I have been waiting a long time to finish and release WP-Members 3.0 and that day has finally come!
This is a major update and will be but the beginning of a lot of updates and improvements in the plugin.
Before I go into details for the update, please let me be clear – this is a major version release, not an incremental update. So please, test the update prior to upgrading a production site. While I always do my best to be responsive to issues, especially when updating, keep in mind this plugin now has more than 60,000 active installs, so it can get hectic around version release time.
When in doubt, test it first! And if you have questions, let me know.
Major Change to Plugin Settings
Version 3.0 incorporates a new format for the plugin’s main settings. This will make the settings array more scalable and make it easier for me to add features in the future. But keep in mind that this changes how settings are stored. So if you need to roll back to a previous version, you may need to reset some options in the settings.
If you are concerned about that, let me point out that this effects only the settings that are in the plugin’s main options tab. The other settings are not touched in this update. So if you do have to roll back, and your rollback requires that you reset these settings, it will only be what is on the main options tab.
You’ll notice in the plugin’s options that there are some new features with these settings:
- Content blocking now includes Custom Post Types. If you do not have any CPTs, you may not notice this. But if you do, you should see these as a selection under “Content Blocking”.
- Excerpts, login form, and registration form display can now be individually set by post type (Post, Page, or CPT). Previously, show excerpts and hide the registration form were globally selected – either on or off – and there was no selector to hide the login form.
New Shortcodes
There is a new shortcode tag in this version: wpmem_form. This will allow you to create a login or registration form as follows:
- [wpmem_form login]]
- [[wpmem_form register]]
Both of these will accept a redirect_to parameter, such as:
[[wpmem_form login redirect_to="http://mysite.com/my-page"]]
Also, these shortcodes, unlike the previous “page” shortcodes (which are still valid, however) can nest content so that you can define content that is displayed in place of the form in the logged in state. Previously, these forms had default bullet lists of some links (such as a logout link and login status) that could be filtered with a filter function, and that is still the case if you have any of those in place. But now, if you want to customize without using a filter function, you can nest the content as follows:
[[wpmem_form login]]This is some content that displays in place of the login form if the user is logged in[[/wpmem_form]
As I mentioned, the old shortcodes are still valid, as are the filter hooks (redirect, bullet links); these are just added as new features.
There is also a new user count shortcode for displaying user counts based on a field. You’ll need to set a label argument for what you want the label to say, the meta key to be counted, and the value. [wpmem_show_count label="Active Users: " meta=active value=1]
Please keep in mind, this particular shortcode is experimental. There may be some changes in early version 3 updates. But if there are changes, you’ll be notified.
Speaking of shortcodes, I’ve added a dropdown menu in the Post/Page editor so you can add shortcodes from there.
New Hooks
There are of course a few new hooks.
- wpmem_settings_loaded action fires after the WP-Members settings are loaded.
- wpmem_securify_comments filter allows you to toggle whether comments display or not.
- wpmem_rs_captcha_folder filter allows you to change the default folder used for Really Simple Captcha (if used).