We just released version 1.5.4 (you should see a notification in your wp-admin panel within max of 24 hours) this is a small update with mainly bug fixes and one new practical feature.
File Upload Progress Bar
In the previous versions, the users saw only a “spinner” when uploading a file, usually, this is a good enough feedback that something is happening with bigger files and slow connection it might spin for quite a long time and the users could get nervous, this is why now aside of a spinner the users will now also see a progress bar.
It will look like on the animated gif below
P.S. Sorry for the glitches on the gif, I am working on a Linux-based system and the only thing I cannot find for it is a screen recorder that does not show the glitches. If you are aware of any screen recording software that works perfectly on a Linux with a 4K screen please let me know in the comments thanks!
While we are on the topic of file uploads, one other change i made here is that previously the files that were bigger than the server max file upload setting were discarded without any information, in version 1.5.4 the WPAdverts should handle the upload anyway or at least display an error message.
SPAM submissions
Quite a few of our users are complaining about being hacked, although what might look like being hacked is actually a spambot submitting ads via an unprotected [adverts_add] form. Most of the spambots cannot get past 3 step forms (fill the form -> preview -> publish) but it looks like they are slowly getting smarter and on some websites, they can submit ads.
One reason the users are unaware of the [adverts_add] page is that WPAdverts is creating and publishing it on installation, so starting from version 1.5.4 the installation will create a page with [adverts_add] shortcode but it will be saved as ‘draft’ that is not visible in the frontend.
I think that is a good compromise between not creating this page at all and creating it with a ‘publish’ status.
What if you want users to submit classifieds ads on your site but you do not want the bots to be able to do so?
Right now there are few things you can do:
- use the [adverts_add] with “requires” param like this
[adverts_add requires="read"], then only users with “read” capability (by default any logged-in user) will be able to submit an Ad. - use the [adverts_add] with “moderate” param like this
[adverts_add moderate="1"], then anyone will be able to submit ads, but the administrator will need to approve the Ad before it will go live - install the reCAPTCHA integration to prevent the spambots from submitting Ads (they might be smart enough to get past 3 step form but will not be able to fill reCAPTCHA … at least for now).
I will be working on a small “honeypot” snippet/plugin soon enough that will allow users to submit ads without filling captchas but will prevent the spambots from doing so, once it’s ready I will post an update here.
What’s next?
This is a small update after 3 months of no updates at all, so you might be wondering if this plugin is still being developed? The short answer is: yes, yes it is.
I am working on version 2.0. It is a lot of work to allow (to some extent) arrange the plugin visually but slowly it is coming together and I might even have some beta version in a month or two.
I do not want to reveal much more now, i will publish a full blog post about version 2.0 soon with some images and maybe videos (hopefully with videos that do not glitch), what tools i am using and why and so on.