Plugins vs CP upgrades (Working vs Not working)
I'm starting this thread in hopes to shed some light on the "partial" failure of some of the third party Plugins that some users might have installed or might think of installing in the future.
This applies to the latest upgrades (3.0.5 and up) given the modified structure of the ad postings (
Before: Categories vs
After: Ads), although the
third Party Plugins are not supported by AppThemes which is 100% understandable, maybe we can work it out and find applicable workarounds.
The Plugins:
GD Star Rating
Post Notification
WordTwit
Personaly I think those 3 plugins along with "
All in One SEO" *which is still working fine* are very useful plugins to keep the users active and engaged on the site.
GD Star Rating
Issue: GD star rating offers a single Rating and Multi rating chart system that can be added to a posts/ads
automatically based on the
Category, this worked fine prior to the CP latest release given those Categories are now listed as Ads, therefore, the Auto-Insertion option no longer works since it can't find the previous structure of Categories as it used to be in previous CP releases.
Workaround: Inserting the Multi Star rating
manually from the Admin/Ads/Edit Ad panel upon ad approval.
Ultimately, the Auto-insertion used to save us the hassle of going into
WP and applying the Multi Rating chart per ad posted within a given category.
Post Notification
Issue: Post Notification allows end users (members or non-members) to subscribe to New ads posted on the site, from the installation step, it automatically recognized all the
categories I had and enabled the end user to choose which Category to subscribe to based on their interest, this was perfect for those that didn't want to necessarily register on my site, yet stay in the loop of any new posts or ads published on the site, hence generating traffic that could eventually be converted into registered members.
Since the upgrade, the Categories are no longer found, yet, we only see the Blog category and whatever Sub-Category was created which beats the purpose of this plugin, the notifications were mainly intended for the posted ads, not the Blog entries.
Workaround: None found, I tried a manual approach but there were no options to include the code from the Ad panel, found a substitute Plugin called:
Subscribe2, although this one failed as well given the Back-Office restriction for CP.
"Access Denied. Your site administrator has blocked your access to the WordPress back-office." and this right here is a must in order to block users from accessing the main
WP Dashboard.
WordTwit
Issue: The beauty about this plugin is that it automatically posted the ads to my Twitter account once the ad was approved, again, an automated service that used to do the job on the spot.
Once the Categories postings got replaced with Ads postings, WordTwit failed to recognize them. I tried adding the Ads ID's or Category names, to no avail.
Personally, I opted to upgrade to 3.0.5 given the addition of the Checkboxes and Radio Buttons that got introduced for the Custom Fields in the new CP releases, the site was built on automated interactivity with the least required action on my behalf except for approving ads and customizing the
SEO functionality, in other words, I can literally say it was a flawless experience.
Question: Since we can't always rely on the creators of those plugins to be uptodate all the time, is there a way to relocate those Category based listings to their original structured path without losing the rest of the advantages of the new releases? Maybe an .htaccess code modification?
Anyone else found any alternative workarounds for these plugins or any other substitutes that work with the new CP releases?
Reply With Quote
You must be an AppThemes customer and logged in to view this response.