate Security Checker (security plugin which performs all set of security checks on your WordPress installation)
• WangGuard (reduces “sploggers”, spam bloggers)
• WordPress Access Control (fine grained control over your pages and posts permissions)
• WordPress Notification Bar (global Notification Bar for WordPress)
• Your Members – Membership Plugin (plugin allows paid subscription services within WordPress)

Custom development

Version of WP Symposium

Stylesheet

/* Theme style changes */

input[type="text"] {
border: 1px solid #aaa !important;
border-radius: 3px !important;
}

#s {
border: 0 !important;
margin-top: -2px !important;
}

/* Mail */

.mail_item, .symposium_event_list_item {
padding-left: 5px !important;
}

/* Category */

.symposium-wrapper #symposium_table {
border: 0 !important;
}

.symposium-wrapper .row, .symposium-wrapper .row_odd {
border-radius: 5px !important;
margin-bottom: 5px !important;
padding-left: 0;
}
.symposium-wrapper .row:hover, .symposium-wrapper .row_odd:hover {
border-radius: 5px !important;
margin-bottom: 5px !important;
background-color: #ccc !important;
}
.symposium-wrapper .row {
background-color: #BDC4C2 !important;
}
.symposium-wrapper .row_odd {
background-color: #DBE4E1 !important;
}

.symposium-wrapper .row_link {
color: #333 !important;
text-decoration:none;
}
.symposium-wrapper .row_link:hover {
color: #000 !important;
text-decoration:underline !important;
}

/* Topic (starting post) */

.symposium-wrapper #starting-post {
border: 0 !important;
border-radius: 5px !important;
background-color: #cfc !important;
}
.symposium-wrapper .started-by a {
color: #333 !important;
font-weight: bold !important;
text-decoration:none;
}
.symposium-wrapper .started-by a:hover {
color: #000 !important;
font-weight: bold !important;
text-decoration:underline;
}

/* Replies */

.symposium-wrapper #child-posts {
border: 0 !important;
background-color: #fff !important;
}
.symposium-wrapper .child-reply {
width: 506px !important;
background-color: #ebebeb !important;
border-top: 5px solid #ebebeb !important;
border-bottom: 5px solid #ebebeb !important;
border-left: 10px solid #ebebeb !important;
border-right: 20px solid #ebebeb !important;
margin-bottom:10px !important;
margin-left: -10px !important;
border-radius:5px !important;
}

/* comments */
.reply-comments-box {
padding: 6px 6px 1px 6px !important;
background-color: #fff;
border-radius:5px;
-moz-box-shadow: inset 0 0 10px #000000;
-webkit-box-shadow: inset 0 0 10px #000000;
box-shadow: inset 0 0 10px #000000;
}

.page .entry-title { display: none; }

.new-topic-subject-input { width: 555px !important; }

.content-wrapper {
color: #333 !important;
line-height: 22px !important;
}
.content-container a {
color: #500050 !important;
text-decoration: underline !important;
}

h1 {
color: #A00000 !important;
}
h2 {
font-size: 18px !important;
}
h3 {
color: #000090 !important;
}

div.sidebar > h3:nth-of-type(n+2) {
margin-top: 45px !important;
}

h1:nth-of-type(n+2) {
margin-top: 45px !important;
}

.content-info table, .content-info tr, .content-info td {
border: 0;
}
/* User tags */
.symposium_usertag {
text-decoration: none !important;
background-color: #ccc !important;
border-top:1px solid #ddd !important;
border-left:1px solid #ddd !important;
border-right:1px solid #666 !important;
border-bottom:1px solid #666 !important;
padding: 2px 4px 2px 4px !important;
border-radius:3px !important;
cursor:pointer !important;
}
.symposium_usertag:hover {
}
.symposium_usertag:active {
border-top:1px solid #666 !important;
border-left:1px solid #666 !important;
border-right:1px solid #ddd !important;
border-bottom:1px solid #ddd !important;
}

/* jQuery dialog box... */
.ui-dialog, .ui-dialog-content {
border:10px solid #450048;
background-color: #fff !important;
}
.ui-dialog-titlebar {
background-image: none;
background-color: #000;
}
#ui-dialog-title-dialog {
color: #fff !important;
text-shadow: none;
}
.ui-dialog-titlebar-close {
background-color: #fff;
}

/* autocomplete */
.ui-autocomplete {
border: 5px solid #e4741f;
}

/* Gallery specific... */
#symposium_photo_frame {
background-color: #666;
background-image: url('http://www.wpsymposium.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/body-bg.png');
border: 5px solid #e4741f;
}
.symposium_photo_thumbnail_border_off {
border: 2px solid #000;
}
.symposium_photo_thumbnail_border_on {
border: 2px solid #e4741f;
}
#symposium_photo_comments {
color: #000;
text-shadow: none;
}

/* Uploadify */
.uploadifyQueueItem {
background-color: #450048 !important;
border: 2px solid #e4741f;
font: 11px Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;
margin-top: 5px;
padding: 10px;
width: 350px;
color: #fff !important;
}
.uploadifyError {
background-color: #000 !important;
border: 2px solid #e4741f !important;
}
.uploadifyQueueItem .cancel {
float: right;
}
.uploadifyQueue .completed {
background-color: #000;
}
.uploadifyProgress {
background-color: #000;
margin-top: 10px;
width: 100%;
}
.uploadifyProgressBar {
background-color: #e4741f;
height: 3px;
width: 1px;
}

Current phase is: Released

• Feature set scope is frozen as per the voting page, excluding reported issues (see below).
• Development phase has been completed.
• Testing phase has been completed.
• Final cleanup has started.
• Release date 17th November 2012.

Please see notes on the release schedule for more information.

Upgrading automatically

Via your WordPress admin, go to Dashboard->Updates to see if an upgrade is available. If it is, select WP Symposium under Plugins and upgrade. You will have to wait a minute or so probably whilst the new version of the plugin is download and installed.

After you have upgraded, if you experience problems with what is shown in the forum (for example), go to WP Symposium->Manage->Templates and click on the “reset to default” links below each text box and click Save. Forum Topics (list) is a likely candidate to reset.

You may see the following after upgrading:

Don’t panic – this is expected. If you get the above warnings, simply go to your Plugins->Installed Plugins and re-activate the WP Symposium plugins that you use. The reason is part of the standardisation of WP Symposium’s naming conventions in the code and filenames.

Manual upgrade or installing Nightly Builds/Release Candidates

It is very important (actually vital) when manually installing, to:

1. take a backup of your current wp-symposium plugin folder and database
2. delete the current wp-symposium plugin folder via FTP - do not delete via WordPress admin->Plugins->Installed Plugins as this will delete all your WP Symposium content!!!
3. upload the contents of the download into your plugins folder (so that you have new wp-symposium folder with everything of inside of it)
4. re-activate your WP Symposium plugins (they will have been de-activated).

If you are manual installing the same version (ie. you are installing a newer release candidate, for example), then you can skip steps 1 and 2. If you are upgrading from v12.10 to v12.11 (for example), then you should perform steps 1 and 2.

After you have upgraded, if you experience problems with what is shown in the forum (for example), go to WP Symposium->Manage->Templates and click on the “reset to default” links below each text box and click Save. Forum Topics (list) is a likely candidate to reset.

Download current version

The current version is available via the WordPress repository and you can upgraded in the normal way via WordPress admin -> Upgrade.

Alternatively, you can download the latest code manually, as running on www.wpsymposium.com, on the Download page. Following the instructions above.

Download version is suffixed with NB for nightly build during development phase, or RC for release candidate during testing phase. If not suffix, current download is the same as available via wordpress.org.

Reporting bugs

A dedicated area on the forum is available for reporting bugs.

Feature set

The feature set for this release is as follows:

Standardise on function prefix
Currently PHP functions sometimes include symposium_ and sometimes do not. Create a standard function naming topology whereby functions start with __wps__, eg: __wps__function_name().
Rename files so they do not use the unnecessary symposium_ prefix.
Important notes:
1. The site search, if using the PHP code, will now be echo __wps__search(150) as per the notes on the Options->Plus admin page.
2. If you are a developer and use the WP Symposium functions, please test your developments.
3. If you have custom CSS entered, please check (use FireFox+FireBug to check IDs and CLASSes).
Status: Development complete, available in download.

Group “page”
To act as an introduction, welcome, instructions, whatever. Content entered by WYSIWYG editor. See here.
Status: Development complete, available in download.

Subscribe to all forum activity
Add admin option to enable this (off by default) as can “kill” some installations with large number of users.
Status: Development complete, available in download.

Forum images
Display in the order in which they are uploaded (earliest first).
Status: Development complete, available in download.

Add Directory sort option
Add an option to sort drop-down list to show by surname first. Surname is determined from the user’s display name (not the internal private last name field) where users have put at least two words separated by a space. For example, my display name is “Simon Goodchild”, so “Goodchild” can be picked up as my surname. If a user’s display name is one word, eg “Simon” that that would also be used as their surname. Also provide default view of member directory (via directory options).
Status: Development complete, available in download.

Maintain options over upgrade
Ensure option selections are preserved over upgrades. See here.
Status: Development complete, available in download.

Allow “Friends” to be changed
Set up a new manage tab called Thesaurus and start with Friends
Status: Development complete, available in download. 

Don’t list empty gallery albums
If a gallery album is empty, do not include in the aggregated view.
Status: Development complete, available in download.

Profile Widget URLs
Check that all widgets go to the correct URLs (check all widgets). See here.
Status: Development complete, available in download.

Add option to member directory shortcode
So you can limit roles to one or more. See here.
Status: Development complete, available in download.

Forum started/replied
Option to show both who started and last replied to a forum topic. See here. New installations will include codes in the template to show these by default. Those who are just upgrading will need to reset the Forum Topics (list) and Group Forum Topics (list) templates (under WP Symposium->Manage).
Status: Development complete, available in download.

Forum for high ranks
If using ranks, set Forum Categories to be visible to users with a certain rank or higher.
Status: Development complete, available in download.

Edit Gallery Comments
Make it so that gallery comments can be edited (user set timeout, and always for album owner and admin). Like with the forum.
Status: Development complete, available in download.

Allow selection of roles from bulk mail
Allow users to select one or more WordPress roles (or all users) when sending out bulk mail via admin Options->Mail. See here.
Status: Development complete, available in download.

Profile page menu – horizontal/dropdown style
A bonus item, added to the release for Profile Plus Bronze members. On Options->Profile Plus you can activate the new horizontal menu, as used on WPS site. Note that you can create your own menu structure (that appears on Options->Profile when the option is activated).
Important! As informed on the Options->Profile Plus page below the activation checkbox, you will also need to change your Profile Page Body template (via Manage->Templates).
Status: Development complete, available in download.

Group forum “new topic” subscriptions
Added as previously missing.
Status: Development complete, available in download.

Template development tutorials
Check they are updated and work to reflect the new standardised filename and function prefixes (etc).
Status: Development complete, available in download.

Update Admin Guide
Available to download as a PDF.
Status: Development complete, available in download.

As requested by many, this will allow bugs to be formally reported for a release and addressed, assisting in a more robust system. The next release will also focus on further stabilisation.

Feature set

The feature set for this release is as follows:

New [symposium-gallery] shortcode to show profile page with gallery as default

Shows the profile page, going straight to the gallery.
Important note: The previous [symposium-gallery] to show all albums will change to [symposium-galleries] as these names make more sense.

Fix for non-admin users to see “My Gallery”

Fix the problem where only admin’s could see the My Gallery menu item.

Fix for s2members plugin compatibility in terms of role selection for forum permissions

Fix the issue with s2member roles with spaces.

Do not permit blank group names

Do not allow groups to be created without a name.

Delete groups via Groups Admin

Add a delete group link on the Groups Options page.

Cubepoints WPS module to support likes/dislikes

Extend the Cubepoints module to support likes and dislikes.

symposium_profile_header and symposium_profile_header_public filters

Add the filters.

Tabbed options in admin (activate in Settings)

Replace the long admin menu with a shorter menu, and tabs for options and manage. Provide an option on Setting to revert back to the longer version.Add comments to forum replies

Depending on roles chosen on Forum Options, permit users to add a quick comment to forum replies. If no roles selected, then disabled.

Additional Fixes (as per bug reporting forum topic)

• Images on forum (if displayed as links) bug
• Check profile page redirect is working
• Activity Stream still prompts for login :(
• Alerts/Forum Reply E-mails Not Going Out
• Admin Install Page v. Gallery

• Preparation is now complete.
• The features for v12.10 have now been frozen (see below).
• Development on new features as now been closed.
• The current position in the release cycle is “Testing”.

Please see notes on the release schedule for more information.

Download current version

You can download the latest code, as running on www.wpsymposium.com, on the Download page.

Reporting bugs

A dedicated area on the forum is available for reporting bugs.

Feature set

The feature set for this release is as follows:

New [symposium-gallery] shortcode to show profile page with gallery as default

Shows the profile page, going straight to the gallery.
Important note: The previous [symposium-gallery] to show all albums will change to [symposium-galleries] as these names make more sense.
Status: Complete 

Fix for non-admin users to see “My Gallery”

Fix the problem where only admin’s could see the My Gallery menu item.
Status: Complete 

Fix for s2members plugin compatibility in terms of role selection for forum permissions

Fix the issue with s2member roles with spaces.
Status: Complete 

Do not permit blank group names

Do not allow groups to be created without a name.
Status: Complete

Delete groups via Groups Admin

Add a delete group link on the Groups Options page.
Status: Complete 

Cubepoints WPS module to support likes/dislikes

Extend the Cubepoints module to support likes and dislikes.
Status: Complete

symposium_profile_header and symposium_profile_header_public filters

Add the filters.
Status: Complete

Tabbed options in admin (activate in Settings)

Replace the long admin menu with a shorter menu, and tabs for options and manage. Provide an option on Setting to revert back to the longer version.
Status: Complete

Add comments to forum replies

Depending on roles chosen on Forum Options, permit users to add a quick comment to forum replies. If no roles selected, then disabled.
Status: Complete

• Release official updates less often (proposing to aim for monthly, but longer if necessary, see below), weekly is too rapid, causing too many headaches. Less haste, more speed, and all that.
• Aim to split the release schedule in two phases, the first “development phase” for fixes and new features, the second “testing phase” for only testing and bug fixing.
• Declare a “Feature Freeze” for the scope of the first “development phase”, so that everyone knows what is being done for the next version, no need to guess or get unexpected changes.
• During the “development phase”, to always provide a download version that mirrors the code running on the WPS site, to be renamed as the “nightly build” or “NB”  (the “use at your own risk” version). This allows users with specific reasons to get the latest version.
• Once a version of the code includes all new features scoped out and has undergone local testing, it will be “locked” and only bug fixes will be applied from then on, no new features will be added – ie. the start of the second “testing phase”.
• Only when the second “testing phase” has been satisfactorily completed, will the official release be made
• Which “phase” is currently active, will be readily displayed at the top of the WPS website.

This would mean that:

1. this gives me at least two weeks to add new functionality (“development phase”), and then dedicated time to test and re-act to any others who are testing/using the release candidate (“testing phase”).
2. gives those who want to install and/or test the latest version of the code, the ability to do so via the nightly builds, with all latest features and changes.
3. with sufficient information in the release notes that are combined with an official release, updates can be skipped if not considered necessary by site admins.

Finally, I would stress that releases would only be made if there are no serious outstanding bugs to resolve.  With 2,000+ installations of the latest version, there are now enough users of WP Symposium out there to take this schedule and release management seriously.

The version number will reflect the anticipated month of release followed by either NB (for nightly build during development phase) or RC (for release candidate when in testing phase). On that basis, as at the time of posting this, I have made available v12.10 NB1 as a download. The Welcome Page within the installation includes changes made. Note that if the release month becomes November, for example, then the version will change to v12.11 at some point.

As a final note, I can assure you that my dedication to WP Symposium has never been higher. It started in December 2010 as a spark of an idea, I’ve experienced several learning curves and I have met (virtually!) some fantastic people, who I continue to be humbled by. I also continue to learn almost everyday and truly believe that WP Symposium can continue to grow (and stabalise!) in ways as yet even to be realised.

And as another final note… many other products were mentioned on this website have died off. I know a few of their developers, and the same thing caused their demise – the stress and time in providing support. Please be nice, we try our best! ;)

Thanks for reading,
Simon

Support for WP Symposium will be impacted by holidays. As is traditional (can the second year be traditional?) during the holiday period WP Symposium releases and support will be effected as follows:

• No major new changes mid July to end of August (to avoid introducing major issues and not able to respond quickly)
• Release Candidate (following v12.09) is available to anyone who wishes to try the latest code at your own risk
• WPS Developer (Simon) will not be able to provide support on the forum
• The Silver membership Helpdesk will not be in operation
• Resolution of any membership of PayPal disputes will be dealt with ASAP as soon as back

Really sorry, hope you understand. The dates when holidays will be in “operation” are:

• 28th July – 8th August
• 15th August – 3rd September

The forum has some awesome contributors who offer support and as always my humble thanks to them for support in the past, now and in the future.

Getting latest version

The version of WP Symposium (as used on www.wpsymposium.com) is available to everyone on the WP Symposium Download page.

If you are experiencing problems, they may have been fixed in the latest version of the plugin(s), and you can give the current release candidate a go.

Also a reminder that the week following the release on v12.09 I will focus on any feedback on bugs and put out a patch prior to the second holiday period. Following my return in September, it’s all back to normality (define normality within your own view of the world….).

Set which profile menu items appear

On the profile page you can now choose which profile menu items appear on your page, and on other member’s pages.

Change the text of profile menu items

And you can change the text of the profile menu items (again a version for your page, and other member’s pages).

Option to move profile menu down as page scrolls

An option now exists on the Profile Plus admin page to “stick” the profile page menu on the page as it is scrolled down, keeping it in view.

Gallery photos now managed through dialog box viewer

To reduce the number of places you have to “go to”, your galleries are now managed whilst viewing it, including:

• Drag and drop thumbnails to re-order your gallery photos
• Rename gallery photo as you look at it
• Set current photo in gallery to album cover image

And therefore the button to manage albums has been removed from Gallery page.

Where possible, WPS will not load unnecessary scripts

Although this won’t have a major impact, WPS scripts are now only loaded strictly when needed by the page.

photo credit: Jerrycharlotte via photo pin cc

Changes since release candidate 3 are:

1. Fix for viewing albums by other users in activity stream (when using file system to store images)
2. Able to set whether profile menu items appear on your own and other members profile pages
3. Able to set the text of profile menu items on your own and other members profile pages
4. A number of minor bug fixes

Item 2 and 3 are set via the Symposium->Profile page.

Release Schedule

Because of the holidays planned, the longer testing period has proven to be very worthwhile, and therefore I am planning to:

• Provide this and possibly one more release candidate before the 29th July if required
• Release as v12.09 on 8th August (live release)
• Be available for support issues (and react to anything raised during 29th July – 7th August)
• Enter second holiday period 15th August – 2nd September
• Return and work on problems reported, next steps, life in general…

Email Newsletters

Why not receive release notes via email? You can also view the past newsletter archive.

Reminder about holidays

Support will be impacted by holiday season. I won’t keep repeating it, but please read this blog post. Forum, Helpdesk and PayPal disputes will be affected, sorry.

photo credit: Photoportunity via photo pin cc

[Edit: From v12.09 this is no longer necessary, and the menu items for your profile page, and other member's profile pages can be switched on/off and the text changed on the profile page.]

The default menu items (My Activity, All Activity, etc) may not fit your site and you might want to change them to something more relevant to your site content and membership.

From v12.09 (RC3) this can be achieved through the use of WordPress filters. Don’t panic! Follow these steps, you don’t need to be a coding wiz, and then change the examples to the text you want.

Step 1: Make sure you have at least WP Symposium v12.09 Release Candidate 3 installed. This is not the current live version. It is available from the download page.

Step 2: Locate functions.php file

This file is (should be in any half decent theme…) located in your themes folder. Let’s use TwentyEleven theme as an example. Browsing the folder structure I get to…

And expanding that folder I see all my theme files, including functions.php:

Now we need to edit that file. If it’s on your web server and not your local computer, use an FTP client (such as FileZilla) to copy the file down to your computer to edit it.

Edit the file with any plain text editor (like Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on Mac). When you open it, ignore the contents, we’re going to add some text at the top.

Put your cursor on the line after <?php (at the top) and hit Return a few times to make space:

Now copy and paste the following into that space:

function my_own_function($html, $uid1, $uid2, $privacy, $is_friend, $extended, $share) { 
    $html = str_replace('All Activity', 'News Feed', $html); 
    return $html; 
} 
add_filter('symposium_profile_entire_menu_filter', 'my_own_function', 10, 7);

So it looks like this:

Important note: my_own_function has to be a unique function name. It would be sensible to call it something like ‘yoursitename_extend_profile_menu’ (or something you are sure will be unique. You need to change it on the first line (after the word function) and on the last line (where it starts add_filter).

Save the file. If you used FTP to copy the file down from your web server, use FTP again to copy it back up (over-writing the previous version). As a safety measure, you might want to take a copy of the original – then you can just revert things back if you’ve messed up anywhere!

Step 3: Have a look at your Profile Page

The menu item will have changed from this:

To this:

Step 4: Change the example text of ‘News Feed’ to something you would rather have.

Job done. Well done. Make yourself a nice cup of tea.

Why not receive release notes via email? You can also view the past newsletter archive.

Reminder about holidays

Support will be impacted by holiday season. I won’t keep repeating it, but please read this blog post. Forum, Helpdesk and PayPal disputes will be affected, sorry.

v12.09 Release Candidate 3

Not release notes, but progress on release candidate 3 (v12.09). As previously mentioned, over the holiday season I won’t be putting out a release that could then fall in to the trap of not having support if something big goes wrong.

But for those who want to keep up to date, the release candidates of v12.09 will include new additions. Release Candidate 3 includes:

• Option to move profile menu down as page scrolls
• Gallery photos now managed through dialog box viewer
• Drag and drop thumbnails to re-order your gallery photos
• Rename gallery photo as you look at it
• Set current photo in gallery to album cover image
• Manage button removed from Gallery page (not needed)
• Where possible, WPS will not load unnecessary scripts

I am trying to get the admin guide completed before the end of July when I’m not around, and the current version is accurate up to v12.09 RC3, including the above.

Take a look by downloading the PDF (100+ pages, 14MB).

photo credit: Yogendra174 via photo pin cc

Email Newsletters

Why not receive release notes via email? You can also view the past newsletter archive.

Holiday notice (impact on support and helpdesk)

Support for WP Symposium will be impacted by holidays. As is traditional (can the second year be traditional?) during the holiday period WP Symposium releases and support will be effected as follows:

• No major new changes mid July to end of August (to avoid introducing major issues and not able to respond quickly)
• Release Candidate (v12.09) is available to anyone who wishes to try our latest code at own risk
• WPS Developer (Simon) will not be able to provide support on the forum
• The Silver membership Helpdesk will not be in operation
• Resolution of any membership of PayPal disputes will be dealt with ASAP as soon as back

Really sorry, hope you understand. The dates when holidays will be in “operation” are:

• 28th July – 8th August
• 15th August – 2nd September

The forum has some awesome contributors who offer support and as always my humble thanks to them for support in the past, now and in the future.

Welcome page

After installing or upgrading a more useful welcome page is shown with information on latest changes (in the new release), some get started links and where to find help. Negates the need for Release notes menu item.

You can remove the welcome page with the dismiss links shown. If you want to take another look there’s a new menu item called “Welcome message”.

Events (listings)

Added options for hiding expired events and swapping the order (chronologically). This can be found on the Events Setting page.

Events start/end time

Ensures that event end date is after its start date.

Forum context menu

Add an option as to whether or not to include this plugin. This is a setting on the Forum Setting page.

With the option selected, the TinyMCE context menu is shown if the right mouse button is clicked:

With the option switch off, the default browser menu will show, matching how the internal editor in WordPress operates:

Forum inline images

Uploaded images assumed lower case extensions – fix so that it’s not important.

Forum reply (double posts)

Hide the reply form on the forum after replying. Re-shown if using AJAX after 3 seconds. If reloading the page, do not reshow (until the page has reloaded). Should stop any double replies (or more!).

Integrity check

Add routine to removed orphaned friendships (when a user has been deleted from WordPress)

Mail templates

Put templates back for mailboxitems and mailmessage

Minor glitches with extended fields defined as list

Fix issue with certain field types when migrating (previous versions).

Profile activity images

When the profile image is clicked, a larger version is shown in a dialog box. Particularly applicable to those with narrow activity area (previously added images won’t zoom, sorry).

However, panic yee not. There are two things to look at that can resolve memory limit problems.

First in your PHP.INI file (contact your hosting company for more info on where your site’s PHP.INI file is) is a setting which can be changed. The file can be edited with a text editor, search for:

ini_set("memory_limit","12M");

and increase the 12M (or whatever yours is set at) to a higher value. M stands for megabytes.

The second place, which solved my memory limit problem after hunting around Google is as follows. It’s a part of the WordPress installation. The following exists in wp-includes/default-constants.php which can also be edited with a text editor and changed accordingly:

// set memory limits
if ( !defined('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT') ) {
    if( is_multisite() ) {
        define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '64M');
    } else {
        define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '32M');
    }
}

if ( ! defined( 'WP_MAX_MEMORY_LIMIT' ) ) {
    define( 'WP_MAX_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M' );
}

Again, the M stands for mega-bytes.

Step 1: Use Firefox with the Firebug add-on to identify the ID of the section you wish to hide, or select it from the following list which should be self explanatory:

• symposium_settings_firstname
• symposium_settings_lastname
• symposium_settings_displayname
• symposium_settings_email
• symposium_settings_signature
• symposium_settings_notify_new_messages
• symposium_settings_notify_new_wall
• symposium_settings_notify_likes
• symposium_settings_forum_all
• symposium_settings_password

Step 2: Enter the following into the CSS box in Symposium->Styles->CSS (changing where appropriate to the ID you’ve chosen from the above list:

#symposium_settings_signature {
display: none;
}

Like on Activity Posts (Part of Profile Plus, Bronze members)

You can now like, and dislike, posts on members activity, and any of the replies. This needs to be activated on the Profile Plus admin page:

If only you have liked or disliked it will show “You” (or your username if someone else is looking).

If more than one person has liked or disliked it will show something like “You and 2 others like this” – and you can click on the “2 others” to see who they are.

By default, members will not be sent an email when someone likes or dislikes their post/reply, but they can switch email notifications on with a new setting on their Community Settings (or switch them off again):

Group Security “gap” fixed

There was a situation when a group member (of a private group) would post a forum topic and it would appear on their activity. But when clicked on, rather than being told the group was private, the topic was being shown. This should be solved in this release.

Security patch

A couple of AJAX files where not checking for suitable WordPress roles when adding shortcodes to new pages via the Installation page, and when importing saved templates. These have been addressed.

If you are not effected by these changes, you do not have to upgrade with this release – choice is yours.

• Mail page uses buttons, changed from icons (from feedback). Probably for the best so it fits in better with WPS and can be better styled to match themes.
• Link at bottom of email notification of replies includes full permalink URL (ie. the topic title)
• Events in Multi-site now working (role permissions issue). Probably not related to v12.07.01 but a nice find (thanks @EllsWeb).
• Compressed CSS file updated (possibly reason for mail page layout issues)

I feel a quieter release coming next week after this one. It was supposed to be a nice small release. Ho Hum. Famous last words. Thank goodness we love what we do……! ;)

Change layout of Mail page to use tabs

As per this discussion (among others) changed the Mail page to use tabs instead of the radio buttons.

Reply emails

When new forum topics are posted, email notification were sent separately to avoid a delay. This hadn’t been implemented on replies, but has with this release. More noticeable on sites with a large number of members and/or slow sites.

Reply on forum remaining

Seems that with Firefox the reply you posted on the forums was staying after a refresh. This has been duly squashed. As per this discussion.

New Widget

As a start, more to come, a new widget to make the profile page more personal. “Symposium: Friends Status” is like “Symposium: Recent Activity” but just for your friends. I use it on the WPS site. Use a plugin like Display Widgets to choose what is shown on which page.

Forum post submit button

The please wait message was showing after the database had been updated, meaning feedback to the user could be delayed on slower sites. It’s been moved to show after clicking on the reply button so the user knows not to double post.

All users as friends (Bronze, Profile Plus)

Added an option to automatically make new users friends with all current users. Provides a way to update all users on the site. This is available via the Profile Plus admin page.

Note, if you want to reset your site to make everyone friends to everyone else, that’s what the second option is for.

Styles admin page

Removed the use of a 3rd party script, and use internal WordPress color picker instead. Reduces the extra unnecessary load of extra scripts.

WPS Permalinks (BETA)

Added support for the forum permalinks to forum search, favourites, etc and to some widgets that can support them, and previously used URL parameters.

Member permalinks remain in testing via the Installation page, but getting feedback on compatibility! :)

Profile Activity/Status Images (Bronze, Profile Plus)

Still not finished, but working on modern and good browsers (Chrome, Firefox – not IE!) that support certain features of HTML5. But the intention is to get it working with all, with a backup method for older browsers.

Instead of using galleries, you can now quickly add an image when you add to your activity/type a status for your profile page.

What to quickly show a photo on your profile, or a friend’s profile? That’s what it’s for.

On the Profile Plus admin screen, you can switch the feature on/off, and choose whether to display an upgrade notice to those users on older browsers.

For those interested in such things, the other reason this is important to try out is that it is using plupload instead of uploadify. It’s the script used by, and provided with, WordPress. So uploadify can then be removed. It should support HTML5, Flash, Silverlight, Gears and HTML4 – and provide the method appropriate to your browser. But at the moment it’s not switching from HTML5, so browsers that don’t support all HTML5 standards (eg. Microsoft Internet Explorer, grrr….) currently can’t use the feature (a little polite warning is shown instead at the moment to change to a decent browser!). Work in progress, but currently ok with Chrome and FireFox for example. Any ideas? I’ve got a StackOverflow thread started.

Admin Guide and Videos

• Work on the admin guide continues as a background task, latest version (PDF) available here.
• I’ve added a couple of videos on the WP Symposium YouTube channel – I’ll continue to add more.

Security patch

Header filters

Added filters for top of profile, member directory, group, forum categories and forum topic. For an example, see the tutorial.

Specify a category in forum shortcode

Added option to specify forum category using [symposium-forumlatestposts] shortcode. More information available in the draft user admin guide.

Unique display names and usernames

When checking for unique display name, now avoids checking user’s own user login name.

WPS Permalinks

Testing continues, with the addition of permalinks for the member profile pages (eg: http://www.example.com/profile/simon).

For example, the following will display some flags at the top of the profile page that if clicked on will go to specific pages (www.example.com used for the sake of this tutorial).

function my_top_of_page( $html, $uid ) {
$flags = '<div style="float:right">';
$flags .= '<a href="http://www.example.com"><img src="/wp-content/plugins/wp-symposium/tiny_mce/plugins/emotions/img/flag-uk.png" alt="English" /></a> ';
$flags .= '<a href="http://www.example.com"><img src="/wp-content/plugins/wp-symposium/tiny_mce/plugins/emotions/img/flag-france.png" alt="French" /></a> ';
$flags .= '<a href="http://www.example.com"><img src="/wp-content/plugins/wp-symposium/tiny_mce/plugins/emotions/img/flag-german.png" alt="German" /></a> ';
$flags .= '</div>';
return $flags.$html;
}

add_filter( 'symposium_profile_header_filter', 'my_top_of_page', 10, 2);

This is how you would use the other four filters:

add_filter( 'symposium_forum_topic_header_filter', 'my_top_of_page', 10, 2);
add_filter( 'symposium_forum_categories_header_filter', 'my_top_of_page', 10, 2);
add_filter( 'symposium_group_header_filter', 'my_top_of_page', 10, 2);
add_filter( 'symposium_member_header_filter', 'my_top_of_page', 10,1);

The code should be added to your theme’s functions.php file.

The first parameter passed is always the HTML that you want to filter. The remaining parameter(s) are as follows:

Admin Guide

I’m working on an admin guide, it’s not finished, but feel free to take a look so far.

Forum view/post level

This has been changed to checkboxes to select which roles can view and/or post on the forum, rather than a fixed list of roles. See admin guide for more info.

You will need to go to Symposium->Forum and set up your permissions after this update.

Log IP addresses

Forum post page now displays client IP address info, namely $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] and $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'].

TinyMCE

Styled the old fashioned border to match WPS. Added more smilies/emoticons.

uninstall.php

Moved uninstallation to uninstall.php file and made sure uninstallation removes tables, options and wps-content folder (ie. complete removal).

Add hook to top of profile header

Allows profile header content to be added to/filtered.

apply_filters ( ‘symposium_profile_header_filter’, $html, $uid );

where $html = the content of the profile header, and $uid = the ID of that member.

STILL IN DEVELOPMENT BUT AVAILABLE TO TEST (AT YOUR OWN RISK)

Permalinks

As an option replace the use of dynamic URLs with static permalinks. eg. Instead of http://www.wpsymposium.com/discuss/?cid=44&show=8222 use http://www.wpsymposium.com/discuss/Plugin-Conflict-Issues-Access-to-WP-Login.

Would be better for SEO rankings, sharing with Facebook/Twitter/etc, better for humans, bla-de-bla…

This is available via the Installation page.

I have just found they stop working because you’ve done something in WordPress admin like adding or editing a blog post. Click on update again (button in the image above) and they kick in. Probably just need to look at where WordPress uses the rewrite_flush() command, something for next week.

It can be used with WP Symposium styles enabled, or not.

Via the admin dashboard, go to Symposium->Styles->CSS and enter the following. Note that I’ve included !important after each entry to enforce the style come what may. It’s a bit brute force, but guarantees that the styles are implemented.

Play around with the colours, they probably won’t match your site!!

/* Category */

.symposium-wrapper #symposium_table {
    border: 0 !important;
}
.symposium-wrapper .row, .symposium-wrapper .row_odd {
    border-radius: 5px !important;
    margin-bottom: 5px !important;
}
.symposium-wrapper .row:hover, .symposium-wrapper .row_odd:hover {
    border-radius: 5px !important;
    margin-bottom: 5px !important;
    background-color: #ccc !important;
}
.symposium-wrapper .row {
    background-color: #cff !important;
}
.symposium-wrapper .row_odd {
    background-color: #ccf !important;
}
.symposium-wrapper .row_link {
    color: #333 !important;
    text-decoration:none;
}
.symposium-wrapper .row_link:hover {
    color: #000 !important;
    text-decoration:underline !important;
}

/* Topic (starting post) */

.symposium-wrapper #starting-post {
    border: 0 !important;
    border-radius: 5px !important;
    background-color: #cfc !important;
}
.symposium-wrapper .started-by  a {
    color: #333 !important;
    font-weight: bold !important;
    text-decoration:none;
}
.symposium-wrapper .started-by  a:hover {
    color: #000 !important;
    font-weight: bold !important;
    text-decoration:underline;
}

/* Replies */

.symposium-wrapper #child-posts {
    border: 0 !important;
    background-color: #fff !important;
}
.symposium-wrapper .child-reply {
    width: 548px !important;
    background-color: #fcc !important;
    border-top: 5px solid #fcc !important;
    border-bottom: 5px solid #fcc !important;
    border-left: 10px solid #fcc !important;
    border-right: 20px solid #fcc !important;
    margin-bottom:10px !important;
    margin-left: -10px !important;
    border-radius:5px !important;
}

So for Bronze members, v12.06.09 Release Candidate 5 is available to download. As with all release candidates, they are not recommended for live sites. WPS is using that code, so ultimately the choice is yours. As a way of “covering my arse” I’ll say as with all upgrades (including WordPress itself) it’s always a good idea to take a copy of your previous plugin folder, and do a backup of your database.

Finally, remember that I use my twitter account (“wpsymposium”) to annouce this sort of thing, so if you don’t already, it may be worthwhile.

Thanks, sorry, hope you understand about that rumbling feeling…!

function newtopic_hook_for_ip($uid, $user_name, $uid, $post, $forum, $new_tid) {
$mutex = @fopen(WP_PLUGIN_DIR . '/IP_forumposts.log', 'a');
fwrite ( $mutex, date("d m Y - H:i:s", time())." - new topic by ".$user_name." - ID ".$uid." - IP ".$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']."\r\n");
fwrite ( $mutex, "");
fclose ( $mutex );
}
add_action('symposium_forum_newtopic_hook', 'newtopic_hook_for_ip', 10, 6);
function reply_hook_for_ip($uid, $user_name, $tid) {
$mutex = @fopen(WP_PLUGIN_DIR . '/IP_forumposts.log', 'a');
fwrite ( $mutex, date("d m Y - H:i:s", time())." - new reply from ".$user_name." - ID ".$uid." - IP ".$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']."\r\n");
fwrite ( $mutex, "");
fclose ( $mutex );
}
add_action('symposium_forum_reply_hook', 'reply_hook_for_ip', 10, 3);

The main focus of this release is an upgrade to the events management options. There are several, so these release notes also act as a tutorial.

What can you now do with events plugin?

Let’s say you run a scuba diving club and you want to:

• list your holidays, and for each:
• provide more information on the holiday, the hotel and prices
• show a maximum number of places and places remaining
• show a link to accept payment
• manage a list of those people who have reserved a place
• keep track if they have sent payment
• send a confirmation email to those who have paid
• show a book button for those who haven’t booked, and a cancellation button for those that have

You can see that with all these options, this is something you may want to avoid your members having on their profile and limit event management to your site admins, or just give members a cut down version. This option is included below.

What can’t you do? Well, so you know, it doesn’t have payment gateways. You can put in your own code (HTML) for a payment button for something like PayPal so it’s easy for people to pay, and then when you receive payment, you can mark those who have paid.

Events Admin

Access via WordPress dashboard -> Symposium -> Events, the options available are as follows:

Global events list

Enter the ID’s of users that you want to include shown via the symposium-events shortcode. Leave blank for everyone. If you were running a club site for example, you may only want the events that you set up to show.

Non-admin event manager

With the new features, come some functionality that you may not want your users to have – like setting up payment buttons and confirmation emails. If you want users to be limited to just listing events and a button for more information (but nothing else), then uncheck this option.

Use WYSIWYG editor

It would be best to enable this for the more information and confirmation email (see below). However, some themes and other installed plugins are known to cause layout problems, so as a backup you can disable the TinyMCE editor.

Roles who get “My Events” on their profile menu

You may want to restrict the creation of events to certain roles, like editors or administrators – or particular roles you have set up in WordPress. Select those roles that you want to have My Events shown on their profile page.

Creating a new event

Creating an event is simple enough – click on the Create Event button via My Events on your profile page and you enter the title, location, description and dates/times. I’m going to use the above example of a Scuba Diving holiday in the following.

Once created, on your My Events page, you can click on the Edit icon to access the extra features, add the google map, and so on.

Managing your Event

This will show a full set of features, split by four tabs, initially looking like this:

The title of the box shows your site name (BigMacDev in my case) following by the unique event ID. Users who book on an event will have a booking reference like 1/12 showing that it was Event 1, reference 12. Each booking reference will be unique.

Summary Tab

For now, I’m going to assume I have all the features, if I was running the cut down version, as set in the admin above, I would not have all these options, only the left hand text boxes.

Title, location and description

These are text fields (WYSIWYG editor is not allow here to keep your site look and feel). The location field is what is used to generate the google map, so don’t use the google map if your location is “my back yard”!

Dates and Times

The starting date/time and the end date/time. If you don’t set one or more of these, the details shown on the events page will reflect that.

Published?

Whether the event should be shown (you can always see your event on your profile page)

Google Map?

Display the google map, based on what you entered in the location field.

Enable booking places?

Do you want to have “tickets”, which people pay (or just take, without paying)? Most likely yes.

Show availability?

Enable if you want to show how many tickets are remaining.

Booking requires confirmation?

Depending on your event, you may want to confirm bookings, or automatically grant a booking. If you are expecting payment, it would be very sensible to require confirmation.

Send confirmation email?

If you have not set the above (requires confirmation) then users who book on an event will automatically receive a confirmation email. If you intend to confirm bookings, then their email is sent once you have confirmed their booking.

Maximum places

In total, how many places are available.

Max tickets per booking

How many tickets can one user book? For popular, or free (no payment required) events, you may want to limit bookings.

Price per booking

How much does one ticket cost?

HTML for payment

You can enter HTML to show a payment button, for PayPal, or just a hyperlink. The following is an example that displays a PayPal button for payment to a PayPal account.

<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick">
<input type="hidden" name="business" value="me@example.com">
<input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="##eventname##">
<input type="hidden" name="item_number" value="##refnumber##">
<input type="hidden" name="amount" value="##unitcost##">
<input type="hidden" name="quantity" value="##quantity##">
<input type="hidden" name="no_shipping" value="2">
<input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="1">
<input type="hidden" name="custom" value="##displayname## (##useremail##)">
<input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
<input type="hidden" name="return" value="http://www.wpsymposium.com/thankyou">
<input type="hidden" name="cancel_return" value="http://www.wpsymposium.com/profile">
<input type="hidden" name="bn" value="WPS_Event_Tickets_US">
<input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/x-click-but23.gif" name="submit" alt="Pay with PayPal">
<img alt="" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
</form>

You will see on line three, the PayPal account email address is set – you would need to put your own PayPal account email address there replacing “me@example.com”.

You will also need to set things like the currency_code, return, cancel_return and bn values. For a full list of PayPal variables, check out their list.

There are also some ##values##, which can be listed by clicking on the round blue info image on screen. They are:

These ##values## will be replaced when the payment HTML is shown, and will be used if you want to use other payment processing websites.

You may want to keep it simple and just display a hyperlink to another webpage, or even a mailto: link – it’s very flexible.

With the above HTML payment code, the Buy Now button above is shown and the following is shown on PayPal when the button is clicked (along with how to pay).

So back to our holiday, the completed summary information for my event looks like this:

Clicking on the Update button saves all information on all tabs, but doesn’t close the dialog box so you can keep working.

More Information Tab

The more information tab allows you to put in further information, using the WYSWIYG editor if you’ve enabled it (via admin settings).

Before I forget, for event management, there is an additional button allowing you to use the editor full screen – much easier! It’s far right, in the top row of buttons.

Here you can put in information on prices, options, directions, agenda, links to further documents, downloads, whatever!

If more information is entered, on the events page a More Info button is shown which will display this information in a pop-up on screen.

So for my scuba diving holiday, I’ve entered information on the hotel, the courses available, and a nice image to further entice people, showing how nice scuba diving is.

A note on security

For security reasons, as it’s easy for users to enter nasty tags and codes (<script>, <iframe> and the like) not everything is allowed based on WordPress’s internal HTML cleanup routines. TinyMCE editor also does some clever stuff to keep the HTML safe. For more things though, you’ll not notice any restrictions – if it’s on the toolbar of the editor, then it’s okay to use. But don’t try entering <script> or <iframe> tags manually – it’s not allowed (for your site’s protection).

YouTube videos

As an aside, if you paste a YouTube video URL like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0Xw2Wqyja4 then the video will be shown in it’s place. It’s a compromise between not allowing users to enter <iframe> tags for security reasons, but the desire to include videos!

So my Scuba Diving holiday “More information” looks like this:

And if I scroll down, I get to see a YouTube video:

Confirmation Email Tab

If enabled (on the Summary tab), your users will receive a confirmation email when they book (if you are not confirming bookings) or when you confirm (if you are). You confirm bookings on the Attendees tab, this will be covered shortly.

The Confirmation email tab is similar to the More information tab, except you can put in some of those ##values## that are replaced with user specific information. They are shown on the tab, but for reference are:

Because the confirmation email is specific to an event, the event name and other details can be entered directly into the content.

YouTube links are not converted into videos in the email, just the hyperlink is shown.

Attendees Tab

This is the tab within which you can manage all you bookings.

For each booking, you can see a set of information. Not all may be applicable, for example if you were not sending confirmation emails then this column will always be blank.

• Reference number (Event ID/Booking ID)
• User (their username), which is also a link to their profile page
• The date and time they booked
• The date and time a confirmation email was sent (the last one, if you have re-sent them a confirmation email)
• The number of tickets they purchased
• The date you confirmed payment
• And finally, a number of actions.

The actions are as follows:

• Send Mail: A link to send an email to their email address
• Re-send confirmation email: Send the confirmation email to them again, in case they need it, lost the original, etc.
• Remove attendee: This will delete the booking. If you have received payment from the user, you should arrange a refund if applicable.
• Confirm payment: This will set the payment confirmed date and time. It’s also a way of remembering who has and who hasn’t paid.
• Confirm attendee: Confirms their booking – if you are awaiting payment, wait until you’ve been paid before you confirm. If you are sending confirmation emails, that email is sent when you confirm a user’s booking. (If on the summary tab, you have set confirmation not required, the confirmation email is sent as soon as they book).

Note that when you confirm payment or a booking, the date and time will be shown next time you re-load the Event Management dialog.

Shown below, I have confirmed payment and the booking for the user “admin”.

In conclusion

I hope you have fun with the event management enhancements. I’m sure that more work will be done, and there may well be changes made as you report back on your experience. With so many themes, and other plugins out there that you may be using, layout (CSS) in particular may need tweaking.

So, try it out first, and let me know how you get on!

• Implemented @tags
• Set your own labels in Summary widget
• Ensures that Hey’s sent can be replied to
• Added CURL and JSON check to Installation page
• Hide town/city admin option on profile page
• Photo comments no longer causing broken images
• Added option to hide distance
• Fix to last active value on Following/Followers

Set your own labels in Summary widget

Some sites could do with different labels on the summary widget – now you can set your own labels. Do so via Appearance -> Widgets -> summary widget settings.

Ensure Hey’s that are sent can be replied to

People who send a Hey (or whatever you call it on your site!), are temporarily added to the mail recipient list so you can send a reply by mail.

Add CURL and JSON check to Installation page

If not activated, currently a messy warning box is shown (if PHP warnings enable) or it just fails. A clean check has been added to the Installation page with the ability to show phpinfo() if DEBUG mode is on.

Photo comments causing broken images

Fix an error as described on the forum. Tends to appear in activity stream. See forum discussion.

Hide town/city on profile page

Added an admin option to profile page to hide the town and city profile options as this is not always wanted on a social network.

Also hides the distance option from the member’s directory if enabled.

Bronze Members

The following are applicable only to Bronze members.

Implement @tags

Activated via Profile Plus admin page:

@tags appear as links to a user’s profile page. First display names are searched to see if there is a match (without spaces), if not user login names are checked as a fall-back. If no match is found, it is displayed as entered. Also WPS ensures that display names set on profile page are unique to avoid duplication.

If enabled, on a member’s community settings page, their @tag is shown to them.

You can style the @tags, for example, this is the CSS for the above, added via Dashboard -> WP Symposium -> Styles -> CSS (if you need to, put !important after a class value and before the semi-colon at the end of the line):

.symposium_usertag {
 text-decoration: none;
 background-color: #333;
 border-top:1px solid #E49A60;
 border-left:1px solid #E49A60;
 border-right:1px solid #A35315;
 border-bottom:1px solid #A35315;
 padding: 2px 4px 2px 4px;
 border-radius:3px;
 cursor:pointer;
}
.symposium_usertag:hover {
}
.symposium_usertag:active {
 border-top:1px solid #A35315;
 border-left:1px solid #A35315;
 border-right:1px solid #E49A60;
 border-bottom:1px solid #E49A60;
}

A new profile menu item “Forum @mentions” can be added to the member profile page via the admin page:

• Multi-line activity boxes
• WPS + WP Site search (Bronze only)
• Autocomplete in Members Directory
• Make public mean public
• Migration check
• Privacy on Member Directory (Void)
• Extra smilies (Void)

Multi-line activity boxes 

If Elastic Textboxes is enabled, activity and gallery comment boxes will now stretch to content. If this causes a problem with other plugins, you can de-activate Elastic Texboxes and an HTML Textbox will be used instead.

WPS + WP Site search (Bronze only)

Created an autocomplete search for use in templates or shortcode that autocompletes. Includes options for members, groups, gallery, forum, WordPress pages and WordPress posts.

Set which you want to include on the Profile Plus admin page. You can include it as either a shortcode [symposium-search] or in your page templates (like I have in header.php on the WPS website) with “echo symposium_search()”.

It should only appear once on screen, so if you use it in your page header that appears on every page, don’t then add is as widget content or page/post content (but then, why would you?!)

If you’re interested, in header.php, I replaced the line that includes get_search_form(); with

echo '<div id="searchform">'.symposium_search().'</div>';

Autocomplete in Members Directory 

Using jQuery autocomplete, the member directory search box will provide a dropdown of matching user’s.

Make public mean public

This was a piece of checking sparked by forum discussion.

Migration check

Added a check to stop migration process re-starting when users are deleted for WP admin (users). May have to run one more time if you are experiencing this, then a check ensures it isn’t run again.

Privacy on Member Directory (Void)

As security on privacy is at member page level, allow all members to be shown in the directory (but hide any personal information such as location, based on privacy level). Shows member’s that they are not alone!

This was actually void as this was already the current way it works.

Extra smilies (Void)

Using the WYSIWYG editor (maybe also the text editor), the extra smilies are showing as broken links. Fix! eg. {{solider}}

Ah, erm, yes. Okay. Turns out I can’t spell soldier. Please, no comments….!!!!

This was my fault – I was testing out the tutorial to show member information on the directory and left it in. No excuses, a complete over-sight on my part. Hence the totally understandable reaction on forum posts here, here and here for example.

I’m sorry guys. :(

To be clear – as soon as the upgrade is available in your admin section, upgrade to v12.05.14. If you want to manually fix, edit symposium_hooks_filters.php and remove the following from the top of the file:

add_filter( 'symposium_directory_member_filter', 'wps_extra_info', 10, 2 );
function wps_extra_info( $html, $uid ) {

     :
     :
     : down to....
     :
     :

}

Recommended for v13.02 (release candidate 23+) of WP Symposium or higher.

First, add the following to your functions.php file to show the common WP Symposium member information you can show, and how to show your extended fields. For your extended fields, you use the slugs that you’ve set on the WPS Profile admin page (extended fields section). In the example below, I’m referring to a slug called ‘gender’.

Note that the second parameter of add_filter matches the function name below.

add_filter( '__wps__directory_member_filter', 'wps_extra_info', 10, 2 );
function wps_extra_info( $html, $uid ) {
  global $wpdb;

  // Include the WPS User class
  require_once(WP_PLUGIN_DIR.'/wp-symposium/class.wps_user.php');
  $wps_user = new wps_user($uid);

  // Start the additional content (in a DIV)
  $add = '<div>';

  // Eexamples of core user information
  $add .= 'Date of birth: '.$wps_user->get_dob_day().'/'.$wps_user->get_dob_month().'/'.$wps_user->get_dob_year().'<br />';
  $add .= 'City: '.$wps_user->get_city().'<br />';
  $add .= 'Country: '.$wps_user->get_country().'<br />';
  $add .= 'Email: '.$wps_user->get_user_email().'<br />';
  $add .= 'Display name: '.$wps_user->get_display_name().'<br />';
  $add .= 'User login: '.$wps_user->get_user_login().'<br />';
  $add .= 'Latest activity: '.$wps_user->get_latest_activity().'<br />';

  // Gender (example of an extended field, with 'gender' slug)
  $gender = $wps_user->get_user_meta($uid, 'extended_gender');
  $add .= 'Gender: '.$gender.'<br />';

  // End the additional content (the DIV)
  $add .= '</div>';

  // Return the sent content, plus the additional content
  return $html.$add;

}

Here’s a screenshot:

The easiest way is via the WP Symposium->Styles->CSS section where you can copy and paste CSS, and it stays there when WP Symposium is upgraded.

Copy and paste the following, for a particularly drug-induced colour scheme, and then change it rapidly to match your website colour scheme!!

/* jQuery dialog box... */

.ui-dialog, .ui-dialog-content {
 border:10px solid red;
 background-color: pink !important;
 color: red;
}
.ui-dialog-titlebar {
 background-image: none;
 background-color: blue;
}
#ui-dialog-title-dialog {
 color: yellow !important;
 text-shadow: none;
}

/* Gallery specific... */

#symposium_photo_frame {
 background-color: orange;
 border: 5px solid yellow;
}
.symposium_photo_thumbnail_border_off {
 border: 2px solid #0ff;
}
.symposium_photo_thumbnail_border_on {
 border: 2px solid #f0f;
}
#symposium_photo_comments {
 color: #39f;
 text-shadow: none;
}

Quite an exciting release this one, for a couple of reasons:

1. Priority has been set by Bronze member users via the voting page
2. The gallery plugin has been replaced to include photo comments (that has other other important connotations too, see below)

Replacement Gallery interface

So this is exciting! And I’m holding my breath as with any change, it may not be to everyone’s taste – but I’ll explain why the change has been made and hopefully you’ll understand.

Adds Comments - members can now comment on photos, this was the initial request

Gets rid of Colorbox - which will help sites use other image tools like thickbox without clashing, removes an external dependency and removes the need to load up external script and CSS for Colorbox.

See all photos in an album - so you can jump to particular photos.

Under my control - not a power thing, but opens up the potential for further improvement. For example, I’d personally like to be able to set the album cover photo and rename photo titles from within the new gallery interface (manage the album from one place).

Under your control – setting up the CSS for the jQuery dialog box can be easily controlled, check out this tutorial.

Supports left/right cursor keys, Return, Escape and click on photo - so hopefully intuitive.

Demonstrates the auto-extending text field - if elastic is set on the WPS settings page. If this is okay, it can be copied across to status field and comments on the activity page. :)

But there is a little downside, and I apologise…. On the activity feed, any mention of uploaded photos will not be supported, they are historical. There is a fallback (the image is shown), but not great. So bear in mind, only new activity items will support the new interface. Note that the gallery page, and “My gallery” on profile page are okay as they are dynamically generated.

Code appearing after activity status field

This has been fixed.

Misleading installation page (mis-information)

Activated WPS plugins don’t get listed now.

Member directory filter

This allows site admin’s to add profile information to each item in the member directory. It’s fairly simple to do – take a look at this tutorial.

Speed up member directory search

When searching for a member, you want to find them, that’s the main purpose. So I’ve simplified the query on the search results which should speed it up.

Text Domains

You can now put your .mo language files in one of three locations, as listed below. Note, if in lang or language, they may be removed when you update WP Symposium plugin. If you leave it in the plugins folder it should not be effected by upgrades. But these other two locations may be useful for other plugins, etc.

• wp-content/plugins
• wp-content/plugins/wp-symposium/lang
• wp-content/plugins/wp-symposium/language

WP Symposium all uses that same wp-symposium text domain now.

That’s it until next week’s release.

Please don’t be too harsh with the photo gallery, it will no doubt improve as we find what’s missing, and any bugs will be squashed quickly. If you do have problems, bear in mind it’s using jQuery UI now, not Colorbox. jQuery UI is becoming the safe and normal way to use jQuery dialog boxes (I predict WordPress will replace Thickbox with jQuery UI dialog boxes before too long!).

Bronze members! Be sure to vote on the priority of next developments at the voting page!

Layout of Panel CSS

The panel has a tendency for boxes (DIVs) to layout (float) vertically. The CSS has been sorted out.

Results CSS wrong on Groups Search

When there are no results on the Group search, the CSS layout is wrong causing a badly laid out page. This has been addressed.

Did you know…?

On your updates page, there are several plugins for WP Symposium listed – you only need to update the core plugin, if you update them all, they all simply get updated for each one – taking far longer!

A reminder…!

With all the Bronze plugins now part of the download from WordPress.org you need to remove the Bronze plugin folders from your wp-content/plugins folder if you haven’t already.

Do this via FTP, do not uninstall them via the admin dashboard (if uninstalling, tables in the database are removed!).

In your wp-content/plugins folder, using FTP delete all wp-symposium-***** folders EXCEPT wp-symposium – do not delete wp-symposium plugin folder.

When you next visit your plugin admin page you will be told that a number of plugins have been de-activated as they are no longer exist, that’s ok.

A small release that does three things:

1. Fix to wps.js to work with 3rd party WPS plugins using (for example) /profile?view=blogpost (where blogpost refers to the 3rd party plugin).
2. Displays a warning on admin page if legacy WPS plugin folders need to be removed by FTP, not via the admin dashboard. This could be done automatically, but I get a little scared, wobbly and sweat a bit (and curse to some extent) when I think that plugins might remove folders on my server, so would not want to impose the same on other site admins….
3. Minor layout change to the Installation page, purely aesthetic!

If you’re wondering about the 3rd party WPS plugin referred to above, its WP Symposium Blog Post, development by AlphaGolf, which will add the following functionality (description blatantly copied and pasted from the WordPress repository!):

You’ve setup a WordPress site and turned it into a Social Network using WP Symposium, but the blog part of your site is important to you as well? WP Symposium Blog Post is the perfect addition to your WP/WPS site.

WP Symposium Blog Post plugin integrates WP Symposium with your WordPress blog, by:

• Adding an entry to your authors’ WPS Profile page to list their posts, and link to them.
• Conversely, adding a link on your authors’ blog posts to their WPS Profile page.
• Adding one item to their WPS Activity each time they publish a post in the blog.
• Adding one item to members’ WPS Activity each time they comment on a post or a page.

Do this via FTP, do not uninstall them via the admin dashboard (if uninstalling, tables in the database are removed!).

In your wp-content/plugins folder, using FTP delete all wp-symposium-***** folders EXCEPT wp-symposium – do not delete wp-symposium plugin folder.

When you next visit your plugin admin page you will be told that a number of plugins have been de-activated as they are no longer exist, that’s ok.

After last weekends release and a couple of mid-week patches, this weekends release (hopefully now back to the usual weekly releases!) features one big (and I think popular) change.

Bronze members no longer have to FTP up the bronze plugins, they are included in the download from WordPress.org.

You need to remove the Bronze member plugin folders – please do this via FTP, do not delete them through the admin dashboard as you will remove tables from the database. There is no need to delete the core plugin folder (wp-symposium) as this gets upgraded.

To “tell” WordPress you are a Bronze member you have to enter an Activation Code, available via the links on the installation page (or here). If you are a Bronze member here, you will see an activation code that you should copy and paste into the top of the Installation page.

The activation code is valid for 90 days from when you copy it, just update it at any point to reset the deadline to 90 days.

If you are not a Bronze member (or are trying out the Bronze plugins when not a Bronze member) they will still work on your website, but a banner will be shown across the top of your website. This also means that non-Bronze members can “try before you buy”.

I hope this makes life easier for Bronze members. Any problems (like your activation code not showing), post here.

Translations

This is where I have to start apologising to all the great people who use WP Symposium in different languages. The good news is that translations are now in one language file (‘wp-symposium’), which will make life a lot easier. The bad news is that you may have to transfer/re-add translations. I wait for the abuse, I’m really sorry, gulp. I’ve updated the single download on crowdin.net/project/symposium so all plugins are now included.

This is a patch release following v12.04.21 and v12.04.24 – it addresses the following:

• A replacement of jquery.uploadify.v2.1.4.js (see this forum topic)
• Bug fixes in the WPS class files (addresses these errors)

Really sorry about the releases this week, I would normally always wait for the following Saturday, but I felt these were important as they could break a site, especially the first above, which had been reported on the forum by a few site admins. If your site is operating okay, the patches aren’t mandatory, you can always wait and review the release notes of each release to judge whether they are worth applying (I would always advise you to keep up to date, as with all plugins, but you are your own site admin!). v12.04.21 was always going to be a “challenging” release, and on the whole (apologies to those who have experienced a few problems) it’s been relatively successful. These patch releases address things that actually weren’t related to the big change in the release (ie. the way WPS stored user meta and options in the database). Please trust me that this the changes introduced are worth it, and will make extended WPS, and integrating it with other plug-ins, so much easier. I appreciate you bearing with things as v12.04.21 and subsequent patches “bed in” – normal service will hopefully resume soon with more exciting additional features released on the usual weekly basis. I am planning on putting up a voting mechanism so WPS users can start deciding which features should be considered first in terms of priority, which will either work very well or bring chaos among us all, ahem….!! ;)

This is a patch release following v12.04.21 – it fixes a couple of bugs identified.

We have corrected one bug in the display of Extended Fields on Profile Details. They now show even when empty at the Profile Details section of users’ profile pages, that may be handy whenever they wish to fill these fields with data…

We also modified the way slugs are managed: it’s no longer necessary to fill the slug of a new Extended Field, if left empty (or to its default value of “New Slug”), as it will be generated from the name. Of course, it’s always better if you keep your hand on the slug, esp. when you expect to use it from somewhere else in your site using get_user_meta and ‘symposium_extended_<slug>’

We found a bug which may have sit there for a while, although it came to light only with last release: on other users’ Profile pages, the first menu entry of the list on the left, “Profile”, wasn’t showing anymore.

Finally, a fix has been added to ensure the Members Directory is compatible with the s2 Members plugin.

Regards,
Simon and AlphaGolf

When upgraded, WP Symposium will migrate users details from a dedicated table, to the WordPress user metadata table (see below). This must be allowed to finish. The time it takes is dependent on the number of users, typically 100 users are migrated per minute.

Please let the process finish, you should see a progress bar steadily move across your screen (rapidly if you have a small number of users):

So, what are the key changes? In addition to a number of bug fixes, and small enhancements (like A-Z on member directory), the two significant changes are to the use of the database.

WPS configuration table

Configuration options used to be in the wp_symposium_config table (wp_ prefix may differ on your installation of WordPress). This upgrade copies those configuration settings into the wp_options table – the core WordPress options table. Why has this been done? To reduce the number of WPS tables, and make the plugin more “WordPress standard”. It’s where site admin’s will expect to find configuration options.

If you want to see the WPS configuration options in the database after the upgrade, via a tool like phpMyAdmin, run the following:

SELECT * FROM wp_options WHERE option_name LIKE 'symposium%'

Note that wp_options may have a different prefix on your installation.

WPS user meta table

User meta data (information about the user, profile settings, etc) were stored in a table called wp_symposium_usermeta (again wp_ prefix may differ on your installation). As part of the upgrade, this information is moved to the wp_usermeta table – it’s the core WordPress table for storing user meta information.

You can see them, for a particular user, by running the following in phpMyAdmin:

SELECT * FROM wp_usermeta where user_id = 1 AND meta_key LIKE 'symposium%'

You’ll need to change the user_id to the ID of a user you know, and wp_usermeta may have a different prefix on your installation.

So really, why again?

Well admin’s will have more power to use WP Symposium user meta information. First off, you can now query any of the WP Symposium user data using WordPress standard get_user_meta function from anywhere in a theme page template or any other plugin.

You know those extended fields? Well any of the information your user’s save via the WPS profile page, using those extended fields, can be accessed on your templates and plugins. You’ll notice a “slug” on the extended field information (on the WPS profile admin page), and using that slug you can get this information use the above function. For example, if you add an extended field with the slug of gender, you can retrieve this information with the follow WordPress function:

echo get_user_meta(1, 'symposium_extended_gender', true);

I’ve put 1 in as an example user ID, you can use any.

And the other WPS profile user meta can be retrieved using the following (note, the plugin required is shown – non-core plugins are part of the Bronze package):

So for example, to display a user’s last login (with user ID 1 in the example below), you would use:

echo get_user_meta(1, 'symposium_last_login', true);

To show the currently logged in user’s last login, you would use:

global $current_user;
echo get_user_meta($current_user->ID, 'symposium_last_login', true);

And hopefully there’s more

The goal is to provide further functionality such that the WordPress profile fields can be integrated with WP Symposium (the author’s bio description for example) – thanks AlphaGolf! Depending on the success of the release candidate(s), you’ll be able to link WPS extended fields with the WordPress profile fields so that both can be updated from either the WP Symposium profile page, or the WordPress edit profile page. Watch this space….

So why has there been a gap of several weeks? Let me explain.

First, sorry. It’s unusual and not my preferred way of working, but needs must. The reason being is a big change to the back-end of WP Symposium, integrating better with WordPress itself.

Second, sorry again – you may not even notice any difference, but trust me, this was a big change and a lot of hard work has gone into coding and testing. Particular, and massive thanks, to AlphaGolf – a dedicated supporter of WP Symposium without whom this change would not have happened.

Release Schedule

1. The new code is currently running on the WP Symposium website, for testing purposes. As soon as it’s stable, the code will be made available as a release candidate. The version number of the release will be 12.04.21 RC1. And the name – yes, releases will have names now in true WordPress tradition – will be “AlphaGolf” in honour of this WPS user’s dedication to the cause! The plan is to make this release candidate available on 7th April, coinciding with a week away for me. I’ll be trying to avoid breaking any bones on a snowy mountain again whilst letting folk try out the release candidate.
2. Although every site admin should backup their plugins and database before upgrading them, I appreciate that this doesn’t happen. I strongly and with lots of gentle persuasive hugs urge you to backup your plugins folder and database this time. (Use FTP to take a copy of your plugins, and a tool like phpMyAdmin that you’ll probably have to take a backup of your database, check with your hosting company if you’re not sure).
3. On my return on 14th April (realistically a day or so after once I’ve caught up), if no serious problems that can’t be fixed have been reported, it will officially be released on 21st April.

When upgraded, WP Symposium will migrate users details from a dedicated table, to the WordPress user metadata table (see below). This must be allowed to finish. The time it takes is dependent on the number of users, typically 100 users are migrated per minute.

Please let the process finish, you should see a progress bar steadily move across your screen (rapidly if you have a small number of users):

So, what are the key changes? In addition to a number of bug fixes, and small enhancements (like A-Z on member directory), the two significant changes are to the use of the database.

WPS configuration table

Configuration options used to be in the wp_symposium_config table (wp_ prefix may differ on your installation of WordPress). This upgrade copies those configuration settings into the wp_options table – the core WordPress options table. Why has this been done? To reduce the number of WPS tables, and make the plugin more “WordPress standard”. It’s where site admin’s will expect to find configuration options.

If you want to see the WPS configuration options in the database after the upgrade, via a tool like phpMyAdmin, run the following:

SELECT * FROM wp_options WHERE option_name LIKE 'symposium%'

Note that wp_options may have a different prefix on your installation.

WPS user meta table

User meta data (information about the user, profile settings, etc) were stored in a table called wp_symposium_usermeta (again wp_ prefix may differ on your installation). As part of the upgrade, this information is moved to the wp_usermeta table – it’s the core WordPress table for storing user meta information.

You can see them, for a particular user, by running the following in phpMyAdmin:

SELECT * FROM wp_usermeta where user_id = 1 AND meta_key LIKE 'symposium%'

You’ll need to change the user_id to the ID of a user you know, and wp_usermeta may have a different prefix on your installation.

So really, why again?

Well admin’s will have more power to use WP Symposium user meta information. First off, you can now query any of the WP Symposium user data using WordPress standard get_user_meta function from anywhere in a theme page template or any other plugin.

You know those extended fields? Well any of the information your user’s save via the WPS profile page, using those extended fields, can be accessed on your templates and plugins. You’ll notice a “slug” on the extended field information (on the WPS profile admin page), and using that slug you can get this information use the above function. For example, if you add an extended field with the slug of gender, you can retrieve this information with the follow WordPress function:

echo get_user_meta(1, 'symposium_extended_gender', true);

I’ve put 1 in as an example user ID, you can use any.

And the other WPS profile user meta can be retrieved using the following (note, the plugin required is shown – non-core plugins are part of the Bronze package):

So for example, to display a user’s last login (with user ID 1 in the example below), you would use:

echo get_user_meta(1, 'symposium_last_login', true);

To show the currently logged in user’s last login, you would use:

global $current_user;
echo get_user_meta($current_user->ID, 'symposium_last_login', true);

And hopefully there’s more

The goal is to provide further functionality such that the WordPress profile fields can be integrated with WP Symposium (the author’s bio description for example) – thanks AlphaGolf! Depending on the success of the release candidate(s), you’ll be able to link WPS extended fields with the WordPress profile fields so that both can be updated from either the WP Symposium profile page, or the WordPress edit profile page. Watch this space….

• symposium_config table replaced with wp_options (more integral to WordPress, but not visible to users)
• BETA of reply-by-email plugin that allows members to reply to forum notifications, just be replying to the email received. See forum discussion.
• BETA for Mingle import (via Installation page)
• Fix to delete topic on forum in CubePoints module installed
• CubePoints module now optionally rewards for sharing forum topic via permalink/social media icons

The release candidate is available to bronze members only. If all goes well this week, it will form the release for 24th March.

• A number of small changes
• The latest in the series of tutorials

The latest tutorial continues the forum page template development, adding the ability to:

• delete replies
• delete topic posts (and replies)
• add a new reply to an existing topic

The tutorial can be found with all the others on the tutorial page.

If you have the groups plugin activated there is no need to update as it won’t effect you.

This release also fixes a problem on sites with lots of members, and ordering the member directory by name (like the WPS site, oops, sorry).

• Support for WPS CubePoints module that rewards members for activity on profile pages, the forum and making friends (as well as the other CubePoints rewards you can set up).
• Inclusion in member directory is now role based
  Set this up via member directory admin
• Private group posts no longer appear on profile activity feed (unless you have permission to see them)
• Forum category hierarchy in admin now colour coded and slightly indented
• Follow/Unfollow buttons now appear on profile page (not just hover box)
  Make sure you reset the profile page template header (in admin->templates)
• Hover box can be disabled (bronze members only)

Sorry, I have spent a lot of time looking at problems that couldn’t be replicated this week. Can site admin’s please try this first before logging a problem on the forum? Thank you!

So I’ve added another tutorial to creating your forum page template, this week showing the individual forum topic post and replies.

Apart from minor fixes, I’ve also posted a BETA CubePoints module that seems to be working ok, and if no bugs are reported I’ll extend it to work across WPS. It seems a really popular and excellent WordPress plugin for rewarding users for site activity, may even add it to the WPS site for a bit of fun. It will eventually include information on WPS profile pages (via hooks, not CubePoint specific code for those who may ask!).

Dealing with permalinks, or not….

So far, all the tutorials have assumed that you are using permalinks (www.example.com/thispage instead of www.example.com?page_id=5)

In this tutorial, and from now on, I’m going to code things so either works.  Introducing the WPS class method $wps->get_url_q()…

In wps_forum_page_3.php which is used for this tutorial page, skip down to line 136:

echo '<a href="'.$wps->get_forum_url().$wps->get_url_q($wps->get_forum_url()).'catid='.$category->cid.'">'.$title.'</a>';

The hyperlink (in this case to drill down into a category) is set to $wps->get_forum_url() which gets what you previously set. This is the page on which your forum is.

We then add $wps->get_url_q($wps->get_forum_url()) which will either be a ? or a & depending on whether you are using permalinks or not on your site. WHY? If you are not, it’s important that the hyperlink doesn’t duplicate the ? that will already exist in the URL.

Okay, so let’s add links to show the topic post itself

This occurs in 2 places (last post in the category, and the list of topics) at lines 147, 177. The hyperlink returns to the same page, passing the category ID and the topic ID.

So if the topic ID is passed to this page, show the topic!

We collect the topic ID (along with the category ID) at lines 58 and 59. Once collected, we do a check if the topic ID has been set and if so, show the topic (line 62).

The topic is shown from lines 69 to 111 as follows:

• Show the breadcrumbs (lines 65-67)
• Show the topic author’s avatar, bigger than the replies (lines 73-76)
• Show the initial post (lines 78-92)
• Show the replies (lines 94-111)

The use of methods are fairly similar to previous parts of the code, so there shouldn’t be any surprises. But for reference, the key methods are:

• $wps_ui->get_breadcrumbs
• $wps_user->get_avatar
• $wps_forum->get_topic
•  $wps_forum->get_replies

Once you’ve done the above, after clicking on a topic, you should see something like the following:

And now you can reward points for WP Symposium activity (posting on profile pages, getting involved in the forum and making friends).

Encourage your users to “do stuff” by offering them points which could be used to purchase items / upgrades / etc. Users will be awarded a certain number of points for each type of activity.

Note that you get points (that you set) for doing something, and the points taken away if you remove what you did. For example, if you post on your profile page you get points, and if you then delete the post the points are removed.

On this site (WPS site), you get the following points:

• For each comment on a blog post: 5
• For each day you visit the site: 5
• For posting on your own profile: 10
• For each forum topic you start: 10
• For each forum reply: 5
• Having a friend request accepted: 5
• Sharing a forum topic via social media icons: 5
• Having one of your profile posts liked: 5
• Having one of your profile posts disliked: -5

You can see your points total (and other members) on the profile page, under the avatar (this is an option in the module). The top members are shown on the home page, in the sidebar.

How to add to your site?

Added the second part of the forum page template tutorial. Covers breadcrumbs, list topics in a category, along with number of replies and latest reply. End result would look like this so far:

Enhancements

Admin should be able to read member’s mail

If you log in as admin, on member profile pages, you have access to the mail. This is for security purposes, allowing site admin’s to investigate complaints.

Add timeout for forum post edits

If people edit forum topics and replies some time after their original post, it can change the whole thread. Therefore, a time limit can now be set to avoid the edit icon from appear to keep your forum integrity.

You’ll find this in Forum settings.

Add admin access to mail messages

A new admin section is available, allow site admin’s to view all mail messages. This is not to allow you to snoop! It is to allow you to investigate complaints quickly and easily. This new admin menu option is called “Mail Messages”.

Bugs/defects

• Profile photo not working on WPS site (via profile page)
• Groups: activity comment not correct
• Gallery – ensure deleted members galleries are not shown
• Profile Community settings shows current user, not member

1. Add breadcrumbs (so you can navigate back “up” the forum)
2. Display the list of topics within the current category

I’m using wps_forum_page_2.php and wps_forum_page.css files for this part – you’ll find them in the tutorials folder in the wp-symposium plugin, or download them from here.

Breadcrumbs

You can see above the forum, I am displaying the “breadcrumb trail” of where you currently are in the forum structure – it allows you to move back up the hierarchy. This is part of the WPS UI class, so we need to include the class:

require_once(WP_PLUGIN_DIR.'/wp-symposium/class.wps_ui.php');

and

$wps_ui = new wps_ui();

Then to insert the breadcrumbs (line 61), we simply add:

echo $wps_ui->get_breadcrumbs($catid, 'catid');

There are a number of parameters we can pass to this method, namely:

• The category id of the current level of the breadcrumbs [mandatory].
• The parameter to be added to the breadcrumb links that you use in your code (catid in my case – and this is the default). Optional, but recommend you include for clarity in your code.
• Show link to the top level or not (true/false), defaults to true.
• The separator character, defaults to right arrow.

What is $catid I hear you ask? Don’t worry for now, this will make sense in a short while and I’ll remind you about the breadcrumbs.

Sub categories

For sub categories, I want to show the sub categories and the lasted topic in that sub category, along with some extra information like when and the author.

So lines 66-99 get and loop through any sub categories. For each sub category, the latest topic is retrieved as before (line 84).

What’s been added here this time? Well links so you can move “down” into your forum. Remember the breadcrumbs provide you with a way of moving back “up”.

First take a look at line 81, where a hyperlink is added to the current page with catid as a parameter for the category to show.

See where catid comes in now with the breadcrumbs?

To react to the passed category ID (catid), that is line 58:

$catid = isset($_GET['catid']) ? $_GET['catid'] : 0;

So $catid is set to the passed parameter, or 0 if nothing is passed.

Remember the breadcrumbs? This is the value that is passed (told you I’d remind you, lol).

Listing the topics

Having listed the categories we are now going to flesh out the topics list, providing information on the last reply. This code segment is line 101-152.

I get the list of topics for this category with:

$topics = $wps_forum->get_topics($catid);

If there are any, the table header is shown, and the all topics are looped through, displaying initially the topic subject. I limit the maximum length to 60 characters, feel free to change!

Showing the last reply

The last reply is retrieved on line 125:

$last_reply = $wps_forum->get_replies($topic->tid, 0, 1);

The topic ID is passed, starting at 0 (the first one) and retrieving only one. If there was one (there may not have been a reply yet), it is displayed along with information on the topic author, their avatar and so on.

We’ve covered this before, but briefly lines 134-136 gets and displays the avatar and link to the author’s profile page. Lines 139-144 show the reply. I’ve previously restricted the length and sorted out the formatting at lines 128-131.

Showing the number of replies

It can be useful to know how many replies have been posted to a topic, and this can be easily shown, line 148:

echo $topic->topic_replies;

Next?

The next tutorial will allow us to click on a topic title and display it, along with all the replies to that topic. Yummy!

For reference… fields returned by get_replies()

• tid – topic ID, integer
• topic_group – 0 for none (ie. main forum), or group ID if a group forum, integer
• topic_category – which category the topic belongs to, integer
• topic_subject – if the initial topic post, the subject of the topic, text
• topic_post – the body of the topic or reply, text
• topic_owner – the user ID of the topic creator, integer
• display_name – WordPress display name of topic_owner
• topic_date – date created, or last replied to, datetime
• topic_parent – if a reply, the ID of the topic, or 0, integer
• topic_approved – defaults to ‘on’, or ” if awaiting moderation (or use true/false)
• topic_answer – is this the answer to a topic? ‘on’ if yes, otherwise ” (or use true/false)

If you don’t have the option of a full width Page template in your theme, it’s easy enough to create your own. You’ll need to be able to access your theme’s folder on your server, and so if you can do that, this should be a fairly easy process.

We’ll go through it in five steps.

Step 1: Create a New Template File

On your server, find your theme’s folder (wp-content/themes/your-theme).

Create a new file and name it something unique and appropriate (e.g. full-width-page.php). Remember to end it with the .php extension.

After that, find the file named page.php. Open that, copy the contents, and then go back to the file you just created (full-width-page.php), and paste those contents into your new file.

Now, at the VERY TOP of your new file (i.e. BEFORE the content you just added into it), put the following:

<?php
 /*
 Template Name: Full Width
 */
 ?>

Step 2: Remove the Sidebar

Next you’ll want to remove the sidebar. Search for the following code and take it out.

<?php get_sidebar() ?>

Step 3: Replace the Div ID

Next, you’ll need to find the Div ID for the content and change it, so we can style it the way we like.

More than likely, the div ID for the content will look like this:

<div id="content">

Change the name “content” to something unique and identifiable like “content-fullwidth.”

<div id="content-fullwidth">

Save the file, and you’re done with the template file.

Step 4: Style Your New Template File

Now you’ll need to widen the content area to give you more space.

Go to your style sheet in your admin area (Appearance > Editor > Stylesheet – style.css) and search for the section that controls the content area of your blog.

Typically your content area in your style sheet is named “#content” (easily enough).

Copy this section and then paste it into the style sheet again, renaming #content to the same name you gave your Div ID in Step 3 above (#content-fullwidth).

Then change the width to something wider.

Save your file, and that’s it for the style sheet.

Step 5: Choose Full Width

When you write a Page now, you should see an option on the right hand side for the “Full Width” template that you created.

I’m using wps_forum_page_1.php and wps_forum_page.css files for this part – you’ll find them in the tutorials folder in the wp-symposium plugin, or download them from here.

The basis for the page template is the same as the profile and mail templates, except that I’m going to allow content added via the admin dashboard to appear – lucky you ;)

That’s simply a matter of including two lines. Try taking them out and see what disappears!

<?php the_post(); ?>
<?php get_template_part( 'content', 'page' ); ?>

You can add these to the other page templates if you would like to be able to add content, or you can hardcode the content into the page template – your choice. It just feels that a forum often benefits from having a little introductory text, that you may want to easily and quickly change. Up to you ;)

So, the class we want to include is the wps_forum class:

require_once(WP_PLUGIN_DIR.'/wp-symposium/class.wps_forum.php');
$wps_forum = new wps_forum();

This should be familiar if you’ve been through the profile page template tutorial. The above assumes you are keeping the class files where they should be – i.e., in the wp-symposium folder.

We also tell WP Symposium about our new page, over-riding the WPS installation page that looks for a shortcode:

$wps->set_forum_url('/aa-forum');

Finally, to prepare things, we include the CSS file:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/wps_forum_page.css" />

Take a quick gander at the CSS file, notice the first section “WordPress style changes”. I’m making some changes to the default TwentyEleven theme CSS to push the content that I’m now including up and out – filling the available area. I also move the “Edit” button over to the top-right to keep things tidy.

Let the fun begin!

Ok, so we are ready to pull in some forum content. Having done the profile (and hopefully mail) tutorials, you should find this relatively easy to understand, so we won’t hang about!

This is what we are aiming for in this part of the tutorial, it’s a clean and minimalist look and feel:

We start building up the “table” DIVs at line 56, before getting the list of categories at line 65:

$categories = $wps_forum->get_categories();

This will return (and pop into $categories) all the categories in the forum. Without a parameter, the “top level” returned will be the very top of the forum category hierarchy. If you have created sub-categories via the WPS admin, you could pass the ID of a “parent” category to return its “children”. But for now, we are interested in getting the lot!

What it won’t do is return “children” categories, so if you want to display any of those children categories here, you’d need a little recursive function to do so – but that’s out of the scope of this tutorial, it’s more in the PHP tutorial territory – take a stroll down Google Lane and you’ll find a wealth of info!

So we have our collection of categories, and we are going to loop through those returned (line 66):

foreach ($categories as $category) {
   ...
}

$category is now going to be each of our categories, we can handle each in turn. So in between a bunch of DIVs (and corresponding styles) we display some information about our category using:

echo stripslashes($category->title);

Note the stripslashes which, bizarrely, strips the slashes that may be needed to store the title in the database. Note that the WPS Wiki lists the fields that are returned that you might also want to display, and I’ve also listed the fields at the bottom of this article.

Last topic for each category

So far so good, and now I’m interested in showing the last topic created for each category. Other fields available for use are listed at the end of this article, or on www.wpswiki.com.

Something like that shown to the right.

So I get the last topic as follows:

$last_topic = $wps_forum->get_topics($category->cid, 0, 1);

The get_topics() method is passed up to five parameters:

• The category ID (mandatory, 0 for top level of the forum)
• Where to start from (default is 0)
• How many to return (default is 9999)
• The order of the topics by creation date (default is most recent first, pass “ASC” to reverse)
• The group ID if focussing on a group (default is 0, ie. not a group)

So we are passing the first three only: the category ID, start from 0, stop after 1. Why just 1 for the third parameter? Because we only want to most recent and it cuts down on server load and the amount of content to return.

If 1 topic is returned, as here, it is returned as a recordset. If more than 1 (as in the next part of the tutorial), an array is returned.

If there is a last topic for the category (checked on line 73), then we display the information about the last topic in between our DIVs.

Showing the last topic avatar

To jazz up the forum a bit, it would be nice to display the avatar of the author of the last topic. This is where familiarity with the profile page template tutorial comes in handy, I won’t go into detail again. Suffice to say, using $last_topic->topic_owner as the parameter, we create a new wps_user object and do two things:

1. Create a hyperlink to the profile page (with wps->get_profile_url() and uid as a parameter);
2. Display the avatar with wps_user->get_avatar(48), where 48 is the size of the avatar in pixels.

Finishing off the last topic

Finally we display the topic subject, display name of the author and how long ago it was created (using the symposium_time_ago function coupled with $last_topic->topic_started).

And there we have it, the start of our new forum page template. There are lots of other values returned by get_categories() and get_topics(), check out the WPS Wiki to see the full list and play around with customising your forum.

Next stop, part 2, will be to click on a forum category and display the topics in that category.

For reference… fields returned by get_categories()

This list can also be found on www.wpswiki.com.

• cid – category ID, integer
• title – title of the category, text
• listorder – order for categories to appear defined in admin area, integer
• allow_new – are new topics by users allowed? ‘on’ or ” (can use true/false)
• defaultcat – is this the default category for new topics? ‘on’ or ” (can use true/false)
• cat_parent – parent cid for this category, as a hierarchy, integer
• cat_desc – description of this category, text
• level – serialized list of WordPress roles that should have access to this category (see later tutorial)

For reference… fields returned by get_topics()

This list can also be found on www.wpswiki.com.

• tid – topic ID, integer
• topic_group – 0 for none (ie. main forum), or group ID if a group forum, integer
• topic_category – which category the topic belongs to, integer
• topic_subject – if the initial topic post, the subject of the topic, text
• topic_post – the body of the topic or reply, text
• topic_owner – the user ID of the topic creator, integer
• display_name – WordPress display name of topic_owner
• topic_date – date created, or last replied to, datetime
• topic_parent – if a reply, the ID of the topic, or 0, integer
• topic_views – holds a count of times topic viewed, integer
• topic_started – initial creation date, datetime
• topic_sticky – should topic be sticky? ‘on’ or ” (or use true/false)
• allow_replies – should replies by allowed? ’on’ or ” (or use true/false)
• topic_approved – defaults to ‘on’, or ” if awaiting moderation (or use true/false)
• topic_answer – is this the answer to a topic? ‘on’ if yes, otherwise ” (or use true/false)
• for_info – is this topic just for information? ’on’ if yes, otherwise ” (or use true/false)

Started work on the forum class, see the tutorials for more information. This will build up over 2-3 weeks to allow you to create your own forum look and feel!

Other changes

• Inline attachements now resizing, before they were appearing as full size.
• Checked forums available on mobile plugin version
• set_display_name() class method updates core WP usermeta (wps_user class)
• If moderation is on, admin user posts no longer require moderating (unnecessary step)
• Post/reply buttons now on group page (if buttons activated in WPS settings)
• Firstname and Lastname added to Profile page (and updates WP usermeta)
• Fixes incorrect permission for WP Symposium menu (only admin has access now)

Also in this release, a handful of minor code bugs, plus:

Advanced Search

It wasn’t, erm, working. Should be now – although I suspect this will be an area that will be refined over time. Bear in mind, for the advanced search:

• Member’s extended profile “values” are not set until they are saved by the member at least once.
• For list boxes, members are included in advanced search results if values match (or “Any” is selected)
• If you “check” a check boxes, members are included if they have also “checked” the extended field
• If you don’t “check” a checkbox, it is not included in the search.

An example, you have two extended profile fields:

1. A list box of “Male” and “Female”
2. A checkbox of “Likes football”

If you select Male and check Likes football, then you will get all men that like football.

If you select Male and leave Likes football unchecked, you will get all men.

If you select “Any” and check Likes football, you will get all members that like football.

Remember (I’ll say it again…) – members are only included if they have saved their extended profile information at least once!

I’m sorry that I had to push a couple of things to next week, I just didn’t get as much time to devote to development this week as I would have liked, support duties took over in a big way, the forum has been rather lively (which is a good thing)!

I’m going to focus on the lines of code that matter here, how you use them is entirely down to your imagination! This is using wps_mail_page_7.php.

The most important parts are the additional parameters to $wps_mail->get_inbox() and $wps_mail->get_inbox_count() that filters the returns list/value by a search term, but on that in a bit.

But first the search box. This doesn’t use a WPS UI element as you can make this however you want using HTML, I’m going to create a straightforward text box and button, lines 160-168 of wps_mail_page_7.php.

Mostly straightforward, except I include a hidden field “action” so I can retain the view state of the mail box (in or sent). I also default the value to anything previously search for ($term).

Getting the search term

Where do I get $term from? That’ll be line 93 that looks for a posted search term. It checks for the term passed by the URL or the post form (URL comes in for the paging, cover that in a minute).

$term = isset($_GET['my-search-term']) || isset($_POST['my-search-term']) ? isset($_POST['my-search-term']) ? $_POST['my-search-term'] : $_GET['my-search-term'] : '';

A check is made if either the URL of the form POST data has a search value (matching the search box name I used in the form), and if so takes the form POST data if available, or if not the URL parameter. If neither is set, $term is set to ” (an empty string).

I’m using a more succinct method of checking values using ternary operators, you could use a set of if {} else {} conditions over several lines:

if ( isset($_GET['my-search-term']) || isset($_POST['my-search-term']) ) {
  if ( isset($_POST['my-search-term']) ) {
    $term = $_POST['my-search-term'];
  } else {
    $term = $_GET['my-search-term'];
  }
} else {
  $term = '';
}

So $term will hold the search term.

Getting mail based on the search term

We use one of the parameters for $wps_mail->get_inbox() that will filter the results based on a search term, line 229. The results will only include mail where display name, subject or mail matches $term:

$inbox = $wps_mail->get_inbox($page_length, $start, 40, $term, true, 75, false, $show_sent_mail);

Notice the fourth parameter? That’s our search term. The results will now be filtered, and if anything matches exactly, it will be highlighted.

Coping with paging

If the results go over one page, we need to be able to move page by page and return the search term, so we add a parameter to the page links, that gets picked up online 93.

Line 274 creates the string to be added to the URL, or an empty string if no search term is available. It’s then added to all the paging links, for example on line 278:

if ($current_page > 1) echo '<a href="'.$wps->get_mail_url().'?action='.$paging_action.'&start=0'.$term_parameter.'">First</a> ';

This is not the only way to do it, but as a simple example it allows us to retain the search term as we move from page to page in the search results.

Search count

It’s quite nice to show the number of search results. If too large, you could avoid the search and prompt for a more precise search, just an idea!

We’ve added a parameter to $wps_mail->get_inbox_count() to filter the count of the mail by the search term. If there is no search term, the count will still just be the total number of mail messages in the inbox/sent list.

$inbox_count = $wps_mail->get_inbox_count(false, $show_sent_mail, $term);

Lines 293-299 display either the number of returned search matches, or if no search was made, just the number of mail items in the mail box:

Note that a link to clear the search is added, it simply links to the mail box without the search term parameter.

The changes are spread out through the file wps_mail_page_6.php, so rather than do a walk through I’m going to highlight key bits of code, particularly those that use the WPS classes.

Inbox and Sent “view” links

Lines 205-217 show the inbox and sent “links” to switch between the two views. Depending which view you are currently in, one will be active and one will be just bold text.

The links include the current view (inbox or sent) whilst redirecting back to the current page, along with the start page of “0″ to go back to the top.

Getting the inbox/sent mail messages

Shifting down to lines 341, the headers of the mail table are now changed to reflect the view.

And now for the important line, getting the right set of mail, it’s line 345.

$inbox = $wps_mail->get_inbox($page_length, $start, 40, "", true, 75, false, $show_sent_mail);

That line already existed, but there is an additional parameter at the end, $show_sent_mail. If true is passed, sent mail is returned, otherwise received mail is returned. The default value, if not passed, is false (ie. received mail).

The variable is set on the previous line (343):

$show_sent_mail = ($action == "sent");

If $action is set to “sent”, then $show_sent_mail will be true, otherwise it’s false.

$inbox will now be set to either received mail, or sent mail. Other than that, the information will be displayed as before.

Adding a reply link

Against each message, beside the trash icon, I’m going to put a reply link, line 391:

echo '<a href="'.$wps->get_mail_url().'?action=reply&mail_id='.$mail['mail_id'].'">Reply</a> ';

The link points to the current page, with a new action “reply” along with the mail id of the message that is being replied to.

Jump back to line 221 now, and you’ll see the condition for displaying the compose form that now includes a check for the reply action, and a passed mail_id parameter in the URL.

Following that if we are replying, we need to get some information to be able to refer back to the original message in the compose form, i.e.:

• who sent it (so we can set the recipient of our reply message)
• original subject
• original message

The subject, if it hasn’t already got “Re:” at the start, gets “Re: prepended to it.

Also, we don’t just get the previous message, we add some header information, so when reading through the entire thread (ie. previous messages), there is a break with who sent the message, and when, etc.

Now that we have the previous message information, we can go ahead as before and display the compose form. However, this time we will default the recipient and pre-populate the subject and message.

That’s nearly the end of our basic mail page

So, we now have a mail page where we can:

• Read our mail
• See mail we have sent
• Page throughout the inbox/sent mail
• Compose a new mail (to friends)
• Reply to a received (or sent) mail message
• Delete mail items

There is so much more that could be done to improve things, now that you have the WPS classes to hand, for example, how about…..

• Multiple delete checkboxes
• A toolbar of icons for compose, inbox/sent view, paging, etc
• Maybe side by side inbox and message (when one is selected)

The next and final part of creating a mail page will add a search feature.

Requires WP Symposium v12.02.04 or above.

Add the following to functions.php:

add_action('comment_post', 'wps_act_on_comment', 20, 2);
function wps_act_on_comment($comment_ID, $comment_status){

  global $current_user;
  require_once(ABSPATH.'wp-content/plugins/wp-symposium/class.wps.php');

  $wps = new wps();
  $commentdata=&get_comment($comment_ID, ARRAY_A);
  $post=&get_post($commentdata['comment_post_ID']);

  $activity = '<a href="'.get_permalink($post->ID).'">Commented on '.$post->post_title.'</a>';
  $wps->add_activity_post($current_user->ID, $current_user->ID, $activity, $type='blogcomment');

}

You will need to change the path to the class.wps.php file to match your own server setup, it may will be the above as it’s the default WordPress installation.

It uses the add_activity_post method of the wps class that takes 4 parameters:

1. The ID of the activity author (such as the current user ID)
2. The ID of the target members (if a comment on activity, probably the current user ID)
3. The message, including any hyperlinks
4. The type of post, that current includes ‘post’, ‘forum’, ‘gallery’ and ‘poke’

To differentiate comments, similar activity should have their own type so I have used ‘blogcomment’ above to refer to a comment made on a blog. This allows WPS core code to pick out particular types of activity.

With this release comes further tutorials to extend the mail page template adding a compose new mail option, and then sending it. See the tutorial page to list the tutorials.

All the files are in the wp-symposium/tutorials folder in the main WPS plugin downloaded from wordpress.org, or the tutorial files themselves from here.

Deleting topics

Owners of forum topics can now delete the topic, along with the site admin. They do this from the list of topics as before. A little trash icon appears when you hover your mouse over any topics that you have created.

Login to forum page, staying on the page

A new option for admins, on the forum settings is “Show login form”. If checked, when a visitor comes to the forum, a login form is shown at the bottom of the topic (assuming they have access to see the forum at all). Logging in, the user will be redirected to the same page, over-riding any other login settings that may have been added.

Links in notification emails are “clickable”

Links back to the forum for topic replies are now clickable, with HTML. This shouldn’t be a problem for email clients as new topics and new mail had those links already, but will be monitored.

First thing is to add a little jQuery magic that will be used to show and hide the compose form. It’s off-topic, so please refer to lines 20-56. They should be in a separate JS file, but are included for the sake of the tutorial. I’ll refer back to the jQuery below when it’s used.

Ok, so the lines we are focussing are to send the mail to handle the form. I’m going to do it in reverse order.

Showing the compose form

To keep things tidy, and as an example of how to do it although slightly off-top, we are going to show a “Compose new mail” link to show the form, and a (hidden initially) “Back to inbox…” link to hide the form and re-display the inbox.

echo '<a href="javascript:void(0)" id="my-show-compose-form">Compose new mail</a>';
echo '<a href="javascript:void(0)" id="my-hide-compose-form" style="display:none;">Back to inbox...</a>';

Notice the the “Back to inbox” link starts off hidden. I’ll not go into any deeper, it’s more about jQuery and CSS. Suffice it to say, that when you click on the “my-show-compose-form” link, the appropriate jQuery code kicks in and hides the inbox (and other bits) and shows the compose form (a DIV with an id of “my-compose-form”). “Back to inbox…” will do the opposite.

Starting the compose form

The form will be an HTML form that will POST back the data to the current script that will fire off the mails. We’ll cover the bit that does the sending now, but to prepare that step the form includes a hidden action field. It will make sense when we look at the code that does the mail sending!

So we start the FORM, add the hidden “action” field, and starting laying out the structure of the DIVs that use the CSS in wps_mail_page.css to position them on screen.

Quite quickly we get to the drop-down list of possible recipients.

Getting the list of friends into a drop down list

You can handle the recipient how you want, predictive typing would be nice, but this tutorial is about interacting with the WPS classes. So I’m just going to put them in a drop-down list. There are a small number of steps to this, namely:

1. Get the list of friends
2. Add the current user (so they appear on the list)
3. Sort this list by display name (my choice, you can do what you want!)
4. Show the drop down list

Getting the list of friends uses the wps_user class:

$wps_user = new wps_user();
$friends = $wps_user->get_friends();

If you’ve worked through the profile page tutorial you’ll recognise this, check it out if you want more detailed info. It returns a list of the current user’s friends after first creating a $wps_user object.

So that we can sort our recipient list, and add the friends display name, we do this:

$frends_array = array();
foreach ($friends as $friend) {
  $friend_user = new $wps_user($friend->id);
  $friends_array[] = array("id"=>$friend->id, "display_name"=>$friend_user->get_display_name());
}

What we do here is set up a new array. This is a PHP topic of its own, if you want to know more Google for PHP array and you’ll find a wealth of information.

We loop through all the friends, getting each of the friend’s user ID. For each, we create a new user object (passing the friends ID) for each, and use their display name, along with their ID, to add to our array. For those interested in the detail, we are creating an array of arrays – if you don’t have a deep enough knowledge of PHP,  it doesn’t matter much, so long as you can follow the code through.

Finally, we add the current user to the array:

$friends_array[] = array("id"=>$current_user->ID, "display_name"=>$current_user->display_name);

We now have our array that will be populating the drop-down list, but first we reorder the array using a handy function that comes with WPS:

$friends_array = sub_val_sort($friends_array, 'display_name');

The array is now sorted by display name, ready to be turned into a drop-down list. Simple really now, we just loop through the array, building up the HTML of the drop-down list.

echo '<select name="my-recipient">';
foreach ($friends_array as $i => $row) {
  echo '<option value='.$row['id'].'>'.$row['display_name'].'</option>';
}
echo '</select>';

Subject, message and send button

These are all UI elements, ready for you to use, so added in 3 lines!

echo $wps_ui->mail_subject("Subject of mail", "my-compose-form-subject").'<br />';
echo $wps_ui->mail_message("Message...", "my-compose-form-message").'<br />';
echo $wps_ui->mail_send_button("Send", "my-submit-button");

For each, we pass the default text, and a class that is used for styling purposes. Both are optional, but it’s probable that you’ll want to be in control and use them.

Just a matter of closing a DIV and the FORM and the compose form is ready for use :)

Groovy!

Sending the mail

So, we fill out our form, then what happens? The FORM will POST the data to the current script. This is not great, as page reloads will cause the mail to be sent again. It should really be in a separate file that then redirects back to the inbox. It’s out of scope of this tutorial as that’s more PHP programming, maybe covered in a separate tutorial later if I get requests!

We now go back to the code block that is checking for either a URL parameter or FORM POST with action against it. We are including this in the form data sent from the compose form. Is it starting to hang together yet? Hope so!

If the action is “sendmail” (as in our compose form), and it will do the following:

if ( !$wps_mail->sendmail($_POST['my-recipient']) ) {
 echo '<p>Problem sending mail, sorry.</p>';
}

The first line is actually doing all the work (the condition around it checks to see if false is returned, and if so displays an error message – true is returned if the mail was sent okay).

All we have to do with $wps_mail->sendmail() is pass the value from the drop-down list, which is the ID of the mail recipient (not the display name, the value of the drop-down list items i.e. the value of the <option> tag). This parameter is used as you may display (and allow selection from) your recipient list in any shape or form, but the recipient ID is what counts. I don’t want to force recipient lists to always be drop-down lists.

What about the subject and message? Well, the sendmail class knows what they are as we used the wps_ui class to display them, and so it knows where to look. It will then send the private mail, and an email notification (unless the recipient as changed their settings not to receive one).

Not much code there, hopefully making your life as a WPS developer easier. Now play around and create your own compose form, not forgetting the styles in the wps_mail_page.css file. :)

If you look at/use wp_profile_page_7.php you’ll be able to follow what we are about to do (try it out as your page template too).

So let’s make sure we have included the wps_mail class file:

require_once(ABSPATH.'wp-content/plugins/wp-symposium/class.wps_mail.php');

Now jump down to line 126-156. I’m not going to explain every line, just some key things that are worth mentioning.

By now you should have realised that the layout is entirely down to your imagination.

It would also be (very!) worthwhile following at least the first few parts of the mail page tutorial, it will help a lot as what we’re about to do is covered in more detail there (at least most of it).

So first lets make sure you are looking at your own page with the following:

if ($wps->get_current_user_page() == $current_user->ID) {

And now create a new object ($wps_mail) that we can use to “do stuff” with!

$wps_mail = new wps_mail();

We then get the total number of unread messages by passing true as a parameter to the same get_inbox_count() method:

$unread = $wps_mail->get_inbox_count(true);

And put something to tell the user how many message they have including how many are unread, with rather a longish, complicated line of code:

echo 'You have '.($cnt = $wps_mail->get_inbox_count()).' message'.($cnt != 1 ? 's' : '').' of which '.$unread.' '.($unread != 1 ? 'are' : 'is').' unread.';

Apologies for this line, I’m showing off really by combining more than one thing – dreadful practice for tutorials, please indulge me… I should, as I am sure I’ll be told, use proper translation methods rather than assume everything will be in English.

See my previous comment and apology for that, and remember this is a WPS class tutorial not a PHP tutorial ;) In summary, $cnt will be the total number of messages and $unread, as previous defined, is the number of unread messages.

If you are having trouble following this, you could break it out and do this instead:

$unread = $wps_mail->get_inbox_count(true);
$message_s = ($cnt != 1 ? 's' : '');
$cnt = $wps_mail->get_inbox_count();
$is_are = ($unread != 1 ? 'are' : 'is');
echo 'You have '.$cnt.' message'.$message_s;
echo ' of which '.$unread.' '.$is_are.' unread.';

If there are any unread messages, we then show the most recent mail (maximum of 3 in my case). We already have the number of unread messages ($unread), so we set $recent to a maximum of 3, or whatever $unread is. You can change 3 to whatever value you want of course.

$recent = $unread > 3 ? 3 : $unread;

and if there are more than one, show a little extra text.

We then get the most recent unread messages with some parameters:

$recent_mail = $wps_mail->get_inbox($recent, 0, 18, "", true, 0, true);

The parmeters are:

• the number of messages to retrieve ($recent)
• start at the first message (0)
• set the size of the avatar (18 pixels)
• the search term (“” as we want anything)
• order from most recent first (true)
• the maximum length of the message (0 as we’re not going to use it)
• unread messages only (true)

Paging

Chances are, you will get more than 5 or 10 mail messages in your inbox. We could just show a long list, but that would not be very nice – far better to be able to “page” through the inbox messages, and jump between pages (and jump straight to first and last page).

So we first set up where we are going to start from (which message), and how long our page of mail messages will be:

$start = isset($_GET['start']) ? $_GET['start'] : 0;
$page_length = 5;

$start will hold the first message to show (where 0 is the first, 1 the second, and so on). It checks to see if a value has been passed as a parameter in the URL (?start=10 for example … trust me for now, we’ll cover this in a bit), or otherwise sets it to 0 (the first one).

$page_length is the number of messages to show on each page, I’m setting it at 5 for now.

Now, when we get our inbox messages, we pass a couple of parameters (line 92):

$inbox = $wps_mail->get_inbox($page_length, $start);

In other words, how many messages, and starting from which message. Doing just this will show the first 5 messages. So we need to work out which page we’re on, and show the list of pages accordingly.

The first thing we need to do is find out how many messages there are in total, and then calculate how many pages of messages there will be (based on our $page_length):

$inbox_count = $wps_mail->get_inbox_count();

$pages = ($inbox_count % $page_length) == 0 ? $inbox_count / $page_length : floor($inbox_count / $page_length) + 1;

You don’t need to understand the maths, or even the line of code, suffice it to say that $pages will now be the number of pages according to the total count of messages in your inbox.

If there is more than one page (otherwise page numbers are irrelevant), we do the following:

1. Get the current page
2. If past the first page, show a link to the “First” page
3. If past the first page, show a link to the “Previous” page
4. Loop through all the pages, either highlighting the current page, or adding a link to the page in the loop
5. If before the last page, show a link to the “Next” page
6. If before the last page, show a link to the “Last” page

There is a fair bit of number crunching going on, but the links referred to above are the important bits here, for example (from line 156):

echo '<a href="'.$wps->get_mail_url().'?start=0">First</a> ';

The hyperlink is set to the mail page, with start as a parameter set to 0. By effectively re-loading the same page and setting start to 0, we are telling the page to display messages from 0 (ie. the beginning!). Let’s consider something more complicated at line 178:

echo '<a href="'.$wps->get_mail_url().'?start='.(($p*$page_length)-$page_length).'">'.$p.'</a>';

The hyperlink will go to $wps->get_mail_url().’?start=’.(($p*$page_length)-$page_length). The key here is the parameter that start is set to. It works out the first message on the page the loop is up to, that’s what (($p*$page_length)-$page_length) is doing!

For example, if as we loop through the number of pages ($pages), let’s say we get to page 4 (so $p = 4), and we are working with a $page_length of 5 messages. Start will then be set to ((4*5)-5), or 15. The fifteenth message would be the first message shown, and would be the first message on page 4 (remember, page 1 would be 0, page 2 would be 5, page 3 would be 10 and page 4 would be 15).

And we have paging, awesome! :)

Next step, add a compose new mail form and sending the mail.

Have I read it yet?

It’s always handy to know if you’ve read a mail message or not, so we check with the following:

$mail_unread = $mail['mail_read'] == 'on' ? '' : 'my-inbox-unread';

$mail_unread will either be “my-inbox-unread” or “” depending if $mail['mail_read'] is set to “on” or “”. This is then added as a class to the row in our inbox table, and CSS applied accordingly (the my-inbox-unread style).

Viewing the message

Go to line 132. The first thing we are doing here is to get the message to view:

$message = $wps_mail->get_message($_GET['mail_id']);

I am sure someone will point out that actually we are just setting here, not getting (that happens later). It just makes sense when you’re “thinking” your code through, but I take your point…

The message is set by the parameter passed, that is the ID of the mail clicked on in the inbox. So yes, we’re missing something here! How is that passed?

Go back to line 98:

echo '<a href="'.$wps->get_mail_url().'?mail_id='.$mail['mail_id'].'">'.$mail['mail_subject'].'</a>';

We are now showing the mail subject, with a hyperlink to the mail page (current page!) with a URL parameter (?mail_id=x where x is the id of the mail item in the current loop).

Ok, so with that, when we click on the mail subject, the browser will go to the mail page (current page), with the parameter in the URL of mail_id of the message. Now, line 132 can get that URL parameter and pass it to set which mail message we are talking about!

Hope that’s clear, ahem…

Now that $message is set to our message we can do something with it – show the message. You should be able to see what we are doing, and the fields that are available, but briefly the important bits are:

$message->mail_from - ID of sender
$message->mail_sent - date sent/received
$message->mail_subject - subject
$message->mail_message - message itself

You may have noticed that we are including the wps_user class at the top of the file. No? Take a look. That’s so we can create an object of the user who sent the mail and then use it! Line 138:

$sender = new wps_user($message->mail_from);

So $sender is the user who sent the mail, and then on lines 150 and 152 we use it as follows:

$sender->get_avatar(120) - show the avatar of the person who sent the mail
$sender->get_profile_url() - show the sender's display name and link to their profile

If you’ve gone through the profile page template tutorial you’ll appreciate that you could show a lot more information, which might be useful if your website is geared towards knowing more about the other members on the site and you want that information shown beside the mail message. Over to you on that one…!

Going back?

Now we can see the mail message, it would be handy to go back to the inbox. No problem, line 146 does that:

echo '<a href="'.$wps->get_mail_url().'">Back to inbox...</a>';

And finally….

Having read the mail message, we need to flag it as read. Easily done:

$wps_mail->set_as_read($message->mail_mid);

Quite a lot happened in this part of the tutorial. Use the code in wps_mail_page_3.php, read it through and play around with it – that’s the best way to learn!

What next? Paging for your inbox!

All we are really doing is adding some DIVs and applying some of the styles from the CSS. You can play around with this as much as you want to make whatever sort of page you desire!

Nothing much is added – the majority is the layout itself, however some additional class methods add the following:

$mail['avatar'] – displays the avatar of the member who sent the mail

$mail['display_name_link'] – shows the name of the sender, as a link to their profile page

wps_get_monthname() – this is a WPS function that will get the text of a month if passed a numeric (1-12). It is used to make the format of the mail_sent value more readable!

You can use your imagination to layout the inbox contents – what about highlight the most recent message at the top with different styles?

The next part of the tutorial will highlight read/unread messages and display of mail message when clicked on :)

So that I don’t need to duplicate information, I’ll assume that you’ve worked through the profile page template tutorial.

Unfortunately I may not have time to respond personally to queries on this tutorial (I’ll try!), but there is an area of the forum for questions (which would be better so answers are available to others to see and learn from).

Let’s get started

So this first part is going to use the wps_mail class to retrieve and display mail for the currently logged in user, just to make sure the basics are working. From the tutorials/mail_page_template folder in the wp-symposium plugin folder you will find the tutorial pages as they develop, start by using wps_mail_page_1.php - copy that file, and wps_mail_page.css into your theme folder, creating a page (mine is called AA Mail) and selecting the new page template you copied across.

We are going to include the wps class and the wps_mail class as follows (profile page tutorial provides more information on this, please read that tutorial for more info):

require_once(ABSPATH.'wp-content/plugins/wp-symposium/class.wps.php');
require_once(ABSPATH.'wp-content/plugins/wp-symposium/class.wps_mail.php');

$wps = new wps();
$wps_mail = new wps_mail(); // defaults to current logged in user

Telling WP Symposium about your new mail page

As in the profile page template, we need to set WPS mail page location to our new page (mine is at /aa-mail), see the profile page template tutorial if you need to remind yourself why.

$wps->set_mail_url('/aa-mail');

Finally, we will include the CSS file that should be sitting in your theme folder (your path may be different):

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/wps_mail_page.css" />

Getting the contents of the users inbox

$inbox = $wps_mail->get_inbox();

This will set $inbox to the current users inbox contents.

If you wanted to use a different user, pass their ID as a parameter.

$inbox will be an array, so we can then loop through showing the various fields passed back.

So we simply use a PHP loop to display the basic mail information for each returned.

if ($inbox) {
 foreach($inbox as $mail) {
  echo 'From: '.$mail['display_name'].'<br />';
  echo 'Subject: '.$mail['mail_subject'].'<br />';
  echo 'Date: '.$mail['mail_sent'].'<br />';
  echo 'Message: '.$mail['mail_message'].'<br /><br />';
 }
} else {
 echo "You have no mail in your inbox.";
}

Even with basic PHP know-how you should hopefully see what’s happening – play around and you can change the format (although we will do that in part 2…).

There are other parameters you can pass:

get_inbox(count, start_from, avatar_size, search_term, order, message_length)

We will cover the other parameters as we work through the tutorial, but feel free to play around with them! For example, to return a maximum of 20 mail messages (20), starting from the first one (0), an avatar of 40×40 pixels (40), no search term (“”), most recent first (true) and the first 75 characters of the message (75):

get_inbox(20, 0, 40, "", true, 75)

Nifty! Part 2 makes it look a little nicer…

The main push is towards the creation of a replacement WPS Mail page, up to the point of setting up your inbox (with paging) and reading the messages.

I’m setting up a tutorial page to list the tutorials – bear with me while I create the mail tutorials, you may want to subscribe to an RSS feed of the blog to get notification.

But all the files are in the wp-symposium/tutorials folder in the main WPS plugin downloaded from wordpress.org.

I am sorry that I probably won’t have enough hours in the day to offer guaranteed support, but there is a dedicated forum area where I will participate as often as possible.

This tutorial requires WPS version 12.11. Please refer to the wps_profile_page_6.php file when following below.

Facebook Connect

If you have the WP Symposium Facebook Connect plugin, you can now automatically insert this element into your profile page. It’s format is as follows:

$wps_ui->facebook_connect(user_id, post_text, connect_text, cancel_text);

The only mandatory parameter is user_id, which should be the id of the user whose page is being viewed. wps_profile_page_6.php shows how this element is only shown if the logged in user is seeing their own page.

So for example, if you wanted to show the Facebook Connect for the currently logged in user, changing the default text, your would do so like this;

global $current_user;
$wps_ui->facebook_connect($current_user->ID, "Send to Facebook", "Send to Facebook too?", "Stop posting to Facebook");

The “Creating your own profile page template” tutorial is now complete – give it a go and make the profile page look like whatever you want!! :)

This is where the focus is for the moment, it will give you the power (the power?!) to create page templates to make WPS look exactly like you want it to.

I am sorry that I probably won’t have enough hours in the day to offer guaranteed support, but there is a dedicated forum area where I will participate as often as possible.

This tutorial requires WPS version 12.11. Please refer to the wps_profile_page_5.php file when following below.

To use the file as a page template, rename wps_profile_page_5.php which is in the tutorials/profile_page_template folder in the wp-symposium plugin folder to wps_profile_page.php and copy it to your theme folder. If using twentyeleven for example, copy it into that folder. As discussed in a moment, you’ll also need to copy wps_profile_page.css into the same folder. The page you created in step 1 will then use the page template that ties in with this part of the tutorial.

For this part of the tutorial, we’re  going to add access to the other profile features (friends, groups, etc). And it’s surprisingly easy to do so.

The plan is to add a serious of icons, demonstrating another way of adding options to the profile page.

From wps_profile_page_5.php, the lines to show the icons are 167-174.

If you are building your own menu, the same important things to remember are:

• They must have a class of “__wps__profile_menu”
• They must have one ID from the following:
  • menu_wall (the member’s activity)
  • menu_activity (the member’s activity and friends)
  • menu_all (all activity)
  • menu_friends (member’s friends)
  • menu_groups (member’s groups)
  • menu_avatar (change the member’s profile photo)
  • menu_personal (edit key profile information and extended fields)
  • menu_settings (edit preferences)

And that’s it! AJAX will be used to load the content. Remember you must have the following in your page template. It is used as the place holder for the content loaded up by the menu items.

echo $wps_ui->profile_placeholder("wall", "my-placeholder");

wps_profile_page_5.php can be used as a learning tool – play around with it, move things around. If you’re not sure, get rid of all the layout and just try out all the methods in wps_user() to see what values are returned.

The final page looks as follows:

Make sure you check out the admin guide the Developer’s section on WPS Wiki, it lists all the methods that you can use from the three classes available to you.

I am sorry that I probably won’t have enough hours in the day to offer guaranteed support, but there is a dedicated forum area where I will participate as often as possible.

This tutorial requires WPS version 12.11. Please refer to the wps_profile_page_4.php file when following below.

To use the file as a page template, rename wps_profile_page_4.php which is in the tutorials/profile_page_template folder in the wp-symposium plugin folder to wps_profile_page.php and copy it to your theme folder. If using twentyeleven for example, copy it into that folder. As discussed in a moment, you’ll also need to copy wps_profile_page.css into the same folder. The page you created in step 1 will then use the page template that ties in with this part of the tutorial.

Try it, take a look – it’s worth doing that before reading the following so you can see where I’m going!

To review, we have displayed a basic set of information on the profile page about the user. We are now going to get the page working for the current WPS member with profile information, avatar, display name, latest activity post and activity streams for your activity, friends activity and all activity. Gosh!

So, first off, we need to include all the classes. Remember, you may need to change the path for your server, although the following is for the default WordPress installation, so will probably be okay for most peeps.

require_once(ABSPATH.'wp-content/plugins/wp-symposium/class.wps.php');
require_once(ABSPATH.'wp-content/plugins/wp-symposium/class.wps_user.php');
require_once(ABSPATH.'wp-content/plugins/wp-symposium/class.wps_ui.php');

$wps = new wps();
$wps_user = new wps_user($wps->get_current_user_page());
$wps_ui = new wps_ui();

The order is important. The first class is wps() which has a number of general methods for WP Symposium. Our new object, $wps, will be an instance of this class.

With that declared first, we can create a user based on the user we are looking to view, allowing us to use the profile page for all members. We pass $wps->get_current_user_page() when creating the $wps_user object.

Finally, we are going to use the WPS UI class for certain elements, and so we create an instance of wps_ui() as $wps_ui.

Over-riding the profile page to your own

WP Symposium stores where the profile page is, as it is used throughout. The installation page will look for a page with symposium-profile shortcode and update it accordingly. We need to ensure that our new page is used instead, and so we can update the value dynamically:

$wps->set_profile_url('/aa-profile');

Important! This is setting the URL to my page, as referred to in part 1. Your URL, for your profile page, may be different – change it if so. In part 1 I created a page called “AA Profile” hence the URL above.

Finally, in preparing ourselves, I’m going to link to an external stylesheet – it keeps things tidy, and can be found in the tutorials folder. Again, I’ve hardcoded it, assuming it is copied into your current theme’s folder.

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/wps_profile_page.css" />

This allows me to keep styles out of the PHP file, which helps with the tutorial.

This might be a good time to show you the layout I’ve “designed” (ahem!) that I’m aiming to provide (click to zoom):

I appreciate it won’t win awards, but it’s significantly different to the default WP Symposium layout to prove a point!

So the <DIV>’s that I’ll need, along with the stylesheet, are as follows:

<div id="primary">
 <div id="content" role="main">
 <?php
 // Sidebar
 echo '<div id="my-sidebar">';
 echo '<div id="my-profile-box">';
    // Info on the member will appear here
 echo '</div>';
 echo '</div>';
 // The member's page "header"
 echo '<div id="my-header-div">';
    // The header information (name for example) here
 echo '</div>';
 // The content area
 echo '<div id="my-content" class="symposium-wrapper">';
    // The main content area
 echo '</div>';
 ?>
 </div><!-- #content -->
</div><!-- #primary -->
<?php get_footer(); ?>

So long as you can appreciate DIV layout and CSS you should see what’s going on here, sorry but I don’t have the time or space to offer a tutorial on HTML layout. If you don’t understand, you can probably learn by playing around with the final PHP and CSS files.

So with the layout sorted out, let’s get some content on there! :)

Rather than duplicate all the code and fill up this page, I’m going to highlight where the WPS classes are used, and let you review wps_profile_page_4.php to see how it pins into the layout above.

$wps_user->get_avatar(204) will display the members avatar with a width of 204 pixels.

The if ($wps_user->get_id() != $current_user->ID) { condition checks to see if the member that we are displaying is different to the currently logged in user.

if ($wps_user->is_friend()) { is used to see of the member is a friend of the current user.

if ($wps_user->is_pending_friend()) { tests to see if a friendship request has been made, but not yet accepted.

Now we start to use some of the methods from wps_ui() to display WPS elements. So in a slightly different order to in the code:

Displaying the add as a friend text box

$wps_ui->friendship_add($wps_user->get_id(), "Type a message, hit return!", "Request sent.", "my-input-box");

We pass four parameters here, with only the first being mandatory:

1. The ID of the member (not the currently logged in user, the member whose page we are looking at)
2. The default prompt in the input box
3. The text displayed after a request has been sent
4. A class so I can control the CSS of the input box

I’m not showing the button, but there is a related method called friendship_add_button, see the WPS Wiki for more info on parameters.

$wps_ui->friendship_cancel($wps_user->get_id(), 'Cancel', 'Cancelled!', 'my-submit-button');

This is a similar method, but shows the Cancel button if a friendship has been made, but not yet accepted or declined.

The Poke(tm) button

$wps_ui->poke_button()  will insert the Poke (Facebook trademark) button onto the page.

I’m using the value as set in the back-end, it’s a constant. You could pass any text here, but remember you can’t use trademarked words like Poke or Nudge. I also pass an optional class so I can control the style.

So that shows an avatar, friendship status (or relevant input boxes/buttons) and a Poke button (I’ve called mine Wink!).

Showing the personal information

$wps_user->is_permitted(‘personal’) is used, and returns a boolean value, set to true if the current logged in user is allows to see the member’s personal information (Everyone, Friends Only, Public).

If permitted, location information and date of birth is displayed using the following:

$wps_user->get_city()
$wps_user->get_dob_day()
$wps_user->get_dob_month()
$wps_user->get_dob_year()

Also, a WPS function is used to format the output of the month, displaying a month as text instead of the number:

wps_get_monthname()

Profile Extended Fields

I decided I wanted to show the extended fields on the profile page. $wps_user->get_extended() will return an array of the extended information, in order as per the order field, with the following fields:

• name: the name of the extended field
• value: the value stored
• type: Text, Textarea, List, or Checkbox
• order: the display order

Displaying the information is then fairly straightforward.

$extended = $wps_user->get_extended();
foreach ($extended as $row) {
  if ($row['type'] != 'Checkbox') {
     echo '<span class="my-info-label">'.stripslashes($row['name']).':</span> '.stripslashes($row['value']).'<br />';
  } else {
    echo $row['name'].'<br />';
  }
}

I check to see it’s a checkbox or not. If it is, I will just list the values that are selected. This would be useful if, for example, you gave members a list of things they were interested in, or games they played, or departments they worked in, and wanted to list them.

Listing friends

I also want to show the friends of the member, which is returned as an array from $wps_user->get_friends(). The array consists of:

• The ID of the friend (id)
• When they were list active (last_activity)

As can be seen by the code below, it’s easy to use this if you create a new instance of the wps_user() class for each of the friends, and then use methods you’ll now be familiar with.

$friends = $wps_user->get_friends();
if ($friends) {
  echo '<div id="my-friends-list">';
    echo '<div style="font-weight:bold; margin-bottom:6px;">Friends</div>';
    foreach ($friends AS $friend) {
      if ($friend['id']) {
        echo '<div class="my-friends-list-item">';
          $friend_user = new wps_user($friend['id']);
          echo '<div style="float:left;margin-right:6px">'.$friend_user->get_avatar(44).'</div>';
          echo $friend_user->get_profile_url().'<br />';
          echo '<span class="my-info-label">Active: '.symposium_time_ago($friend_user->get_last_activity()).'</span>';
        echo '</div>';
      }
    }
  echo '</div>';
} else {
  echo '<div id="my-friends-list">No friends</div>';
}

Within the loop for each of the friends, a new instance is created with

$friend_user = new wps_user($friend->id);

With this new object ($friend_user) we can then display the avatar, and all the same information from the class. Groovy! This is why we use classes.

There is one my function worth highlighting, as it’s turns the timestamp of the last_activity into something like “5 days ago”:

symposium_time_ago($friend_user->get_last_activity())

The header information

We are now using the same sort of class methods, and you will begin to recognise them. back to our $wps_user instance of the wps_user() class we can quickly display information using the following:

$wps_user->get_display_name()
$wps_user->get_latest_activity()
symposium_time_ago($wps_user->get_latest_activity_age())

Take a look at wps_profile_page_4.php to check out the code itself.

So this is what our page now looks like with the member information and header (click to zoom):

The content area

We are going to provide the means to view the member’s activity, member+friends activity and all activity – just like the activity menu items in WP Symposium. Awesome! And it’s going to be fully AJAX’d – more awesome!

The DIV for the content area must have a class of “symposium-wrapper” – very important! It is used by jQuery/javascript So something like this:

<div id="my-content" class="symposium-wrapper">

The menu itself will show three buttons (actually links) across the top of the activity, using the condition if ($wps_user->get_id() == $current_user->ID) { to tailor the “My Activity” button, dropping the “My” if the current user is not on their own page.

Other than that, the only really important thing to remember here, is to make sure the menu items have a class of “symposium_profile_menu”, and the id as shown menu for each of them.

Menu’s will be different on many sites, so a menu is not provided as a WPS class method or element to display. You can then use any menu you want, so long as the id of the activity options can be set, along with their class.

echo '<div id="my-menu">';
  if ($wps_user->get_id() == $current_user->ID) {
    echo '<div id="menu_wall" class="symposium_profile_menu">My Activity</div>';
  } else {
    echo '<div id="menu_wall" class="symposium_profile_menu">Activity</div>';
  }
  echo '<div id="menu_activity" class="symposium_profile_menu">Friends Activity</div>';
  echo '<div id="menu_all" class="symposium_profile_menu">All activity</div>';
echo '</div>';

Showing the “What’s up?” input box

Ok, so the menu shows. The following will display an input box where a status or activity post can be made.

if ($wps_user->get_id() == $current_user->ID) {
  $box = $wps_ui->whatsup("What's up?", "my-input-box"); // parameters are optional
  echo '<div style="clear:both;overflow:auto;margin:0px 0px 10px 10px;">';
  echo '<div style="float:left;margin-right:10px;">'.$box.'</div>';
  echo '</div>';
}

$wps_ui->whatsup(“What’s up?”, “my-input-box”) will return the input box, with the default text prompt set as a parameter, and the class to control style. The rest displays it.

The initial condition test ensures this is only shown on the profile page with it is the currently logged in user’s page!

So our page now looks like this (click to zoom):

Inserting the activity streams (with AJAX!)

This is easier than you would think, with the menu above with the correct id’s and class’s we just need to put in a place holder:

$wps_ui->profile_placeholder("wall", "my-placeholder");

Two optional paramaters are:

• the view: for now try wall, activity or all (equivalent mine, friends or all)
• the optional class. Worth looking at .my-placeholder in wps_profile_page.css to see what I’ve set it to, for layout purposes.

As if by magic (code actually), you can now switch between the three views, and via AJAX the content of the activity will update. Lovely jubbly!

The way this actually works is by putting content into the page that WPS then recognises and replaces it with WPS output.

Click the image below to view the page as at the end of this tutorial (part 2).

I would suggest that you take wps_profile_page_4.php, rename it to wps_profile_page.php, put it into your themes folder along with wps_profile_page.css and change the page template for your “AA Profile” page (or whatever you called it in part 1 of the tutorial) to see it working.

Then play with the file to change the layout, and experiment with the class methods, particularly the parameters.

Also play around adding your own styles, to make a truly wonderful profile page!

Next and final part of the tutorial will add more menu items to allow access to the other features, like updating your setting, avatar, and so on.

This is the first part of a set of tutorials to show how to create a profile page of your own design. It will use the ever-expanding PHP classes that are provided with WP Symposium.

You are expected to understand the concepts of coding, with an appreciation of PHP and developing for WordPress – or have the confidence to dive in and play around with the examples! Knowledge of HTML/CSS for layout would be a distinct advantage!! The best way is to take the tutorial files and play around.

I am sorry that I probably won’t have enough hours in the day to offer guaranteed support, but there is a dedicated forum area where I will participate as often as possible.

So, let’s get cracking! The tutorial will be in the form of a walk through, explaining what I have done/do as the files develop. At certain steps, versions of the files will be in a folder called ‘tutorials’ in the wp-symposium plugin folder (from v12.01.07 onwards!). For page template files, simply drop them into your theme folder – they should then appear under the Template drop-down menu on the Add New/Edit page in the WordPress dashboard.

Creating the initial template file

Nothing fancy here, this is an empty and ready to improve page template file. The file wps_profile_page_1.php is in the tutorials/profile_page_template folder. Pop it in your theme folder.

Note – you may want to rename wps_profile_page_1.php to (probably) wps_profile_page.php. This applies to all the tutorial files wps_profile_page_2.php, wps_profile_page_3.php, etc…

Once done, create a new page in WordPress admin (mine is called AA Profile, you’ll see why in a moment!). I’m using TwentyEleven theme, so it’s easy to add it to the menu, under Appearance. Create a new menu if you’ve not done so (assigning the primary menu), and add the new page. If you have a lot of pages, prefixing the page with AA ensures it appears at the top of the list, that’s the only reason for the AA!!!!

Finally, visit your site, click on your “AA Profile” menu item, and your page appears with the new page template – with nothing on it. Well, there’s nothing in the template, so no surprise there…..

The base template for page creation is as follows:

<?php
/**
 * Template Name: WPS demo profile page
 * Description: A Profile Page Template to demonstrate using WPS classes
 *
 * @package WordPress
 * @subpackage Twenty_Eleven
 * @since Twenty Eleven 1.0
 */

get_header(); 
?>
<div id="primary">
 <div id="content" role="main">

 </div><!-- #content -->
 </div><!-- #primary -->

<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

Woosh! Impressive, eh? No, not really. But it’s a nice clean start. This is not a full WordPress theme page creation tutorial (there are plenty out there via Google!), but in summary the comments at the top define the name of the template plus some other bits and pieces. The page header is shown (header.php) and then the primary content area is created. Finally, the sidebar is shown (sidebar.php) and the footer (footer.php).

If you are interesting in developing a full theme, get to Google ;)

Ok, so let’s now include the necessary files to start building our page template.

Including the PHP Classes

There are three PHP class files. The links are to the WPS Wiki website where more information can be found. This tutorial, however, will cover the various properties and methods (ooo…. fancy OOP words!) as they are needed. You won’t necessarily have to understand how they work, but trust that they do.

• class.wps.php: a PHP class for getting and setting various values for the WP Symposium system.
• class.wps_user.php: a PHP class for getting and setting various values for the currently logged in user.
• class.wps_ui.php: a PHP class for displaying on screen elements with options to add CSS class names.

So to include the classes in our page template, we add the following lines, right below get_header().

require_once(ABSPATH.'wp-content/plugins/wp-symposium/class.wps_user.php');
require_once(ABSPATH.'wp-content/plugins/wp-symposium/class.wps_ui.php');

We’re only including two of the three classes for now, as we only need to access methods from two of them (about the user, and displaying WPS User Interface (UI) elements).

Important! The path may not be correct for your server – update as required to match the path that will be accurate to your own installation.

Let’s start by displaying some information about the current user.

Having included the PHP class files in your page template, you can create an instance of the wps_user class object:

$wps_user = new wps_user();

$wps_user can now be used to do lots of fun things. As you read the following, remember “get” refers to getting some information, and “set” refers to updating some information. This is typical best practice when using PHP classes.

For now, we are using the currently logged in user. If you had passed a user ID as a parameter when creating your instance, $wps_user would be an instance of that user, not the currently logged in user.

Pop the following in the middle of the two <div> … </div>’s (see wps_profile_page_2.php to see if you’re not sure what this means.

 <?php
 echo $wps_user->get_avatar().'<br />';
 echo 'Display Name: '.$wps_user->get_display_name().'<br />';
 echo 'User login: '.$wps_user->get_user_login().'<br />';
 echo 'Email: '.$wps_user->get_user_email().'<br />';
 echo 'City: '.$wps_user->get_city().'<br />';
 echo 'Country: '.$wps_user->get_country();
?>

Now, this doesn’t look great, and we won’t be including user login and email in the final page, but it will test that everything is working in a nice, joined up, kind of way. This file can be found as wps_profile_page_2.php.

This won’t win awards, but if the above is functioning you have the basis to start producing your own profile page, awesome!

Finally, let’s layout the information we want, making it look a little nicer. Note:

• the parameter for get_avatar to set the size.
• before anyone comments, I know the styles should be in a separate CSS file, but I’m trying to keep the number of files for the tutorial to a minimum! You should use ID’s and classes (that’s CSS classes) in the proper way!!
• literal text strings are hard coded in English to keep the files as tidy as possible – you should make them translatable, eg: instead of “lives at” you should use __(“lives at”, your-text-domain). But that is outside the scope of this tutorial.
• I’m not repeating <?php … ?>, remember all PHP codes should be within them!
• The width I’ve set for the overal DIV fits in nicely with TwentyEleven – this is the theme within which these tutorials will be considered.
• The design may not be the best, but I’m trying to make it different to show that the layout is totally under your control!

The following is reflected in wps_profile_page_3.php.

echo '<div style="float: left; width:590px;">';

   echo '<div style="float:right; text-align:left;">';

      if ($wps_user->get_city()) echo 'Lives at: '.$wps_user->get_city().'<br />';
      if ($wps_user->get_country()) echo 'Country: '.$wps_user->get_country().'<br />';

   echo '</div>';

   echo '<div style="float:left;padding-right:20px;">'.$wps_user->get_avatar(120).'</div>';

   echo '<span style="font-size:32px">'.$wps_user->get_display_name().'</span>';

echo '</div>';

Please remember, the scope of what the classes can provide will grow dramatically, they are very much work in progress. As new functionality is added, tutorials will be created to demonstrate the functionality. The tutorials, at the time of writing, reflect the current state of play!!

Part 2 of this tutorial will introduce the member’s activity and allow them to add their “status” making use of the class.wps_ui.php and class.wps.php methods to display WPS elements.

As has been previously mentioned, I am going to be focussing the next few weeks on building up a set of classes that will supplement the existing functions and constants available within WP Symposium to support theme and plugin development.

If you don’t develop, sorry, most of this will be largely invisible to you, so I will try to include other enhancements in parallel as time allows to include in each release.

So what is a PHP class?

If this is your first question, you probably have a little learning curve to tackle. It’s a structured way of programming (object orientated programming, or OOP) that allows code to be extended and re-used. It’s an “open” way of programming.

To find out more about classes, Google for PHP class tutorial, you’ll find loads of resources.WP Symposium has largely been “closed” as the code can’t really be shared around in a cuddly warm way. Okay, there are functions and constants, but there are better ways to do it, including as a set of classes.

If you have a fair idea of what a PHP class is, your first stop should be the Codex on the WPS Wiki.

Initially, three classes will be provided (as described on the WPS Wiki), and these will no doubt grow like crazy as either I realise what’s missing; or as I’m told! So for starters:

• class.wps.php: a PHP class for getting and setting various values for the WP Symposium system.
• class.wps_current_user.php: a PHP class for getting and setting various values for the currently logged in user.
• class.wps_ui.php: a PHP class for displaying on screen elements with options to add CSS class names.

As a say, but just to re-emphasize, these are just the beginning, and they will grow!

Before too long, and when the classes are suitable, I will produce a demonstration theme page (or a few pages) to show how you can then start creating your own WPS pages (and therefore, the layout will be down to your own imagination).

What else is in this release?

Mobile Plugin

Whilst I have your attention, please remember that after updating your WPS mobile plugin, if you make use of it, copy all the files from the WPS mobile plugin folder to the folder in which your mobile “version” resides (/m is the suggested folder).

Access of the forum now honors the security you have set up in WPS->Forum settings.

New forum topics are also now added to member’s activity pages.

Mail and Forum email notifications

You can now set the subject line of email notifications of new mail messages, and new forum topics/replies. Do so on WPS->Settings.

Note that for the “New Mail Message” subject, you can also include [subject] that will be replaced with the subject of the mail message received within WPS.

Mail

For some time now, not being able to show only unread mail messages on the mail page has annoyed me, so no more – you can toggle between all mail and just unread mail.

To add this feature you should reset the ”Mail Page” template (via WPS->Templates) – or manually add [unread] into the template if you’ve modified it previously.

Forum

Some site admin’s prefer the page to reload after posting a reply – you can now choose whether to or not via WPS->Forum settings. The option is called “Refresh forum after reply”.

And finally… Release Notes

Release Notes are now available via your admin screen as a menu item (WPS->Release Notes), along with quick links to other WPS Blog posts. Note that you will need internet access, so any local development offline will mean the content is unavailable.

I will not be putting out a release this Saturday (31st December) as there are not enough changes to warrant it (for you and me!).

So, enjoy the transition from 2011 to 2012 – see you next year!!

Simon

(Wait for Noddy Holder to shout it out on YouTube if you think I’ve gone mad…)

This is a small patch release picking up a few things that were identified and solved in an expert manner in my absence.

Thank you to all those who haved helped out with support to other users on the forums both recently and throughout 2011.  I love the WPS community and I don my hat to you all, thank you!

So, this release applies the following:

Translation Strings

Thanks to AlphaGolf for providing a vast number of translation strings, particularly in the backend.

Mail box list

Solved the problem of the mailbox list not rendering correctly and stopping the ability to click on older messages.

Profile Avatars

Thanks to Chaitanya Sharma of Secunia Research who helped analysis potential security holes in the upload script, these have been addressed. Also, members can now upload a photo and click on OK without selecting an area, and the whole uploaded image is used. Finally, uppercase file extensions are no longer a problem.

Extra check for missing wp_footer() function

WPS assumes a site’s theme has a wp_footer() hook in footer.php (or elsewhere). This is good (essential!) practice, but not all theme developers remember to include it. An additional check has been added to avoid an error if this is the case.

And finally…..

I will try and keep in touch over the festive period, in particular with the helpdesk tickets, but this is a time for family and friends, good food and the odd tipple of sherry. Not forgetting the bizarrely suitable Snowballs at Christmas (why does it feel wrong to drink them during the year?).

So I hope you have enjoyed this year with WP Symposium – the new year will be particularly exciting with objects and functions galore to let developers create “WPS friendly” theme and plugins. This will include documentation on the WPS Wiki.

Have a great time, enjoy the Christmas period whether you happen to celebrate it or not, and I will see you in 2012!!

This is not a full release, but addresses some minor issues, plus a security patch, prior to me going on holiday for a week (and as that spans two Saturday’s this makes up for missing two formal release dates).

Upgrade TinyMCE to latest version

This addresses some IE9 incompatibilities.

Followers list

Last active date/time now per member (was showing one for all).

Add Site Name to From email 

WPS sent emails now come from your Site Name (as per WordPress Settings)

Add style for current profile page menu

You can alter this in Styles->CSS by entering the following:

.symposium-wrapper .symposium_profile_current {
     background-color: yellow;
     font-weight: normal;
}

Obviously change the style to one you like. By default bold is added, so if you don’t want bold, include font-weight: normal; as above.

Add Activity Stream shortcode

Show’s the all activity shown on a members profile page on any WordPress page. See the demo page on WPS for more information.

Add ID’s to the Summary Widget list items

This was a specific request. Use Firefox + Firebug to see what the ID’s are if you would like to make use of them!

Security Patch

Many thanks to Secunia Research who, as part of a security review of WP Symposium, identified a potential security hole. This was as part of the upload avatar function. Therefore, the admin upload feature has been removed (it was superfluous) and the member avatar upload has been enhanced to ensure that an image is uploaded (and nothing else). Again, my thanks for the co-operative manner in which they shared the issue.

First, and foremost, a massive hug to all the users of WPS, you know who you are, please imagine yourself at a big WPS party, you are invited and are truly welcome!

Maybe this time next year it will be a real party somewhere, with real beer! And tea, of course…

You guys rock!!!

An improved postal system

Well, maybe not, but in terms of WP Symposium new forum posts no longer wait for the postal service (ie. email server) to send out all the email notifications, speeding it up no end. You may have noticed it on the WPS website.

If you have a lot of members, all asking for email notification of new topics, you will spot the difference. If you’re into geek things, it is, as they say, now asynchronous…

Quieter week due to holiday
(and December release schedule)

As mentioned, I’m on leave from 10th Dec – 18th Dec, so that will effect the release schedule, and I don’t want to launch any massive changes now that I won’t have time to fix. Also, if you join as a Silver member I may not be able to add you to the helpdesk until I’m back, or answer helpdesk tickets during that time. Sorry! :(

However, as usual, there are some new features being added this week…

Option to show/hide avatar on summary widget

If you’re using other widgets that display the current user’s avatar, it can be a bit “avatar heavy” with this switch on, turn it off in the summary widget options.

Option to hide stars on new forum topics

If you don’t like it, or it doesn’t fit with your theme, you can now turn them off.

As usual, full details of release on WPS Trac.

However, if the look of your site is important (and why shouldn’t it be?) then you would probably like to set the width of the topic subject input box to match, like on the WPS site, for example:

To set the width of the subject input box, on the admin dashboard, go to Symposium->Styles and select the CSS tab, and enter the following:

.new-topic-subject-input { width: 555px !important; }

Change 555px to your desired width.

Okay, not as sexy but important!

From v11.11.26 if you are using .mo language files (see here for more info), you should save the .mo files into your plugins folder, probably in /wp-content/plugins, although you may have moved your wp-content folder somewhere special on your server.

Why? So that upgrading WPS doesn’t impact on the language files. Some admin’s find they have to re-upload the .mo files after each upgrade, and with weekly upgrades this can be a pain.

WYSIWYG editor

Okay, what a lot of users have been waiting for – a WYSIWYG editor with a toolbar full of icons. Or maybe a few if you prefer the minimal look.

First, to be clear, this is a Bronze/Silver member feature. Really sorry, I know this will disappoint many free users, but WPS has to be funded somehow. Hopefully, $39 a year for all the extras will still be considered value for money.

Configuring the editor

Once you have upgraded, as a Bronze member, ensure you have at least one Bronze plugin activated. You don’t need to actually use it, so for example, activate Alerts and if you don’t want Alerts just done use it. This “tells” WPS that you have bronze/silver membership. You will then have, on your forum settings page, a checkbox to enable the WYSIWYG editor. You may recognise it, it’s TinyMCE.

Once you’ve checked it, and saved, you will have a further set of options as follows.

Editor Toolbars

You can have up to four rows of toolbar buttons, depending on how you want to set up your editor. On the WPS site, for example, only the first row is used to keep it fairly minimal.

For each row you list, separated by commas, the buttons that you want to appear. If you want a gap, put in a horizontal bar.

So as an example, the WPS top row of buttons has the following:

Note the links that allow you to reset the toolbars to minimal or full. Also a link to a list of all the buttons and controls that you can add.

To avoid showing a toolbar row, simply clear the contents.

Editor CSS

You can change the style of the editor – by default it will link to a stylesheet for WP Symposium. But if you want red text on a green background, change the path to your own stylesheet. Don’t make changes in the existing file as it will be over-written every time WPS is updated.

Be sure to clear your cache after changing your stylesheet to see the changes.

Skin Folder

TinyMCE, as an editor, can be “skinned” to show different toolbar icons. WP Symposium includes three: default, cirkuit and o2k7. I personally like cirkuit best so that’s what the default value is, as opposed to TinyMCE’s “default” skin.

If you make your own skins, or find others that you like, you put them into the /wp-content/plugins/wp-symposium/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/skins folder and put the folder name in this field.

Width and Height

Simply sets the width and height of the editor.

Full set of bug fixes and enhancements

Can be seen on Trac.

For that reason after the v11.11.26 release I won’t introduce any changes until I return. I will instead being focussing on bug fixes and support issues.

Therefore, there will be two more releases before I’m away:

• 11.11.26 that includes the WYSIWYG editor for Bronze members, and bug fixes
• 11.12.03 to include any bug fixes

Forums are great – but until now WP Symposium forums were all or nothing (not including the ability to have a private group forum).

This version introduces the ability to set forum category access levels by role – WordPress roles that is, eg. subscriber, author, administrator, etc.

But because it’s role based, other plugins that create roles, can link in.

For example, on the WPS site I have a “bronze” role for all bronze and silver members, so that they now have access to a private forum category just for them. The “bronze” role is used by YourMembers (the subscription plugin I used) to mark all subscribers.

I used a plugin call Capability Manager to add the new role as a copy of the subscriber role.

After upgrading, go to your Forum Categories admin page to check that your role access levels are what you want.

Gallery shortcode

You can now add a searchable gallery on a WordPress page with the shortcode symposium-gallery.

This provides a way of seeing all your members galleries (if they have set the appropriate permissions).

It also lets members search for other members galleries, or the photo album titles.

Try hovering over the little avatar in the Profile Plus and you get to zoom in.

Works best with avatars uploaded on your site, not so with the gravatar images.

Otherwise, profile plus works as before with convenient input for text and icons for other features.

Don’t forget, the content of the Profile Plus hover box changes for your avatar, your friends avatars and others.

Distance

Re-save your personal information (on your profile page) – or for the first time on new WPS sites – and you’ll be “geo-coded”!!

Don’t worry, it’s nothing rude, it’s just an X/Y co-ordinate of where you are in the world. And if two members have both been “geo-coded” the distance between them (ie. you and the other members) will be shown on the member directory.

Deleting Groups

It was a bit too easy to delete groups, so now the group is a request to the site administrator, who has the “power” to delete the group. Also adds a level of security – imagine you walk away from your keyboard and someone deletes all your groups – argh!!

“Poke”s ™ appear on activity streams

Send somebody a “Poke” ™ and it appears on the recipients activity as well as an email.

Importantly,  it’s private between the two of you and doesn’t appear on friends activity feeds.

It’s a nice way to hold a conversation on your profile page.

More? Yes…

See the full list on the Release Forum.