I am happy and a bit nervous to inform you we will be releasing WPAdverts 1.4.0 within 48 hours (on 6th February around 10 AM GMT).
This is a major version change (from 1.3.X to 1.4.0) which pushes the whole project forward (in terms of what we can do with it under the hood), but unfortunately …
… this is a major update with possibly backward-incompatible changes.
Do not panic though, this is nothing that would break your site. We also did as much as possible to avoid any unwanted behavior but you still might need to change few (exactly max. 2) things manually.
Before I will list the new features lets start with who might be affected and what to check before and after updating to avoid any surprises.
Basically, there are 4 major changes out of which only 2 could potentially be backward-incompatible and each has a solution you can implement within a few minutes.
Note that we will be also extending the support hours, so you will be able to get help quickly in case of problems.
Ok, so what changed?
Custom Language
Using custom language. To put it simply if you used Loco Translate (or another translation plugin/software), or the Say What? plugin to change some phrases then most likely your site is affected.
To fix it you would need to go to wp-content/languages/plugins folder, and check if you have there file(s) which names starts with adverts-*, if you do then rename it to wpadverts-*.
Similarly, if you are using Say What? the plugin then edit the customized phrases and in the “Text Domain” enter “wpadverts” where you have “adverts”.
Custom Templates
Specifically, if you created a child template for the wpadverts/templates/add-preview.php template file, then after the update you will need to overwrite it with the add-preview.php file from WPAdverts 1.4.0 otherwise going to “Preview” from [adverts_add] might not work.
I suppose some of the users might say: “Ok, but I am not sure if you have a custom add-preview.php, what then?“.
If you had a developer create a website for you, then it would be best to ask him. If you created the website yourself and do not know what an add-preview.php template is then there is a good chance (like 99% chance) you do not have a custom template and can update safely.
In either case, after updating just go to the page with [adverts_add] shortcode and post a new Ad if you will be able to go from Preview to Publish/Pay then everything is set correctly.
If you use a custom add-preview.php template file then you can prepare yourself for the update by opening the add-preview.php file and adding below (or above)
<input type="hidden" name="_adverts_action" value="save" />
the following code
<input type="hidden" name="_post_id_nonce" id="_post_id_nonce" value="<?php echo esc_attr( isset($post_id_nonce) ? $post_id_nonce : "" ) ?>" />
It is best to edit this file via FTP, but you also should be able to find it in wp-admin / Appearance / Theme Editor panel and edit it from there.
UPDATE: 2020-02-06
Additionally, if you have at least one of the following custom templates add.php, form.php, list.php or manage-edit.php then in each of these templates you will need to find code
call_user_func( adverts_field_get_renderer($field), $field )
and replace it with
call_user_func( adverts_field_get_renderer($field), $field, $form )
basically just add third param “$form”
ALS Slider Replaced with Slick
On Ad details pages WPAdverts was using ALS slider which was no longer supported and started becoming incompatible with newer browsers, so we made a switch to the Slick slider which is a modern alternative and hopefully as its slogan says it will be “the last carousel you’ll ever need“.
This change you will only notice if in wp-admin / Classifieds / Options / Core / Gallery panel you have option “Thumbnails Slider” selected in the “Gallery Pagination” field.
That being said the only noticeable change here should be that the image slider uses the space better and now allows scrolling the images by dragging.
Categories Handling
We did quite a lot of work on handling the custom taxonomy pages (in our case Advert Category and Advert Location taxonomies).
The update changes how the taxonomy pages (that is the pages with URLs like https://example.com/advert-category/test/) will be handled, internally.
In most cases, we expect an improvement in the compatibility between WPAdverts and the WordPress themes, but since this is a quite big change just check one or two category pages to make it works the way it used to work (or if it works better if the previous version had some kind of conflict with WPAdverts).
That is a LOT of work on my end!!!
You might be wondering: couldn’t you just make an update which *just works*? Unfortunately, the answer is: “no”.
I understand that some users will not read the update notices (thank you for reading it btw.) and will rate the plugin with a 1-star rating or ask for a refund because the update “broke” their website.
I am ok with that, as in order to improve the WPAdverts and take it to a so-called next-level (as much as cliche it sounds), these are all changes that needed to happen sooner or later.
What else changed?
Additional Security when posting from [adverts_add]
The two main updates are under the hood changes. I have prepared a kind-of checksum system to verify the integrity of the requests sent via [adverts_add] shortcode.
The checksums system will check the form integrity specifically when uploading files if you are using more than one form scheme or more than one [adverts_add].
It is maybe not that useful if you have just one [adverts_add] form scheme but still adds an additional layer of security. For now, the main usage of this feature is to validate the integrity of the [adverts_add] submission when skip_preview param is set to 1 (read more on this feature below).
These security improvements will come handy when we will allow more file upload fields and when the anonymous users will be able to edit their listings.
Skip Preview in [adverts_add]
You can now use the [adverts_add] shortcode with skip_preview param like this
[adverts_add skip_preview="1"]
With this param, the user will go to straight from the Form to the Publish or Pay screen.
Streamlined Taxonomy Browsing
Until now each taxonomy added to Adverts (usually) required some programming in order to display the browsing by taxonomy correctly.
With the new class Adverts_Taxonomies all of the taxonomies assigned to “advert” Custom Post Type should be handled in the same way.
This means if you assign a new taxonomy to “advert” then display for the taxonomy archive should be handled automatically.
On top of that, the Adverts_Taxonomies registers auto-magic tax__* params in the [adverts_list] which allow filtering the list by taxonomy.
For example, if you have an “advert_location” taxonomy registered then you can list Ads assigned to this taxonomy by using [adverts_list] like this
[adverts_list tax__advert_location="100"]
where 100 is an ID of taxonomy term you want to filter by.
That is all for now!
The update will be available pretty soon, please do not get discouraged with the listed issues we will be here to help you.
Comments (21)
Congratulations on reaching another milestone with WPAdverts. Keep up the good work.
Thanks!
Does this change the appearance? Can we make the posts look more modern. This was thendeal breaker with me. Unfortunately i did not renew my subscription due to the appearance of the posts. Can we see examples of what can be done with the appearance?
Hi,
unfortunately, this version only extends the internal API and improves compatibility with WP ecosystem only. Version 2.0 will be changing the WPAdverts frontend appearance, i am planning it for the middle of the year, but since we are a small team of 2 people only then this is not an exact ETA i am afraid.
That being said i understand the problem is with the [adverts_list] and the Ad details pages? If so then you can replace the default templates with your own as explained here https://wpadverts.com/documentation/child-themes-and-templates/. Specifically, the files to change would be list.php, list-item.php and single.php.
All of these files are using mainly WordPress API so any theme developer or just a web designer familiar with WP should be able to design and implement better templates for you.
Before releasing new templates we will be consulting them with users, that is posting mockups on the FB page and on the blog here, but still, this will need to be templates which will fit the majority of the themes so the redesign might not be exactly what you are looking for and hiring a designer to create a unique design might work best.
Awesome stuff, what’s the future look like after 1.4. What’s so ‘next leve’ or game changing that we can look forward to through 2020?
Keep the great work, and thanks for all my support over the last few years.
Thanks! The next level things i am looking to add is a completed redesign with Gutenberg/Elementor integration plus the ability to customize the appearance visually from wp-admin / Appearance / Customize panel.
As far as the extensions are concerned i have the most plans for the Custom Fields editor, it will have new fields and conditional logic.
Aside of these two big goals for this year, there will be smaller updates to the other extensions, i will write about it more in the blog post, i am planning to publish it in about a week from 1.4 release, i want to have this post at the top after release so it’s easy for everyone to find it in case of problems :).
Awesome! Still no payments between (BP) users yet though?
I thought in the 3 years of use I might be closer to convincing you with this feature haha.
Unfortunately, like any other payments related feature, payments between users require a lot of work, yet there isn’t much demand for it (at least not right now), we are focusing on features which are simpler to develop and have high demand, sorry.
Fantastic work! Thank you for the update!
Hi Greg – Thanks for the update and detailed instructions. I have completed these step, as currently using Gecko-Peepso theme. I have the WPAd full bundle and after making this update and above template changes, I have noticed that the ad_manage page is not displaying as should. Is there any know issues happening with this page?
Hi, is there may be an update for PeepSo WPAdverts integration available? I sent an email to PeepSo few days before release but i never heard from them so i am not sure if they prepared release to make their integration compatible with WPAdverts 1.4.
In either case, can you send more details regarding what you mean “the ad_manage page is not displaying as should”? It would be best if you would send me a message via the contact form at https://wpadverts.com/contact/ with links to the screenshots explaining the problem or just link to the page where you have the issue so i could take a look at it.
Thank you for the job done. Plugin is very useful. I’ve just started to use it but see big potential.
The problem I faced is .webp pictures are not supported. I can’t even download wepb pictures into ads neither from frontend nor from backend. About 85% of browsers now support webp pictures and Google even reccomend to use these files instead of jpg or png.
Do you have plans to fix this issue in nearest feature?
Thank you in advance
Hi, thanks for using WPAdverts.
As for the WebP, i will look into it, however right now the WP itself has limited support for WebP which might make it complicated.
Specifically, the uploaded webp file is not recognized as an image in media library so using the image-related functions on it is not possible, but i will see if there is a way to work around it.
Thank you for quick reply. I am able now to add webp pictures into WordPress media gallery of my site ( did like suggested here https://mariushosting.com/how-to-upload-webp-files-on-wordpress/ ) and I can even embed these webp images into body (text) of ads of WPAdwers but unfortunately it’s still not possible for ads gallery. I even added “image/webp” to
var types = {
video: [ “video/webm”, “video/mp4”, “video/ogv” ],
image: [ “image/jpeg”, “image/jpe”, “image/jpg”, “image/gif”, “image/png”, “image/webp” ]
};
for file wpadverts-gallery.js but it doesn’t work either unfortunately. Would be grateful if webp type will be added to allowed type of images. Thank you in advance once again.
Hi,
thanks for your work and new features added. I use your plugin and I like it very much. I would only like to notice that this update can also change the display of [adverts_list] images. I had some custom styling which has been overridden by new changes. Thankfully it was easy to fix this, in my case I had to add the following lines to my styles.css file:
+.adverts-list .advert-img > img {
+ object-fit: contain;
+ width: auto;
+ height: auto;
+}
When I updated to the new version the advert detail show 404 page.Advert list and all other features are functional.
Please go to wp-admin / Settings / Permalinks panel and click “Save Changes” to reset WP router it should fix it.
in the old version when I called a custom field in the list-item.php file, I used this code:
but in version 1.4 it doesn’t work, the whole page goes wrong.
Hi,
it seems the code you pasted was cut by WP, so i am not sure what code you were using, but generally, the same PHP code should work as no changes were made as far as handling custom fields goes.
Either way, it would be best if you would resend the question (with the code) using a contact form at https://wpadverts.com/contact/ and the error message you are seeing after using the code with new WPAdverts version.
Hello i am new user and i would to ask you, How to disable avatar?
Hi,
sorry for the late reply, but we usually do not check the comments for support requests (nor provide support in the comments).
Please resend your question using the contact form at https://wpadverts.com/contact/ also include in the message information where you would like to hide the avatar exactly.