Today I released an update for the WP-Members User List with some needed updates.
I continued (and I believe, completed) the ongoing updates to the code to implement compatibility with the current WP code standards and documentation standard. This also included the removal of the use of the php extract() function. This doesn’t mean much for most people and it doesn’t affect the use of the plugin, but it does make the plugin code easier to read for developers, which is important for some who use filters and need to see where things are coming from and how to change them. The use of extract() had been removed from the main plugin and most of the extensions already, so I’m not sure why the User List actually still used it, but regardless of why, this update gets rid of it.
Along that line, I’ve been working to deprecate the use of the WP-Members function wpmem_chk_qstr(). This function has been in the plugin for a very, very long time and it served a purpose in the plugin’s past. But that has long since changed and a better approach to allow for broader compatibility with outside plugin’s is using add_query_arg(). Again, for most users, this isn’t something that really matters and may not even be noticed, but it’s important for some. Anyway, the wpmem_chk_qstr() is being removed from the main plugin and other extensions, so this update handles that in this extension as well.
That’s the boring stuff. On to the good stuff…
This update includes a number of changes designed to make the extension more compatible with the use of default permalinks. Default permalinks are what you have when you see http://mysite.com/?p=123 instead of http://mysite.com/some-post/
In previous versions, you could use default permalinks, but if you implemented search and paged navigation, things would generally be incompatible. This meant a limited feature-set for User List users who also used default permalinks.
I had wanted to change that for quite some time, but it is a limited audience that uses default permalinks so it wasn’t too high of a priority when compared to other necessary projects; that, coupled with the fact that I just couldn’t get a good result when re-doing the necessary functions.
But last night I had a break-through (or flash of brilliance, depending on your point of view) and was able to get the elements in place to make it work. At least it seems to on the test sites. Some astute users may catch situational elements that need to be adjusted, so we’ll see how it goes.
I’m pushing toward 2.0 which is where I expect to make the User List a stand-alone product.