Valentine's Day 2012

For the next 10 days, until Monday February 20 2012, Dev4Press is offering 25% discount deal for all our individual plugins and themes, plugins pack and themes club membership. Discount coupon is already added to all purchase links, and all prices displayed with discount applied.

This year Valentine’s Day coupon for 25% discount is VALENTINE. Coupon is valid starting now until Monday February 20 2012. All products are eligible for this deal, and all prices on the website show the discounted price. For the next 10 days you can get all our Dev4Press Plugins Pack with lifetime license (one payment only) for only $450,00 (you save big $150,00 with this deal). And you can get GD Press Tools Pro lifetime license, or any other plugin, for only $150,00 (you save $50,00).

Don’t miss this great opportunity. Happy Valentine’s Day!

When you get to the checkout page on ShareIt, you will get the list of our other products with the same license type you can buy. Depending on the license type, you will see different discounts. For plugins with annual standard or developer licenses, discount is 15% for same license for other products, 10% for GD Star Rating Support License and 25% for xScape Themes Club Membership. For lifetime licenses, discount is higher by 5%. And if you are buying Dev4Press plugins pack or xScape Theme Club Membership you can get up to 30% discount.

Cross-selling Example

Lets say you want to buy GD Press Tools Annual Standard License. Price for that one is $89.00. But, on the checkout, you will see other plugins and themes with 10% to 25% discount. Image on the right shows this, and price for other products with same license type with you can add to the cart and get additional plugins or themes cheaper.

Discount depends on the first products added that got you to checkout page. Also, discount coupons you might have will not have effect on the price of cross-selling products.

Development of plugins, themes and theme framework will continue this year, and I have plans on improving Dev4Press website, and launching at least 3 new websites related to my work and WordPress. The list that follows will include dates if possible, all items in the list are listed in no particular order.

Dev4Press

1. Newsletters. First major update to website is coming in February with powerful newsletter system. I can’t give more detailes at this moment, but there is a plan to have it released as commercial plugin later this year.
2. Support Forum. There will be many improvements to support forums, starting with changes to posting topics that are coming in the next couple of weeks. More things will be introduced to improve the forums.
3. Plugins Informations. All plugins information will be updated over the next 2 months. Existing information will be improved and kept current as often as possible.

Plugins

1. GD Simple Widgets 3.0 Pro. This plugin was neglected for the last year, but that will change. Plan is to give it new gdT3 templates system library and to add at least 4 new widgets to it. I hope to get working on this new version in the next two months.
2. GD Products Center 1.0 Pro. Plugin is in the final beta phase now, and final 1.0 is expected in January. This is not even close to the end of the development for this new plugin, it will include a lot of new features that are in the roadmap.
3. GD aZon FUSION 1.0 Pro. Plugin is nearing completion, and 1.0 will be released in February or March. I am also preparing the list of features to be added after that. There are some plans in that regard already.
4. GD Star Rating 2.0. This plugin is delayed several times, but now it should be getting back on track. Public beta versions (or further) will be released by the end of March. More info on the progress on this plugin will be available next month.
5. GD Custom Posts and Taxonomies Tools 4.0 Pro. Roadmap for this plugin is pretty much planned out. Before we go to 4.0, there will be at least on major release (3.6 most likely in February).
6. GD Press Tools 5.0 Pro. Plans for this major version are not yet formulated, but it will be released in the second half of 2012. Leading to this release, plugin will get more SEO features, more content related tools and few other things. Development for 4.4 will start this week and it will add new features to modify WordPress 3.3 toolbar and other things.
7. Lite & Free Plugins. The development of all free plugins will proceed as before, Pro plugins will have priority but free plugins will not be neglected. As for the lite versions of Pro plugins, they will get regular compatibility updates as usual.

Themes

1. xScape Theme Framework 1.9/2.0. Work on the post 1.8 version will begin soon, and I will have detailed roadmap soon. Current roadmap already includes new features, and it will be expanded with few more interesting things.
2. Themes. Right now, plan is to have 5 to 8 themes released in 2012, depending on available time and available designs. I have 2 themes already planned, one is in the works. Also, all future themes will be HTML5.

Libraries

1. gdT3. This library is in development, and it is used to power GD aZon FUSION and GD Products Center rendering right now. GD Star Rating 2.0 and GD Simple Widgets 3.0 Pro will use it as well.
2. gdR2. This powerful library will be expanded further this year. Plan is to have more core functions added, to have improved loading and support for APC for caching library. All Pro plugins and xScape are using it already.

Websites

1. GD Products Center Pro, GD aZon FUSION Pro and GD Simple Widgets Pro will get own websites that will be used as demos and basic landing pages with information about each plugin and its features.
2. A website related to WordPress is in works and I expect it complete in the first half of this year. I will not give any details about the website content or plans for it, but it will be interesting.

That’s it for now, plans will change depending on the needs, but I will try to keep to the list. All suggestions for the development are welcome, and you can leave them in comments or in the forum.

I wish you all happy new year!

New Year 2012 coupon for 25% discount is NEWYEAR2012. Coupon is valid starting now until Sunday, January 8 2012. All our products are eligible for this deal, and all prices on the website show the discounted price. For the next 3 days you can get all our plugins pack with lifetime (one payment only) license for only $300,00. And you can get GD Press Tools Pro lifetime license for only $126,50. GD Custom Posts And Taxonomies Tools Pro lifetime license is also only $126,50.

This year Christmas coupon for 40% discount is XMAS2011. Coupon is valid starting now until Christmas: December 22, 23 and 24. All products are eligible for this deal, and all prices on the website show the discounted price. For the next 3 days you can get all our plugins pack with lifetime (one payment only) license for only $240,00. And you can get GD Press Tools Pro lifetime license for only $101,40.

Don’t miss this great opportunity. Merry Christmas!

You can check out the original tests article to see first tests results here. I got many requests to expand the list of plugins, so in the first test in 2012 (it will be out on January 4 2012) will include 50 plugins. But, the data displayed will be expanded. For each plugin I will include basic data unrelated to tests:

1. Version and release date
2. Developer and website URL
3. Size and number of files
4. Use of JavaScript
5. Use of AJAX
6. Use of Cron Scheduler

As for the tests, we will test everything as before including few new things. Here is the preliminary list of tests for the January test:

1. Memory usage on Dashboard and Home page
2. Loading time on Dashboard and Home page
3. Number of SQL queries on Dashboard and Home page
4. Number of hooks on Dashboard and Home page
5. Number of AJAX handlers counted in code
6. Number of Cron jobs counted in code
7. Number of widgets registered

As for the plugins tested, I will include both free and commercial plugins. If I can’t get to a latest version of some commercial plugins, they will be dropped from the test, I will not test old versions. I will contact some of the developers with commercial plugins to ask for the plugin for test. If anyone can help with commercial plugins, I will be happy to include them in the test. Number of tested plugins will expand each month, and as I said, first month I will test 50 plugins.

I also plan to have similar test for themes, but that will depend on my free time. I will try to have themes tested in March or April.

Leave your suggestions for plugins to include in the first test. If you have test suggestion, please describe the test and the method to conduct the test. Tests will be published each month on the first Wednesday.

Don’t miss the chance to get 40% for any plugin, theme, plugins pack or themes club, for any of the licenses (including lifetime licenses). For manual use, discount coupon is: CYBERMONDAY. Coupon can be used during the checkout on ShareIt. All purchase links or shopping cart on Dev4Press automatically have this coupon applied.

So, browse the Dev4Press, get the products you need with 40% discount. Only today.

. . .   t h i s     d e a l     h a s     n o w     e x p i r e d   . . .

Don’t miss the chance to get 50% for any plugin, theme, plugins pack or themes club, for any of the licenses (including lifetime licenses). For manual use, discount coupon is: BLACKFRIDAY. Coupon can be used during the checkout on ShareIt. All purchase links or shopping cart on Dev4Press automatically have this coupon applied.

So, browse the Dev4Press, get the products you need with 50% discount. Only today.

. . .   t h i s     d e a l     h a s     n o w     e x p i r e d   . . .

xScape Themes Club Membership is lowered by some 20%, and single theme standard license by same 15%. Plugins pack with recurring annual payments is now some 10% lower. All individual plugins now have same price for all 3 licenses. Also, all future Pro plugins will have same prices. Other than making prices equal, single plugins will not get any lower due to the nature of licensing for plugins.

All our licenses for all our products are for unlimited websites use, and compared to any other Pro plugins from other developers, we have by far lowest prices for full featured and very powerful plugins. Developer license (with additional ticket based email support) for one plugin with unlimited number of uses is $109.00 with $89.00 annual recurring payment, standard license (full support, but no email support) also with unlimited usage is $89.00 with $59.00 or $169.00 with lifetime license. You can see that our pricing model is very competitive considering very high quality of our plugins, documentation and support. This is 2 or 3 times lower pricing model than with other Pro plugins developers.

So, browse our product, find what you need and also take advantage of current birthday celebration 30% discount on top. If you have any additional questions, don’t hesitate to contact me and ask.

Here is a bit of history of Dev4Press project and how all this came to life. I had an idea to start a business for development of premium plugins back in December of 2008, and to get things rolling, I have registered dev4press.com domain on January 5 2009. At the time, I was still working with my old company, and I had little time for new business. Still, during 2009 I started with developing plugins that will be available as Pro versions later.

Dev4press Original Logo

From Summer of 2009 I started working on some of the design solutions, including logo. Logo in several variations that are in use still was designed by Vladan Vasic from Peexon Design. You can see basic version of the logo on the right.

First Pro only plugin I started developing was GD Affiliate Center, and by the time Dev4Press started working in December of 2009, this plugin was in Beta. Official first stable release was available in April 2010. Most important plugins were Pro version of GD Taxonomies Tools (later became GD Custom Posts And Taxonomies Tools) and GD Press Tools. Both versions were developed during the Summer and Autumn and were released same day with the launch of Dev4Press website.

First version of new Dev4Press website was online from December 15 2009, and it was using The Station theme by WooThemes. It was heavily modded and it remained in use until the September of 2010 when it was replaced by lightScape theme using in-house developed xScape Theme Framework.

Not to go into too many details, there will be a time for that, here is a quick products and release statistics of Dev4Press work over the past two years:

1. 6 Pro plugins
2. 8 Lite/Free plugins
3. 10 Premium themes
4. 645 releases of plugins and themes
5. 200.000 downloads of all products
6. 30.000 websites using our products

I am preparing detailed Dev4Press summary for the past two years, and that will be published on December 15 2011. But, until that day, Dev4Press is in a full month celebration mood, and what better to celebrate such an important anniversary, than to have 30% discount for all purchases during that period.

From today, November 15 2011 until the December 15 2011, you will get 30% discount for all our products and all our licenses versions. Discount coupon will be automatically applied to all purchase links and shopping cart on this website, but if you get to checkout page on ShareIt some other way, discount coupon to use is D4PTWOYEARS.

I would like to thank all Dev4Press users for their continued support and for pushing the plugins and themes development. I hope to deliver more great releases over many years to come.

Halloween Award Badge

For this year Halloween, Dev4Press website is changed a bit visually, and this is a great chance to organize a treasure hunt. Over the next 15 days, on a random pages website will display awards in the sidebar areas. There will be total of 55 awards spread over this period.

Each award will be displayed only once, but they are very easy to notice. You can see example award badge on the image on the right. If you get the discount coupon award, write it down, that same coupon will not appear again. And if you get the products license, click on the link to claim the award, and that link will take you to the form where you can fill your information.

Awards in the treasure hunt:

1. 10 lifetime licenses. If you find this award, you need to fill the form and select which plugin (or 2 themes) you want to get. As soon we process your form, you will get the selected award.
2. 45 discount coupons. Each coupon can be used for only one purchase and each coupon will appear only once on the website. Coupons can be used until the end of November 2011.

The rules are simple:

1. The more you browse through Dev4Press website, the more chance you get to find an award.
2. Awards can appear on any website page with the exception of the front page.
3. One user or visitor can win only one award, and to make sure of that, we will track IP’s used.
4. If we detect any sort of cheating we reserve the right to ban the IP used and to void the award.
5. Abnormal number of visits from same IP will also cause ban for the IP and void of the award.
6. You can give your discount coupon to someone else, but each coupon will be usable only once.

That’s it, Happy Halloween and happy hunting.

Shopping Cart

First thing you will notice is the cart on the top of the page (as on the image on the left). It shows you current status of the cart. Items in the cart are stored in the cookie in your browser, so you can add products for purchase and keep them there for days before deciding to checkout. This cart always stays in the header on all pages on Dev4Press

To edit items in the cart or to checkout and buy items in the cart, click on the edit or checkout link, or on the cart icon, and you will be transfered to Shopping Cart page. Here, you have left sidebar with links to products you can purchase, and the main part of the page is contents of the cart.

All products are listed with name, license edition, quantity and price per unit. For each product in the second line you have subscription details (if product has a recurring subscription) and option to remove the product from the cart. Single xScape themes are only products that allow you to change quantity. For all other products you can get only one license per product. If you make a changes to number of themes you want to buy, or you check remove check-boxes to remove products from the cart, click the Update button to update the contents of the cart. Once you are sure about what you want to buy, click Checkout. On checkout you will be transfered to standard ShareIt checkout page where you can complete your purchase.

Shopping Cart Contents

Cart will display conflicts also. For instance, if you add a plugin to the cart, and than you add Plugins Pack to the cart, you will see the warning informing you that you should remove single plugin from the cart, since you already have Plugins Pack there also. On top of the cart you see option to change currency. Selected currency will be stored in a cookie, and will be used on all product pages (they also have own selection for currency). During checkout, you can use other currencies, not only the 3 in the list. Converted currency is based on exchange rate from Google and ShareIt, and it is for information only, real value will be displayed on ShareIt checkout page. Main prices remain in Euros.

If you notice any problems with the cart, please report them using contact form. This is still very new addition to Dev4Press website, and maybe there are some minor bugs in there still.

For individual plugins, coupon is for 30% discount. Coupon can be used for standard lifetime licenses, or for the annual recurring standard or developer licenses (applied to initial payment only). To get the discount, use it during the checkout. For plugins pack and for themes club membership, coupon is for 40% discount, and it can be used for standard or developer licenses. This time, single theme licenses are not included in the promotion.

Plugins Pack and Themes Club Discount Coupon

40% discount coupon to use during checkout is: SEP2011PACK. Coupon is limited to 20 uses only, so hurry up to get great value packs for much lower price.

Individual Plugins Discount Coupon

30% discount coupon to use during checkout is: SEP2011PLUGIN. Coupon is limited to 100 uses only, so hurry up to get great plugins for much lower price. You can use coupon for all available single plugin license.

Warning: Plugin is not yet completed, and it is not recommended to use it on the live websites. Right now, from all the planned features for 1.0.0 release, admin side is 90% done, and front end is 50% done. Main goal of this version is to get feedback on features and start with testing, plugin is not fully usable yet and many features are not finished.

GD Products Center: Product Types

Even before custom post types, WordPress was used to create website with products catalogs. Custom post types make that a bit easier, but still, you needed a lot of time and work to prepare custom fields for specifications, theme templates to display specifications, but still, it wasn’t enough if you needed more advanced stuff: multiple pages for each product with different information, products filtering or products comparison.

GD Products Center: Product Properties

Now all that changes. GD Product Center is powerful plugin that makes very easy to define one or more product types (each created as a custom post type), assign taxonomies, set unlimited number of properties for specification, get separate pages for product review, media, users reviews or related products, get products archives with filtering, products widgets and compare products feature. And that is just for starters, these are only main features planned for 1.0.0 release, with more things planned for later. Full overview of all planned features is here.

Properties editor on the right, shows groups of properties. And each property has a type set. Plugin supports wide range of data types that are added to make data entry much easier. For each property you can set list of values, visibility and other elements, depending on the data type. Image bellow shows the product editor based on the set properties.

GD Products Center: Product Editor

As with any plugin that needs to control display, GD Products Center requires changes to theme templates. As an example, plugin includes templates for TwentyTen and TwentyEleven themes, and is fully compatible with xScape Theme Framework themes. I plan to publish tutorials for both: customizing any theme you might use and using xScape theme with this plugin. More tutorials on other subjects are coming soon, but since we are still in early alpha versions of the plugin, there is time to cover all subjects and issues.

Over the next month, leading to 1.0.0 release, I plan to have at least one, two or even three updates each week leading to Beta version that should have all planned features done. Many changes will reflect suggestions, found bugs, work on planned features. I will try to have as many tutorials in parallel with the development to make easier for users to adopt the plugin and start using it. In the next 3-4 days, a demo website will be in use.

If you want to test the plugin before buying, use contact form to ask for the demo website at xScape.info, where all Dev4Press plugins and themes are available for testing.

Promo coupon

If you decide to purchase plugin now, while still in development phase, a coupon is available that will give you 25% discount. This coupon is: PRODUCTSCBETA. To purchase plugin, visit the plugin editions page.

Plugin Info

GD Products Center, Plugin Information:
http://www.dev4press.com/plugins/gd-products-center/
GD Products Center, Editions & Purchase:
http://www.dev4press.com/plugins/gd-products-center/editions/

New license gives you same rights as the standard membership and include support, unlimited installations and updates with full access to tutorials and documentation. Pricing for the new license is higher, because you will pay only once.

New purchase grid pricing for a plugin

Purchasing FAQ is updated and expanded. With new one time pay only license, you can again use PayPal on ShareIt to purchase plugins.

A while back I have created plugin for GeekWithLaptop website for comparing computers, phones, printers and other devices. This was done long before WP 3.0 and custom post types. It is a good plugin, and it’s used still on that website. But, there are a lot of things I wanted to do differently on my own time and with many more ideas I had for some more comprehensive product that will truly be main control for product types and products. Over the last 2 years I have got many, many questions about that plugin and people wanted to buy it for their own websites. But, that plugin is made for GWL websites and it’s theirs plugin.

GD Products Center: Product Types List

So, over the past 6 months I have been making list of all the features I wanted to have for products related plugin, and that list grow longer. GD Products Center has nothing to do with that old GWL comparison plugin, accept that it is inspired by the idea of having management of products in the WordPress powered websites.

GD Product Center: Product Images

GD Products Center uses custom post types for product types. You can create as many product types you want (phones, monitors, laptops…), you can specify properties for them (meta boxes for the product/post editing), create and assign taxonomies, set customizable rewriting of URL’s, render product pages and compare products within the same product type. Plugin will allow comparison of any number of products in the same time (2, 3, 5, 10 or more if you want), it will allow advanced filtering of the products archives with AJAX support and integration with some of our plugins: GD aZon FUSION (to connect products with Amazon), GD Custom Posts and Taxonomies Tools Pro (for additional taxonomies and enhanced features) and GD Star Rating (for ratings and reviews).

GD Products Center: Properties Editor

Plugin will also have predefined product types allowing for easy deployment of common product types: mobile phones, tablets, laptops. It will have set of templates for single product, comparison page, comparison widget and archive page (with AJAX powered filtering). Creating of product types will be simplified version of creating post types, and plugin will generate automatically all needed settings. You can control rewrite rules to an extend. You will be able to control editors for images, videos and links, and also set and define list of properties for each product. All that will be added in custom meta boxes for product/post editors.

First Beta version will have most planned features and plugin should get stable 1.0 release a month after that. So, stay tuned for the next week release, there will be a discount coupon available (25%) for as long as the Beta period lasts.

xScape Core is not functional theme, it can work on its own. To use it, you need a theme that has Core version. Right now newsScape and R8 are available as Core. Next week, lightScape and eScape will get Core versions also. xScape Core has full xScape Theme Framework, all modules, basic main styles and images for theme (networks icons, breadcrumbs…) and template load files. Each theme now holds only own settings, own stylings and templates.

To use Core themes, you need to install xScape Core theme, and then add actual theme and activate it. That’s it. Core theme acts as a child theme, with xScape Core as a parent. You can’t have same theme old version and Core version, you must use only one. If you already have normal theme installed and want to replace it with Core, simply delete old and copy new Core version. If you didn’t customized any files that’s it. If you have customized files, copy them over in the same folders as before. All theme settings will be retained and you can continue using it as normal. Dev4Press Updater supports Core themes also, so you can work with them as before.

I have announced that normal themes will get support for own child themes, but that is not yet done since I need to figure out few more things to make that easy to do. I hope to have some news on that soon.

To download xScape Core, you need xScape Themes Club Membership or license for themes that have Core versions. You can’t purchase xScape Core individually. xScape Core theme will be update every time framework is updated.

More on xScape Core: http://www.dev4press.com/themes/xscape-core/
List of Core Themes: http://www.dev4press.com/themes/?core

But, first thing first, the winners are:

I have contacted winners about this and they need to create free accounts on Dev4Press and plugin license will be assigned to them. Congratulations, and I hope you like the plugin, and also hoe to hear from them on their impressions about plugin and maybe some suggestions for future versions.

And, for everyone else, it’s not too late to take advantage and use the 30% discount for this plugin, Dev4Press Plugins Pack or Themes Club Membership (for both standard and developer licenses, coupon is applied to initial payment only): GDCPT3PRO. Coupon remain active until June 4 2011.

More about GD Custom Posts And Taxonomies Tools:

http://d4p.me/gdtt

Discount coupon can be used to purchase Dev4Press Plugins Pack, xScape Themes Club and individual plugins: GD Affiliate Center, GD aZon Fusion, GD Custom Posts And Taxonomies Tools, GD Press Tools and GD Simple Widgets.

Promo coupon:

To get 25% discount (applied to initial payment), on checkout use this coupon: EASTER2011. Coupons is valid until April 27 2011. Happy Easter!

CoolHandle offers standard web hosting plans: Starter, Business and Pro. All plans include unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth, free setup, free domain, domain privacy, cPanel and long list of pre-installed software you an use to setup your websites. Starter plan is $4.95/monthly, but I recommend Pro plan for $12.95/monthly that includes dedicated IP, unlimited PostgreSQL and muSQL databases and private SSL.

For more power and speed, CoolHandle offers VPS hosting starting with VPS 01 plan for $29.95/monthly with 512MB RAM and 20GB storage to VPS 03 for $79.95/monthly with 2GB RAM and 60GB space. But, if you need more, you can get dedicated server that you can build with specification you need: custom RAM, HDD drives, RAID and much more.

All hosting plans that include cPanel, also include access to CloudFlare CDN services that comes with many great features including Always Online feature that will keep your website online even if server is temporarily down.

So, if you are looking for new hosting service to upgrade from your current one, I recommend you try Web Hosting by Cool Handle. And make sure to check out their Partner Program that offers many website additions including Dev4Press plugins and themes

This is the current list of features GD Search Tools plugin will have:

1. Use of MySQL FULLTEXT index for indexing posts and comments table.
2. Support for natural language and boolean types of search as supported by MySQL.
3. Implementation of filters based on content type and other criteria.
4. Expandable search context with additional data types.
5. Use of AJAX to get search results with on the fly filtering.
6. Logging of all the search requests into database.

Plugin will have predefined templates for displaying search forms and search results with filtering so you can get it to work with any theme. xScape Theme Framework will support new plugin with all themes. List of features is far from complete, and there is always room for more suggestions. Plan is to get current planned features into first stable version, but all good suggestions will go into the future features list.

Pricing for the plugin is yet unknown, but it will be comparable to GD Press Tools. As of yet, I am not sure if plugin will have Lite version, but it’s not impossible. I hope to release first test versions by the end of May 2011.

Support Forum

10 latest discussions are now on the top of the first page, with list of all forums bellow, making it easier to see the latest topics and discussions first. Sidebar area on all forum pages is changed to give more relevant information and to have same layout and controls in all forum areas. Most of the forum is redesigned for better usability and more changes will be made if needed to improve on this.

bbPress forum used right now, it contains all latest fixes and changes, and I am monitoring the development of bbPress plugin version also, and at one point Dev4Press will switch on using plugin instead of the full forum installation.

Users Dashboard

New dashboard is fully redesigned with new left side navigation and better content organization. Previous translation pages are removed and replaced with a form to request validator status for GlotPress powered translation. More info on that will be announced in the next couple of days.

Changes are all tested, but I might have missed something, so please report any problems in comments here or in forum, or use the contact form. Also, all suggestions on how to improve dashboard further are welcome.

GlotPress: Project

Previous experiment for translating plugins wasn’t successful, so let’s hope that this new one does better. I am currently setting the GlotPress with all plugins and themes and importing existing translations.

But, with GlotPress now, I can set language for each project and to set users that want to join translation process. GlotPress allows use of Google Translation to help with the process and to track how the project goes. GlotPress can export compatible po/mo files we can than use with plugins and themes in WordPress.

Dev4Press translation using GlotPress will be open next week once and there will be a form where you can request access to translate any of plugins and themes to your language.

So stay tuned to this going live, and check out the GlotPress current development blog for more info on this great project:

http://blog.glotpress.org/

But, first thing first. All re-tweets were ordered by the posting time, and using random.org random number generator website, 3 tweets and 3 users were picked. This time number of tweets had some play in the results with @funbu tactics of multiple tweets paid of, because, more tweets, more chances to win. So, the winners are:

I have contacted winners about this and they need to create free accounts on Dev4Press and plugin license will be assigned to them. Congratulations, and I hope you like the plugin, and also hoe to hear from them on their impressions about plugin and maybe some suggestions for future versions.

And, for everyone else, it’s not too late to take advantage and use the 40% discount coupon for this plugin (coupon is applied to first payment only). Coupon is valid until March 31 2011.

40% Discount Coupon: GDAFFC13

Checkboxes and radioboxes, with all Dev4Press plugins, are enhanced using jQuery. Problem with default HTML elements can be that they are not easy to position and control. jQuery helps with that, and make controls look pretty. Multi select dropdown control doesn’t exists in HTML, so it’s much better to replace existing multi select control with jQuery powered dropdown.

But, controls looking pretty is not exactly always accessibility friendly and they don’t matter much to blind users. They usually use a screen reader that interprets HTML controls. But, some of the enhanced elements we have are hiding actual elements making it impossible for screen reader to find them. Same thing happens with tabs and many other elements, but in case of most jQueryUI powered controls, they have built-in accessibility support. For the rest of the controls (checkboxes/radioboxes/multi dropdown), there is an option to disable them.

Accessibility Control

Each plugin, on the settings page got a new tab called Accessibility with one option used to disable enhancements. If anyone finds some more controls that have similar accessibility problem, I will add them to the enhancement control. As for xScape powered themes, same option is added in 1.6 version that will be available in the next couple of days.

But, first thing first. All re-tweets were ordered by the posting time, and using random.org random number generator website, 2 tweets and 2 users were picked. The winners are:

I have contacted winners about this and they need to create free accounts on Dev4Press and plugin license will be assigned to them. Congratulations, and I hope you like the plugin.

And, for everyone else, it’s not too late to take advantage and use the 40% discount coupon for this plugin (for yearly recurring payments standard and developer licenses, coupon is applied to initial payment only). Coupon is valid until March 7 2011.

40% Discount Coupon: GDPRESSTOOLS4

To access the monitor status page use this URL: http://dv4p.com/monitor

Pingdom has done great job in creating public status pages, and here you can see the overview of the status page, and you can see details for each website individually including response time and other data:

Pingdom Status Page

In the past 40 days since we Dev4Press was moved to Hostgator VPS server, site was offline twice: once was server kernel update restart, and second one was intentional maintenance mode for upgrading to WP 3.1 last week.

So, just in case, add the monitor URL to bookmarks and check out what is going own if you can’t access Dev4Press or our other websites.

To access the monitor status page use this URL: http://dv4p.com/monitor

Compatibility of my plugins and themes is number one concern when new WordPress is in development, and I am always working with alpha and beta versions of the WordPress to make sure that new features or changes don’t break anything. I try to cover all things, but some minor problems can be expected, considering that very often, WordPress is changed daily, and that something that was OK yesterday, is broken today. My plugins will always be updated as soon as possible to make sure that they work with all latest WP versions.

Current, half baked, link panel

WordPress 3.1

For me, there are only 2 new features I was excited for in WP 3.1: Internal Page Linking and Network Mode for Multisite. Admin Bar is an interesting one also, but will take some time to be used to it, even I see many interesting opportunities for further development that will involve the bar.

Problem now is that Internal Page Linking is not even close to what I expected it to be, and is not working as I expected it to be (it’s not really internal linking at all, links that end up in the content are absolute, not aware of later changes). When this was first announced, I was starting work on my version of internal linking feature, and I stopped working on that since there is no point having same thing in core and in plugin. But now, because the core implementation is not very good, I will be back to my version of it.

GD Press Tools 4.0

Last week, GD Press Tools 4.0 Pro is released, and it’s fully compatible with WP 3.0 and WP 3.1. It’s the first plugin that I know of that has full support for new network admin panel and it will display different options based on the panel you are on, making clear difference between the normal site administration and network administration. Previous GD Press Tools 3.9 Pro and current GD Press Tools 2.5 Lite branches are also compatible with WP 3.1.

To find out more on this plugin and what was added in 4.0 Pro, check out the release article and the plugin feature overview pages.

GD Custom Posts And Taxonomies Tools

There is one feature that is now in conflict with WP 3.1, and it should be avoided in new WP 3.1: post type archives. It was made way back for WP 2.9 and WP 3.0 to add much-needed custom post types archives. But, now, WP 3.1 has that built-in, and plugin will cause problems if it’s option for that is still on. I will release updated plugin in the next 2 days, that will have some improvements in that area to handle better new WP 3.1 and archives for post types.

Everything else in plugin is up to date, and it supports all the changes added to custom post types and custom taxonomies in WP 3.1

GD aZon FUSION / GD Affiliate Center / GD Simple Widgets

None of these plugins are really dependent on any specific WP 3.1 features or changes, so there is nothing to worry about with any of them.

GD Star Rating

As long as you don’t use it with multisite mode it should be fine. Even in multisite, most thing will work, limited to each blog.

xScape Framework and Themes

Fully compatible with WP 3.1. Post Format added in WP 3.1 are partly supported in xScape, and that is still more than 99% other themes out there. Problem with Post Formats is that is coming into play too late, since all themes and theme developers have own way of doing things, and long before post formats themes were able to display content based on the context and location. At this point I have no idea how to approach post format, so if there are any suggestions, please leave the comment.

All themes and framework are tested with WP 3.1 in normal and multisite mode, and no problems are found and that goes for new internal/transient cache feature introduced in xScape 1.5.9.

What’s next?

For Dev4Press, things are back to normal, until next WordPress goes into development. There is a new plugin coming soon (pro version only), with 2 more in the planning stages, new themes (I am a bit late on this, GD Press Tools took a lot of my time, but I think it was worth it).

GD Star Rating on BuySellAds

Right now I have set 3 ad zones: header 468×60 (one ad space, for 2 rotating ads), sidebar 125×125 (two ad spaces, for 2 rotatings ads) and sidebar 300×250 (one ad space, for 4 rotating ads). Few more zones will be added soon. Data displayed on BuySellAds page is not yet fully updated, they are just started gathering statistics, so estimated number of impressions will change over the next week or so.

Prices are set as low for now, I don’t plan changing them anytime soon, and considering daily number of visits and other factors, price is much lower than it is on other sites with similar stats.

Check out the info, and buy ad spaces here:
http://dv4p.com/bsagdsr

WordPress 3.0 jQuery

WordPress Top Plugins

Posting of books reviews will continue on Dev4Press next week with more WordPress and jQuery related books published by Packt Publishing with WordPress Top Plugins (written by Brandon Corbin) and WordPress 3.0 jQuery (written by Tessa Blakeley Silver) both from September 2010.

With each review, once again, Packt will give a free copy of the book for one lucky reader.

WordPress Top Plugins

This book review will be posted on Thursday. Until than, you can find more info about this book on the Pack Publishing website:

https://www.packtpub.com/wordpress-top-plugins/book

WordPress 3.0 jQuery

This is the book review that will follow in approximately 2 weeks. Until than, you can find more info about this book on the Pack Publishing website:

https://www.packtpub.com/wordpress-30-jquery/book

More books…

There will be more Packt books reviewed after these two. In February, Packt will publish jQuery 1.4 Animation Techniques: Beginners Guide, in March, WordPress 3.0 Ultimate Security. There are couple of more interesting books that I look forward reading and reviewing in the next couple of months.

The short answer is: premium support remains as it is. As long as your support account is active, you get support for GD Star Rating plugin, regardless if the version is 1.x or 2.x. I know that this is logical status for the support, but I have been getting some questions lately what will happen when GDSR 2.0 is released, and I want to ensure all current premium support users and future ones, support will cover both versions.

When GDSR 2.0 is released, new sub-forum will be added to separate the topics from old and new. Also, sub-forum for transition purposes will be added with advices and help on migrating to new version. New category for tutorials will be added to separate tutorials also.

Since GDSR 1.9 branch is not going to be developed anymore, there will be one more minor revision soon to fix few minor issues and that’s it. Plugin is compatible with WordPress 3.0, and with WordPress 3.1 for the most part, but that’s it. I don’t plan to make changes to make it fully WP 3.1 compatible, especially when you consider major changes in network mode this WP adds.

If you need to know some timeline in GD Star Rating 2.0 development, so that you can make plans in using the plugin, here is the date list that is not set in stone, but I will do my best to keep to it.

• End of February 2011 => GD Star Rating 2.0 Alpha: core functionality, voting control, JavaScript and styling for rating blocks, partial admin interface
• End of March 2011 => GD Star Rating 2.0 Beta: plugin is done, conversion of data, installer, everything ready for final round of testing
• April or May 2011 => GD Star Rating 2.0: plugin is released to public.

There is a lot of work to be done, and not much free time to do it, so it will take some time. But I think that results will be great and that new plugin will cover most of the things requested in the past year or so. If you have additional support related questions, please, feel free to ask.

And with anything that is popular, when your website starts growing, and getting more and more visitors, attacks will increase and attackers will became more inventive to find different ways to get data from the website, user accounts, delete data or just cause you trouble just fro troubles sake. One post to explain what can go wrong and what you can do to improve security is not going to be enough, so I will not even try to do it with this article. I am preparing series of 6 (or maybe more) tutorials on WordPress Security that will be published every 3-4 days starting on December 14 2010, each one concentrating on a specific security area. Tutorials will cover: hosting environment, files and folders protection, using of htaccess, preventing spam registrations, wordpress specific tips and info about securing plugins and themes (mostly info useful to developers).

If you tried to find plugin for WordPress that can help you with security, you will find out many (too many?) plugins that are usually not enough , so you will end up installing several plugins. In the past 2 weeks I have tested over 20 plugins available and I was really surprised to find out that there isn’t a single plugin I am willing to use on any of my websites full time. Several plugins were completely broken, and one of them I couldn’t even activate and many caused far too many problems if left active. Many plugins were not updated for a while, throwing all sorts of warnings after activation. So, as with many other things I needed for my websites, I am adding all sorts of security features myself to already all powerful GD Press Tools Pro.

For some time now, GD Press Tools Pro has options to fight spam registrations, that is now improved with many new options. With new centralized Security panel that is added this week, plugin will get more and more tools and options in the coming weeks spread over 3-4 revisions. All this will be in Pro version only. Some security related features are available in Lite edition.

So, stay tuned and wait for the comprehensive series of articles on WordPress Security starting in the next couple of days.

My GD Press Tools Pro plugin was used to prevent spam registrations and it did a great job for the most part, preventing over 80% of registration attempts. But, you still have human spamers that can’t be distinguished by the plugin, and there is nothing to do about them.

So, now if you want demo account on xScape.info to test themes and plugins, use the contact form, and select xScape.info Demo as Feedback type, and in the Message part enter exactly why you want test account and what you plan to test. Without that, messages will be ignored.

Portfolio

My portfolio website was neglected over the past year, and I decided to change the theme (it’s now using my eScape theme), and start adding new projects in it again. There will be more changes soon, with several more projects to be added, and some new sections to the website.

Latest project added is App Help, and I will write more about that one soon, because it’s very extensive and advanced website built on WordPress. Few tutorials already added are based on experience of working on App Help, and few more will be added soon.

My Portfolio is located here:
http://portfolio.gdragon.info/

As for the support, nothing is really changed, but I have added new FAQ entries to make refund policies clear, because there were few confusions on that recently. Also, before making any purchase, please read support policy, FAQ and information provided on the purchase pages before deciding to buy any plugin or theme. Despite all plugins and themes being GPL, make sure that you understand how the procedure works, so that we can avoid all future misunderstandings about that. Info about use of auto-updater is expanded also.

So far there were only couple of cases with purchase/refund problems, but it’s good idea to avoid such things in the future. In general, refunds are not available for any product except for few cases that are covered on the FAQ page. If you have any trouble with these rules, please use a contact form and I will respond as soon as possible.

Support Policy:
http://www.dev4press.com/support-policy/
Frequently Asked Questions:
http://www.dev4press.com/faq/
Auto Updater:
http://www.dev4press.com/auto-updater/

All the refund policy changes are valid from today, October 26 2010.

First on the agenda is GD Custom Post Types and Taxonomies Tools. All public functions are now documented. Next plugin on the list will be GD Press Tools and after that xScape theme framework and themes.

GD CP&T Tools Documentation: http://www.dev4press.com/docs/?nav=999

For individual plugins and themes, your commission is 20% and for bundles is 25%. Also, you earn commission for recurring payments for all subscription, membership based purchases. This will ensure that you get payed as long as the subscription license purchased of your affiliate links are active. Affiliate program is handled by ShareIt (all sales on this site go through them also). They will be responsible for sales tracking and sending earned money to you.

We have prepared many banners for Dev4Press and all individual plugins in different sizes: 125×125, 120×240, 200×125, 234×60, 468×60 and 300×250. If you need some other size, please use affiliates contact form and ask for specific banner sizes, and we will make them for you.

To get more info on the program and to get started, visit the page bellow for step by step instructions.

Affiliate Program
http://www.dev4press.com/affiliates/
Affiliate FAQ
http://www.dev4press.com/affiliates/faq/
Affiliate Guidelines
http://www.dev4press.com/affiliates/guidelines/
Affiliate Payments
http://www.dev4press.com/affiliates/payments/

There are only few terms for making reviews:

• Your website must be at least 3 months active.
• Your website must be WordPress related (not exclusive).

If you have such website, please contact us using Contact Form (select Review in Feedback Type field). Include your website URL, and what plugin or theme you would like to review. And you will get:

• Pro version of plugin or theme you can use for review.
• Free licenses (5 or more) for giveaway you can organize for your website readers of the reviews plugin or theme.
• All reviews will be linked from Dev4Press, as part of the Showcase section that will be opened soon.

Also, you can sign up as affiliate and use provided banners for plugins and themes to promote our products and earn 20-25% commission for initial sale and all recurring payments.

So, if you are interested in reviewing plugins or themes, please contact us.

Central Documentation

Central Documentation allows filtering, search and navigation. All documents are classified by products. On the image on the right you can see how the documentation interface looks like.

Entire system is implemented with custom post type for documents, and two custom taxonomies for products and filtering. To make this possible, WordPress 3.0 is installed and GD Custom Posts And Taxonomies Tools Pro to provide visual interface to add these custom elements.

For each document you have several additional elements: version of product document is related to, edition of product (lite, pro, free), star rating and date document is created. At this moment documentation system is fully functional, but it will be improved over time I plan to add comments, but currently there are some problems with WordPress 3.0 and comments for custom post types.

Access to documentation requires active licenses for individual products or products bundle. If you have single theme license, you will have access to xScape Framework documentation too. Documentation will contain filters, actions and functions with all parameters explained, examples, shortcodes and reference links to existing tutorials.

Having good and organized documentation is very important element for quality premium support and is another step in providing best possible support for all our plugins and themes to all premium users.

Leave comments and any suggestions you may have to improve documentation further.

Central Documentation:
http://www.dev4press.com/docs/

GD Custom Posts And Taxonomies Tools:
http://www.dev4press.com/plugins/gd-taxonomies-tools/

As I announced last week, I am working on centralized documentation for all plugins and themes you can find here, and to make that work, I developed a system that uses custom post type and custom taxonomies. Basics of the system are done, and everything is fully functional, and after the upgrade to WP 3.0 is done, I will start adding documents into the system.

WP 3.0 upgrade will be performed today, so at times there is a possibility that website will be down. At this point forum caused most problems to upgrade, but I think I have sorted everything out.

More info will be posted after the upgrade is completed.

Basically, this plugin will improve posting experience with tools to modify the content quickly, add some useful shortcodes and things like that. There is no definitive list of features yet, and this is a good time to let us know what might you need that can be interesting as a part of this new plugin.

Leave all suggestions as comments, and focus on the post/page editing.

On Monday demo website powered by WPMU will be available, and anyone can register and get demo blog to test first (and later any other) theme. You can see how the admin panels work and try any of the settings. Demo website will feature preset demo website for every theme.

Over the next week at least 10 video tutorials will be released to cover major framework usage, and even more tutorials will follow after that. By the end of this month at least 20 tutorials will be online.

baseScape will be available also as a free theme, but with many features stripped from framework. Next theme called photoScape will not be available for free. PhotoScape will be released in next two weeks. For April we plan two more new themes. Also, framework will be updated regularly, and we already have a list of new features that will be worked on in the next two months.

So, the wait is almost over, xScape will be available in less than 72 hours.

Detailed info for the sign up is updated on your account affiliate page. If you have any more problems with the sign up and adding products to your ShareIt affiliate account, please leave a comment I we will try to resolve it.

This way, you will get best possible explanation and on the other hand I am sure that there are other premium users who have same problem and they will also benefit from it. And Dev4Press content will be more and more driven by premium users and that’s exactly how this should work in the first place.

To leave the suggestion for the tutorial, use the General/Suggestions sub-forum (topics can only be accessed by premium users with any purchased license). There are pre-created topics, one for each plugin and you can leave reply to any of them with your suggestion, and very soon after that I will record or write new tutorial.

We have prepared many banners for Dev4Press and all individual plugins in different sizes: 125×125, 120×240, 200×125, 234×60, 468×60 and 300×250. As for the signup details and everything else you first need to create account here. If you already have account, go to your Account dashboard and you will see affiliate link there. You have URL for signing as affiliate, details about the program and links for banners download.

Affiliate program is handled by ShareIt (all sales on this site go through them also). They will be responsible for sales tracking and sending earned money to you. And, you will have continuous earnings for all membership licenses sales. To get started, make account here and go to this page when you are logged in:

http://www.dev4press.com/user/affiliate/

Plugin will be able to perform the update of only Pro plugins, because Free and Lite can already be updated by the WordPress updater. For new upgrade plugin to work, you need API Key (on the profile page on this website). And plugin can update itself also, and will be able to upgrade to beta and nightly builds (depending on your license for a plugin).

First plugin will be added in the next two weeks (and it’s a Pro version of one very important and very popular WordPress plugins). And after that one more developer will join, with 2 or 3 plugins. These plugins will be maintained by their authors, and they will be responsible for providing support for them. Also, these plugins will not be part of Dev4Press plugin bundle license.

There will be some changes on the website to prepare for third party plugins. So, stay tuned, more news on this will be available soon.

First thing that is noticeable after the upgrade is that memory requirements are once again increased, and on all my blogs increase is about 2MB.  And, here is the first negative side of this upgrade, and I don’t mean the memory increase but lack of warning to that effect. There were many discussions on including some kind of warning in this WP so that people are prepared to the fact that they need more memory allocated to PHP. If you run more than 10 plugins (and most blogs do, some have more than 20 or 30 plugins active), memory will easy go over default 32MB, and blogs will crash with out of memory notice. But, on the other side, memory increase is well justified, because WordPress is now some 10% faster than WP 2.8 was. Again, speed for some memory is a good trade of, but memory notice would be nice, because I expect that again we will see a lot of questions in the forums about this memory notice.

Core and plugins upgrade is great. Upgrading multiple plugins at once is great, but it’s not very logical, because it’s on the same panel used for core upgrade, and not at logical place that would be Plugins menu and panel. Hopefully, this will be moved in the next version.

I don’t like some of the changes made to post edit panel. They tried to add more Ajax features, but they are not done well. If you click Save Draft or Publish, loader will be displayed similar to all Ajax operations, but the operation is not done using Ajax at all. Maybe that was the intention, but it’s not working. Taxonomies widgets on this page (both standard tags and custom taxonomies) are behaving strangely. Button Add is not bellow the field living a lot of empty space beside the input box and adding new tags is not always visible.

But the worst problem is scheduled publishing, that on all my blogs have failed. I tried it over and over again, and none of the scheduled posts have been published, and all of them are marked as they have missed the schedule, and you need to do manual publish. This is something that MUST be fixed in the next few days. I tested some previous nightly builds, and they don’t have this problem.

So, overall, WP 2.9 is very good update. If you need scheduler feature, it’s best to wait a while before upgrade, if not upgrade right now. Also, check your PHP memory settings, and increase it to at least 40MB (if you have 10-15 plugins) or to at least 48MB (if you have more plugins than 15).

WordPress doesn’t change much the already established interface created with WP 2.7 and WP 2.8. But, there are number of features that you might find very useful. But, first and most important is that there are many fixes in this release over 2.8 so, the upgrade is at least worthy of that. Here are some of the new features:

• Trash: instead of direct deletion of posts, they are marked as trash. So if you delete something by accident you can restore it.
• Theme templates: for categories, pages and tags based on slugs.
• Image editor: basic operations allowing resize, rotate of uploaded images and more.
• New libraries: updated SimplePie and TinyMCE.
• Embed: direct embedding of different media types in posts and options to expand them using oEmbed.

There are many more things, and you can check full list here.

As for the compatibility of Dev4Press plugin, I can confirm that they are all fully WP 2.9 compatible, and you can safely upgrade your blog, none of our plugins will brake.

I would like to start with the reasons for premium support. Since I already posted about that on official GD Star Rating website, here is the link, so check that post first:

Why Premium Support?: http://www.dv4p.com/gt

So, what you get in the support package for GD Star Rating? First of all, premium tutorials that will be published only here, and only for the users who purchase support package. First 3 video tutorials are coming in the next 5-6 days, and I plan to publish at least one new premium tutorial each week. Support forum is another important feature, and it’s not going to be only for bug reports, but for solving all kinds of problems: using functions, setting plugin, using templates and anything else you might need. And most important is the email support. It is ticket based, and you get 5 tickets after you purchase the support package, and after each recurring billing is processed (3 months) you get one more ticket. You can read more about email support on the Support Policy page.

If you have any question, don’t hesitate to ask.