Plans for 2019 (and 2018 review).

Similarly, like last year, the first post in January are the plans for the year ahead of us. Additionally this year I am also publishing a review of the last year goals to see how the last year went.

2018 – Year in Review

You can refer to the 2018 WPAdverts goals article to read what we were planning for the last year.

In 2018 we had a total of 11 milestones, most of them were updates to the existing plugins or new plugin releases:

• BuddyPress Classifieds – we were planning an update which will allow sending a private BP message directly from Ad details pages. This was a rather small change and was quickly released. Checked!
• WPAdverts Custom Fields – this plugin received an update which allows switching between stacked and aligned layout. There were also some other updates for this plugin to allow new functionalities like preselecting Ad category. One optional goal (Conditional Fields was not reached, but I was expecting that since this was a huge update in a busy year). All in all, I am satisfied with how the CF extension changed last year. Checked!
• WooCommerce Integration – we wanted to allow users to purchase packages (aside of paying per Ad posting) and we were able to release this feature in May, yet there was another huge update for our WC Classifieds plugin which adds pricing per feature functionality and moderation. I can say that 2018 was a double win for WPAdverts WC. Checked!
• Maps and Locations – while we had a small update mainly with bug fixes for Maps and Locations addon it was not what I wanted to do. The planned update was not something users needed and due to other more requested features, we decided not to do the update. Fail!
• WPAdverts Stripe Integration – we were able to release the Stripe add-on in October. The plugin release note is available here. Checked!
• Mark As Sold – the Mark as Sold extension did not require much work and we were able to release it as early as January 29th, 2018. Checked!
• Reviews – due to other work and the fact that you can have this functionality by enabling default WP comments and installing some comment rating plugin we have not released this extension but we are still planning to do so. Fail!
• Authors Plugins – the plugin which allows users to create and manage their profiles was released on August 28th, judging by the support requests this is the plugin a lot of you have been waiting for. Checked!
• Pricing Plugin Integration – this is something we have done, but in a different form than originally planned. We have added this functionality to the WooCommerce Integration. It is designated in a way that it should allow you to integrate with any pricing table plugin which (i think) is a much better design than having integration with just a single pricing table. Checked!
• Membership Plugin Integration – this is a work in progress, we started to work on this plugin but eventually came to a conclusion that without own WPAdverts Membership engine this plugin does not make much sense, but in order to have the memberships we first need to make some major updates in WPAdverts Core and this is what we are working on right now. Technically this is a fail but I will mark it as in progress as the original scope of this project changed a lot. In Progress!
• Gutenberg Integration – we made sure WPAdverts will work fine once the Gutenberg AKA WordPress 5.0 is released, but to be honest, this wasn’t much work, we were basically testing with major Gutenberg releases and there was never a conflict between WPAdverts and Gutenberg. Checked!

As you can see out of 11 tasks we have planned for 2018 only two were total flops. These were things we have not even started working on.

The two things we have not managed to finish will be a “to-do” in 2019, except the Maps and Locations update will have a much broader scope, but more on that in plans for 2019 section.

Overall this was a pretty good year for WPAdverts and I am hoping to continue this progress in 2019.

Plans for 2019

2019 will be a WPAdverts Core year, we have a couple of big updates for the core planned, aside of that we will be updating the extensions we already have and will try to release 2 new extensions only.

Reviews – this is the plugin we were not able to deliver in 2018, I am hoping to have it done in 2019, how it should look and work like is getting much clearer so I am pretty sure we will be able to release it this year.

Memberships – as I wrote earlier the memberships is something we are already working but will require some changes in WPAdverts Core first.

The Memberships functionality will allow displaying some pricings in [adverts_add] shortcode only to users with selected capabilities or roles. You will be able to select how many times the user will be able to use the membership and how long it will be valid.

Maps and Locations – the MAL extensions requires a couple of updates. First of all, we will want to change how on the map the clustered pins (that is the pins in the same location) are displayed. Right now the display is a bit unpredictable and we will want to change that plus offer a few more display options.

We will also want to introduce an integration Open Street Maps. In the middle of the year Google made the Google Maps API request paid (if you will go over a small free limit) and for some medium-sized sites, the Google Maps API is unfortunately no longer a viable option.

Custom Fields – two things I would like to add to the Custom Fields extension this year is the ability to create file upload fields and to have conditional fields.

WPAdverts 1.4 – the update will allow managing email templates which will be sent when some action occurs.

For example when a user publishes an Ad which is saved as pending both the author and administrator will be notified about that. The editor should make it easy for users to customize the content of the emails.

Two additional points for version 1.4 are:

• Link to finish payment – unregistered users should be able to finish their postings if they will close the page with [adverts_add] accidentally.
• Allow unregistered users to edit their Ads – the emails can include a unique link which will allow even unregistered users to edit their Ads.

Please note these are two sub-points for version 1.4 they might not be included in version 1.4.0 but rather in an update coming after that, for example in 1.4.1 and 1.4.2.

WPAdverts 1.5 – the WooCommerce Integration has more pricing options than the builtin WPAdverts Payments Module. The 1.5 release will try to change that by adding more pricing options (packages and memberships) to the Payments Module.

WPAdverts 1.6 – this release will allow using Gutenberg blocks instead of shortcodes. I am also planning an improved modern design/layout for the shortcodes and details pages. The one WPAdverts has right now is a few years old and it could use an update. Of course, the old one will be available via some snippet if you would like to revert to it.

Summary

As you can see this year has only 7 big milestones planned, it is 4 less than last year, but I am also planning to make some smaller updates to the plugins we already have and this changes are not listed here since the small changes do not qualify as milestones.

I am pretty excited for the updates we are planning and I am sure all of them can be reached by the end of the year.

Once all the changes planned for this year are ready, using WPAdverts and the premium extensions users will able to build complete classifieds site just as good and reliable (if not better) as when using expensive classifieds software.

What do you think about our plans? Feel free to post in the comments.