About two years ago (yeah, really!) I reviewed the WP-Table Reloaded WordPress plugin on our show The Sweet Plugin. After a rebranding and reworking of the code, WP-Table Reloaded is now TablePress. The developer Tobias relaunched the plugin, renamed it with a much better name, and revamped a number of the plugin’s features.

One of the biggest improvements has to be the all tables view, which feels almost exactly the same as the edit posts and pages WordPress screens do. Honestly, the closer any plugin or theme can get to WordPress core UI, or feeling like a real part of WordPress, the better it is.

Adding and editing tables feels better too. A lot of what was there before is still in place, but nicer. Manipulating table content feels much better; you can drag and drop rows and columns around and change the display order of table cells with one click. This sort of table manipulation would have been much more time consuming under the old WP-Table Reloaded plugin.

TablePress makes the table shortcodes much more obvious too. Each table management screen includes the table’s shortcode at the top of the screen, and they’re quickly available from the all tables screen too.

TablePress also implements something I don’t remember seeing in WP-Table Reloaded, and that’s the ability to choose where in the WordPress dashboard the TablePress menu is located. This is one of those options which I could see popping up in any of the more complex WordPress plugins out there. Let users choose whether the menu item displays right below comments, at the bottom below settings, within the tools menu, and so on. I think this is an approach I can get behind — again, only in plugins that potentially warrant prominent menu placement in the first place.

Where to grab TablePress

You can download TablePress from the WordPress.org plugin directory, and based on everything I’ve seen there’s really no reason to hold back. Your tables will need to be exported from the old plugin and imported into the new plugin, but really that seems like a pretty seamless process.

Tobias also runs TablePress.org, a nice resource for using the plugin.

Have you switched over to TablePress yet? What do you think of the new, rebranded, and updated WordPress plugin?

The post Sweet Plugin: TablePress, the successor to WP-Table Reloaded appeared first on WPCandy.

Fullscreen Preview Button is a simple little WordPress plugin that solves a problem I’ve been annoyed by for a while. It adds a preview button to the distraction free writing editor so you don’t have to exit out of the view in order to see what you’ve written on your site.

Alex King released this plugin on the WordPress.org plugin directory, which is where you should grab it if you’ve ever had this problem with the distraction free writing editor.

Do you have any favorite plugins designed to tweak and improve the distraction free writing editor in WordPress? Do you use the fullscreen editor as often as I do?

The post Sweet Plugin: Improve the DFW editor with Fullscreen Preview Button appeared first on WPCandy.

Word of what to expect from BuddyPress 1.7 has been trickling in, and while it’s not quite here yet there’s a lot to get excited about. Brand new users should pay attention, but longtime users may be the most excited by what’s on the way.

At last month’s WordPress NYC Meetup the lead developer of the BuddyPress project, Boone Gorges, led the group in a presentation showing off what can be expected in the next major version of the popular social plugin. Let’s take a look.

BuddyPress themes? How about all the themes?

The biggest leap forward for the BuddyPress project may end up being the headline improvement in 1.7: theme independence. Currently in order to take advantage of BuddyPress properly you have a few options:

1. use the BuddyPress default theme as it is or modify it,
2. search for a BuddyPress theme (which is likely a modified version of the BuddyPress default theme already), and
3. take the time to add the necessary BuddyPress files to the theme you’re already using, possibly using the BuddyPress Template Pack.

Anyone who has gone down that third road can attest to the often frustrating experience that follows. Even sticking with number two, the reality is that a shocking number of theme developers have resisted making BuddyPress themes at all. This is at least in part due to the additional template files and styles that are necessary to properly integrate with the plugin.

On this topic I tend to share BuddyPress Lead Developer Boone Gorges’ sentiment when he says, “I never found BuddyPress theme development that frustrating. The thing that I’ve heard countless times is ‘ugh, there are so many files, it’s so confusing. I’m just a theme developer, I’m not a plugin developer.’ I’ve heard it, and I’m annoyed by it.” He continues, “But it’s fine. It is more complicated than a WordPress theme, and the reason it’s more complicated than a WordPress themes is because there are lots of different kinds of content.”

“‘There are so many files, it’s so confusing.’ I’ve heard it, and I’m annoyed by it.”

Suffice it to say this level of complexity will no longer be an excuse theme developers can use. With BuddyPress 1.7 any properly constructed theme (in other words it passes the most basic tests of WordPress theme sanity) will work with BuddyPress. Take a second and read that sentence again.

Every WordPress theme will become a BuddyPress theme after 1.7.

“The way that we make this work is It feels like magic when you use it,” Gorges said. “It is kind of like magic, like voodoo magic. The kind that you probably don’t want to know too much about.”

How does this happen exactly? BuddyPress 1.7 will utilize output buffering and a few included styles to bring a default uniform template into otherwise standard WordPress theme pages. While this shouldn’t relieve a theme developer from taking BuddyPress into account, it will provide a nice jumpstart to building full featured support into themes. Best of all, for users this means any WordPress theme on the market should soon double as a BuddyPress theme without any work at all.

Of course this doesn’t mean themes previously built with the added templates or manual BuddyPress support will stop working. This convenience is entirely backwards compatible with earlier themes.

Freelancer and BuddyPress developer David Bisset and I discussed precisely this during WPCandy Podcast #36 if you’re interested in a bit more discussion on the topic.

Bid the installation wizard farewell

For the last few releases of BuddyPress, the first-time activation of the plugin would prompt an installation wizard. A few steps were necessary before BuddyPress would fully activate. For instance the plugin asks that “pretty permalinks” be enabled and lists the enabled and disabled components.

Referring to this process in particular, Gorges said, “If you are just somebody who’s looking to set up your club for people who knit sweaters with dogs on them, and you’re asked about pretty permalinks, you’re just like ‘What?’ And then you go just use Ning or something.”

The installation wizard prompts user to set up pages and tweak permalink settings, among others. The BuddyPress team have determined these are too confusing, and are removing the wizard entirely from 1.7.

Despite the wizard having good intentions, in order to improve the BuddyPress experience the team axed it in the new version. Beginning with 1.7 BuddyPress will automatically set itself up for you when it activates.

In addition only the profiles and activity streams will now be on by default. This, Gorges explained, is to provide a coherent experience that isn’t overwhelming and delivers what most users will most benefit from right off the bat. BuddyPress Project Lead John James Jacoby (or JJJ for short) has often shared the sentiment that using all of BuddyPress is a step in the wrong direction. In many cases only a slice of what’s available in the plugin is worth putting to use.

It turns out that many users would enable every BuddyPress component when faced with this step in the installation process.

Last year Gorges, JJJ, and Paul Gibbs joined me on the Roundtable Podcast to discuss topics such as BuddyPress complexity in a bit more detail.

Of course despite BuddyPress setting defaults for users, all the important options are still present and changeable. It’s just that you will only have to deal with them if you go looking for them first.

Above: BuddyPress Lead Developer Boone Gorges previews the upcoming version 1.7 at a WordPress Meetup in New York City.

Meet BP_User_Query

The details behind the addition of the BP_User_Query to version 1.7 are more for developers than anyone, but the thing to know is this: with 1.7 many of the requests that include members (read: pretty much all of them) are much, much faster.

Regarding the improvements Gorges said, “When you load a members directory, and you have 100,00 users on your site, your page load time might go from five seconds down to half a second because of the optimizations that have happened here.” He continued, “It gets even better when you start doing complicated queries like search or a funky kind of sort. Those have even more dramatic speed increases.”

The BP_User_Query can be found in the bp-core-classes.php file.

Now, what about those details? Well one of the longstanding issues with BuddyPress has been that it’s sort of a resource hog. BuddyPress would execute joins on tables that, if you have more than few thousand users, could slow a site down real quick. That’s the exciting part about BP_User_Query. It gives developers a much quicker way to load up users within BuddyPress. It also allows for querying among multiple databases, which is a major factor in enterprise situations.

Gorges insists that these queries are backwards compatible with soon-to-be-old ways of querying, at least for “99.9% of sites.” There may be a few cases where a developer’s query might not work after the changeover. For those, however, there will be a way to force the use of legacy queries.

Group management akin to post and page screens

In order to make group management easier — particularly in situations where hundreds or even thousands of groups exist — BuddyPress 1.7 will also bring group administration within the WordPress dashboard. The management screens themselves are a lot like what you would expect from WordPress posts, pages, or custom post types. Exactly like them, actually.

These new screens will allow admins to take bulk actions on groups just the way you would to manage any other type of thing within WordPress. Modifying group settings on a singular basis can happen from the dashboard as well.

Not all big and flashy

Along with the major updates and changes will be a handful of smaller changes that should really appeal to those who have used BuddyPress for a while. Complete bbPress integration was completed with bbPress 2.3 (which is currently in beta) so that now, when installing BuddyPress forums, in reality the bbPress plugin is installed. It’s also now an option within BuddyPress core to limit certain blogs from being recorded within activity logs, for those cases where an administrative or housekeeping blog is kept that isn’t for public consumption.

BuddyPress 1.7 will also include an “admin only” visibility level for profile fields. Gorges, during his presentation embedded above, gave the example that an admin might want to include a profile field like phone number, referer, or where the user heard about the site — all of which isn’t exactly information the world needs to see. Soon those fields’ contents can be restricted to administrators only.

Sounds great. So when can we have it?

As for exactly when this next major version will launch, there is no specific date. The plan, according to the BuddyPress team, is to get a beta out in the next week or two, with the final release following a few rounds of betas. Obviously any number of timeline-affecting issues can come up during that time.

If you are running a BuddyPress site of any sort, it probably wouldn’t hurt to start testing the 1.7 development version that you can find on the BuddyPress trac. After all, the more people who run it through the ringer the fewer issues will end up in the final release.

The post BuddyPress 1.7: Theme independence, BP_User_Query, and what else to expect appeared first on WPCandy.

Development has begun on the next version of Edit Flow, the editorial management plugin and big inspiration for one of the major advances coming to WordPress 3.6. The plugin, whose lead developer is Automattic’s Daniel Bachhuber, is lauded by many (including myself) as one of the best ways to organize an editorial team with WordPress.

Among the planned additions to next version, Edit Flow 0.8, are quick post creation, iCal support for the calendar, and dashboard widget for editorial comments. That on its own would make for a killer update, but those are just a few of what’s planned.

Bachhuber says the 0.8 release coincide with WordPress 3.6, which wouldn’t hurt because Edit Flow will likely be linked up by anyone writing about the new WordPress release. So if you’re a user of the plugin keep an eye out around April 22. And if you’re a heavy user, or a developer, run over to the Edit Flow Development blog and see about contributing to its development.

A question for the comments: is it accurate to see Edit Flow in a similar light as the BuddyPress and bbPress projects? At least in the sense of usefulness and depth of a project built on top of WordPress I’d say it’s comparable — certainly not as a blessed sister project to WordPress in quite the same way. What do you think?

The post Edit Flow 0.8 scope begins coming together appeared first on WPCandy.

Photo credit: Jennifer Dodd

Jennifer M. Dodd joined the bbPress core commit team this week after contributing to the project since the plugin version of bbPress was introduced. bbPress lead John James Jacoby said, “Her ability to iterate and improve on core patches, her outstanding communication skills, and her knowledge of the codebase, make her a great addition to the bbPress team.”

Dodd blogs about WordPress at UncommonContent.com, and you can find a list of her (WordPress/bbPress/BuddyPress) plugins there too.

In the blog post announcing Dodd’s commit team status Jacoby said her first tasks for bbPress 2.3 will be focused on full forum searching. Her first commit after the announcement can be seen here.

Side note: has it really been more than a year since bbPress 2.0 became final? Holy. Wow.

The post Jennifer M. Dodd joins the bbPress commit team appeared first on WPCandy.

Very clever. Though I would probably add a link to a blog post with more information on the update.

The post Plugin self deactivation appeared first on WPCandy.

The recently released WordPress 3.5 dropped the Link Manager from core — unless you were already using the feature, of course. For many this was met with cheers of “good riddance”, but that might not be you. The Link Manager was there for a reason, of course, and folks still used it.

If you find yourself wanting to use the link system in a new install of WordPress, or would like to bring it back on an upgraded install where it went away, try out WordPress Lead Developer Andrew Nacin’s Link Manager plugin. It’s available on WordPress.org and will add back the classic featured back to your install.

If you’re using the Link Manager and reading a WordPress blog like this one, I’d be curious to hear what you’re using it for exactly. Drop by in the comments below and let me know.

The post Miss links already? Add them back with the Link Manager plugin appeared first on WPCandy.

Version 1.6.2 of BuddyPress is now available, and fixes a couple of compatibility issues with WordPress 3.5. John James Jacoby says that if you are running BuddyPress 1.5 or 1.6 and also upgrading to WordPress 3.5 (who isn’t?) this one should be a safe and painless upgrade.

11 tickets were closed for this release, which you can read through on the BuddyPress Trac.

Speaking of WordPress 3.5, we should be seeing that release in the next hour or two. Who’s excited?

The post BuddyPress 1.6.2 released, brings compatibility for WordPress 3.5 appeared first on WPCandy.

Back from our Thanksgiving hiatus full of tryptophan and nonsense, the crew has its thirtieth episode in the can. Thirty. Episodes. Milestones are fun. So are italics.

First things first: big thanks to Robert Nienhuis, one of the organizers of WordCamp Orange County, for putting together the new, awesome WP Late Night logo. You can expect to see it showing up in a few more places real soon.

In this week’s episode we discussed the first release candidate of WordPress 3.5, WebDevStudios acquiring Startbox, WordPress maintenance services, and of course our bar tricks. Special guest Brian Richards also joined us for a few minutes to discuss Startbox and WebDevStudios.

Or you can grab the show in a few other ways:

• MP3 file (25.4 MB)
• Subscribe on iTunes
• Audio RSS Feed
• YouTube video

Full show notes are available just after the jump!

Episode #30 Show Notes:

• WordPress 3.5 RC1
• WebDevStudios acquires Startbox theme framework
• http://theoatmeal.com/comics/restaurant_website
• Lots of WP maintenence sites: ManageWP, WPFix, Maintainn, WP Maintainer
• Mentioned WPHelpCenter.com
• Perezbox Gangnam Style! http://www.jibjab.com/view/VZsga2hjRCBNyazc8RFy
• Dre: Tumblr Importer http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tumblr-importer/
• Brad: Advent http://advent.squareonemd.co.uk/
• Ryan: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ice/

The post WP Late Night #30: “Insane in the Maintainn” appeared first on WPCandy.

If you’ve visited your WordPress update screen recently you’ve likely noticed that the latest point release of the bbPress plugin has been released. The fresh release brings “What’s New” and “Credits” pages, compatibility with the yet-in-beta WordPress 3.5 and BuddyPress 1.7, and improvements to theme compatibility and user roles and capabilities. 69 features and bug fixes in total made it into this release.

The bbPress Trac is the place to go if you’d like to dig into any of the specific tickets tied to this version.

As project lead JJJ points out in the release post, this marks the third major release for bbPress since it became a plugin. Speaking of which, how many forums have you established using bbPress as a plugin? Does anyone still use the old standalone version of bbPress anywhere?

The post bbPress version 2.2 now available for download appeared first on WPCandy.