I had initially expected that 2.8.8 would wrap up 2.8.x and the next release would be begin 2.9. But it looks like we need one more update to get through the period before 2.9 will be ready.
2.8.9 contains a couple of fixes, some updates to deal with the new Twenty Fourteen theme, and some updates that will help users transition to 2.9 (which will be rebuilding the form building functions).
WordPress 3.8 Updates
The new 3.8 version of WordPress introduced a new default theme – Twenty Fourteen. None of the existing stylesheets in the plugin worked particularly well with this theme. While that is not a major issue if you know that the plugin allows you to fully customize the CSS and load a custom stylesheet, that is not really what you want your first introduction to the plugin to be – especially for new users of WordPress who may be just beginning the learning curve.
So this release adds a new stylesheet for Twenty Fourteen and also makes that the default stylesheet for a new install. If you are upgrading, the new stylesheet will be there, but your current setting will not be changed.
WordPress 3.8 also had some significant changes to the backend (admin) styles. Since the plugin already had a makeover of the admin panels to utilize WP default styles, there wasn’t too much of a problem with the update. However, I did take the opportunity to make some slight changes to the Options tab as the spacing for the new styles made it a little on the large side.
Fixes
The user export process that was rebuilt for the 2.8.7 release inadvertently used a function that is only available in PHP 5.3 and higher. For most users who are keeping current with PHP, this should not be a problem. However, WP officially supports PHP 5.2.4. So I have applied a fix to this process so that all users can access the user export functions.
Some improvements to the the auto excerpt function were also implemented in this release. Previously, the function was supposed to favor the ‘more’ tag if one was present so that you could use a combination of the ‘more’ tag to create a specific excerpt while still relying on the auto_excerpt. This wasn’t functioning as expected, and probably wasn’t noticed until now because I am sure that most people go one way or the other rather than needing a combination of the two. As part of this update, I also cleaned up the use of the default ‘more’ link. It should be noted that the default ‘more’ link, which is (more…), will be inserted unless you are filtering the more link with the_content_more_link. So if you are one of the people that actually uses both the ‘more’ tag and auto_excerpt, and your theme (or other process) creates a custom ‘more’ link such as “Continue Reading” or something, you may want to set up a filter with the_content_more_link to make sure that they match.
Updates Preparing for WP-Members 2.9
I have been releasing some of the new functions for the upcoming 2.9 release for testing as they happen to be pluggable functions. But there were a couple of things that were not available as pluggable functions (such as the shortcode function) that also needed some updates to allow the full testing. So I have implemented these changes in this release.
I moved the texturize process from the registration form and login form functions into wpmem_securify and wpmem_shortcode. This was going to occur in 2.9 and doing this change now will allow users to test out certain functions of 2.9 without worrying about this change. Also as a part of this process, I am making the shortcode function pluggable.