jQuery 1.9.1 (currently in WordPress 3.6 development builds) removes some core functions that many plugins rely on, and that includes live() method for event binding, and all other bind related functions. In jQuery 1.7.1 a new method is added: on(). So, we need to have all plugins jQuery code updated to use on() instead of live() and bind(). jQuery 1.7.1 is shipped with WordPress 3.3. And because of that, all plugins will get updated jQuery code that will require jQuery 1.7.1 and with that will require WordPress 3.3.

Currently, there was a plan to change requirements for some plugins to WP 3.3, and that plan will go ahead earlier than planned (GD Products Center and GD bbPress Toolbox). And some plugins already require WP 3.3 (GD Custom Posts And Taxonomies Tools 4.1 Pro that will be released this week). But, now all that is changed, and there will many updates during April to stay ahead of WP 3.6 launch. It is very possible that WP 3.6 is not going to be released until late May, depending on how many delays there will be.

During March there are 3 releases planned:

1. GD Products Center 1.2.1 (March 26), it will still work WordPress 3.2.
2. GD Custom Posts and Taxonomies Tools 4.1 (March 27), it will require WordPress 3.3.
3. GD bbPress Toolbox 1.5 (March 31), it will require WordPress 3.3.

In April more updates are coming, all will require WordPress 3.3:

1. xScape Theme Framework 1.9.2 (middle of April).
2. GD Products Center 1.2.2 (in late April).
3. GD aZon Fusion 0.9.7 (in early April).
4. GD Affiliate Center 1.4 (in late April).
5. GD Simple Widgets 2.2.1 (middle of April).
6. GD Press Tools 4.4.2 (in late April or early May).
7. All 3 bbPress free plugins (first week of April).
8. Other free plugins that rely on jQuery (in late April).

Some of these plugins all rely on jQueryUI, and they will also get latest available jQueryUI.

And in the future, plan is to limit support for maximum of 4 versions of WordPress. Once WordPress 3.7 gets in development, minimum required WordPress for plugins and themes will shift to WP 3.4, or WP 3.5 (for some plugins, depending on what they need or do).

My suggestion is to make sure that other plugins you use are also ready for the WordPress 3.6 transition, since now you need to worry about jQuery too, and I think that a lot of plugins will not be ready for such upgrade. Try to reach to developers of plugins you use and remind them of the upcoming changes to WordPress so they will have enough time to prepare for it.

GD Products Center 1.2 will have many new features:

• compare box as a replacement for widget
• companies support with brands and sellers (using post types)
• use of Font Awesome for font icons and adding them to properties
• allow properties to be used for archive filtering order
• direct theme support: TwentyTwelve

Updates and improvements list includes:

• updated libraries: qtip2, jQueryUI, gdr2
• improvements: building of the main query object
• improvements: loading of CSS and JS files
• improvements: generating titles
• improvements: compare page grid
• improvements: product types panel
• improvements: creating of missing templates
• modified registration of product types
• changed values for archive order filter
• better organization of settings panel
• product properties no longer display empty groups

GD Products Center 1.2 will include many bug fixes:

• creating new product leaves pages information empty
• detection of available product types theme templates
• wp_title function improper detection of page type
• duplicated cache rebuild when saving product type and taxonomy
• minor problems with some shortcode parsing

New version is few days away, and as soon as the testing is done, plugin will be ready. If nothing goes wrong, that should be Monday or Tuesday.

Menu caching now takes into account user roles, and it will stored cached version of each menu for each role. You need to enable caching of menus from Global Settings panel. This will lower the number of queries executed and time spend processing especially for complex menus (like the menus on Dev4Press, it takes 25 queries less with menu caching on each page).

bbPress 2.2 added some important changes that are now supported by bbPress module in xScape. All libraries are updated to improve compatibility with different versions of WordPress. Fixed problems include few issues with bbPress (wrong order of some templates loading), some issues with sidebars initialization and few issues with the admin interface.

If you notice any more problems, please report them in the forums.

Creating new post type or taxonomy is enhanced with limiter applied automatically to name for the object allowing only supported characters. Both are expanded to support new labels added in WP 3.4, so if you need, update your existing post types and taxonomies with that missing label. Many things are improved in JavaScript code.

As for the bugs, few of them are fixed: widget with invalid taxonomy selected, duplicated calls in some filtering functions, taxonomy name not editable with no terms in database and problem with generating function for post type and taxonomy for display.

Module Index, will be released on Monday (first version will be 0.9 Beta). Over the weekend module will be added to Dev4Press website, so you can see it in action in some areas (more on that when released). Dev4Press Updater will be updated also, to get support for modules. Support forums will get new set of forums for modules support.

As always, if you find any problems, please report them in the forums.

Menu Archives Metabox

WordPress Navigation Menus are expanded with new meta box for adding post types archives links into the menus. It is simple to use, selected post types from list and add them to the menu. You can modify each menu item later. Only public post types that have archives will be in the list.

With first module coming out soon (in October), plugin is expanded with hooks to allow modules to modify and add features, support own controls. Post types and taxonomies editors support new modules panel for additional options modules might need to add. In the same time, several bugs with interface are fixed. Saving post type and taxonomies has additional validation to check and cleanup values entered for query variable and custom slugs.

Custom fields got several major improvements. Text field now can use regular expressions or masks for data entering, with several predefined regexes and masks. Each custom field has settings for limiting access to custom field values editing to specified user roles or users with specified capabilities. Same thing is done for whole meta boxes. Also, filters are added to control access from code.

Custom Fields Editor

Plugin also includes latest jQueryUI 1.8.23 and new gdr2 library 2.7.9.

Due to the number of major changes, please test this version and let me know if there are any issues. I will get to fixing them as soon as possible (as always).

Before we go on, here is the reminder for the article published yesterday about upcoming WordPress:
What will we get with WordPress 3.4?

This list is based on the features requested by WordPress community, and things I consider important. This features are in circulation for over a year now, and still most of them are not even mentioned in the future development plans. Problem with most of these features is that they need much more time to do, and current quick development cycles core team insist on are simply not long enough to make these things happen.

• Replacing outdated and no longer maintained ThickBox with jQueryUI Dialog. This is actually something that was in works, and from what I have seen, it should be ready for the next WP 3.5. ThickBox popups are very complicated to control and they lack many features that jQueryUI Dialog popups can do. Replacing them would be great. But, that will also cause all sorts of problems for plugins developers, because most of the code using ThickBox will not be compatible with new popups. Colorbox is also a good way to go to make popups, but I would prefer jQueryUI approach, considering  how much WP relies on jQueryUI already.
• Custom post types posts relationships. This is very, very important feature that will move WordPress in the field of full-fledged CMS systems. Right now, you can’t connect posts directly and with more and more popularity custom post types gain, this is a very important addition. There are several plugins for this, all implementing this differently, but this is something that must be in the WordPress core. This would need additional database table for bridging posts.
• Meta data for taxonomies terms. There was some talk about this, but it was always dismissed when plans for next WordPress were made. Right now all data types in WordPress have meta fields (users, posts, comments) with the exception of terms. It would be very beneficial to have those. This also would require another database table.
• Improved media library. This can be found on most WordPress wish lists on the Internet. I don’t have too many complaints to Media Library, but there are many things that can be improved, including attaching one image/file to more than one post. Other important improvements would include: user controlled folder structure for storing files (not only dates based as it is now), with improved URL rewriting rules that can hide wp-content from the URL. Also, real galleries implementation would be of great benefit for media library.
• Shared resources between sites in multisite. It would be of great benefit to have central media library with assets and images that all multisites can use (logos for instance). Only super admins get to control that, but any site admin can use those resources. Beyond files, sharing can be done for taxonomy terms, maybe even pages and posts to some extent. This can be useful if you have same Terms And Conditions page that any site in the network can use as its own.
• Improved posts management. Right now, posts lists on the admin side are real pain to use when you have large website with thousands of posts. Changing category for hundreds of posts at the time is impossible. We need better system that would allow simpler and more powerful filtering on that page and operations that go beyond current, flawed bulk operations (if you want to bulk edit 10 or 15 posts, you can wait good minute or two before you can do anything, and some browsers can freeze with bulk edit).
• New Taxonomies Terms management. This current is very bad, and if we get meta data for terms, this current interface must be replaced with something that is actually usable for website with large number of taxonomies and terms.
• Real search. Maybe the worst thing in WordPress is absolutely useless search feature. There is no need to explain how bad it is, and how much we need something useful to search posts. We need full text indexing, some search operators, easy set filters for post type, custom fields or taxonomies terms. There are some plugins for this, but this is a feature that should be in the core.
• Remove Akismet from core distribution. Akismet is a commercial plugin, and for most websites, it must be purchased to use. Bundling it with WordPress core is not fair to all the other commercial plugins developers. Considering that many users prefer solutions that work on site only with no remote servers involvement, there are better solutions that Akismet, and also free solutions.

And what we should not see in future WordPress version (for a while at least):

1. We don’t really need new core themes. TwentyTen is great, and TwentyEleven is awful. I would like to see TwentyTen as HTML5 theme and be done with it. From what I have seen of TwentyTwelve, I am not impressed.
2. No more cosmetic admin side changes. We need real changes to posts lists panel, taxonomies terms pages, leave the rest of WordPress admin as it is. It looks great as it is now.

With few teams working only on these features, I think (based on earlier development cycles) that these would take 9 to 10 months (maybe a year) to implement and test properly. Also, having longer beta testing period for it would be beneficial to convince larger group of users to switch to new version when it gets released. And I am sure that powerful set of features would be the best incentive for adopting new WordPress.

What do you think about these features? Would you prefer to wait longer for a WordPress that comes with most of these things, than to waste time on small updates as we have now? Let me know with a comment.

Users with new GD Press Tools versions reported some issues when GD Affiliate Center was active, and this was due to older gdr2 library and few buggy functions in that old version. This is now all OK, and latest library is included. Compatibility with new jQuery 1.7.1 that is part of WordPress 3.3 is fixed and latest jQueryUI included.

Demo Website:
http://www.gdaffiliatecenter.com/
About Plugin:
http://www.dev4press.com/gd-affiliate-center/

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 85% done. This version includes complete data saving process, and it has been changed from previous versions. Some of the old data will be lost due to the format changes.

New filter example

New plugin version is ready and we are getting close to implementing all planned features for 1.0 release. This time, focus is on filtering in searching that includes use of product properties. Example of the filter for the product archive is displayed on the image on the right. At this moment, not every property type can be used for filtering, and even when everything is done, some fields will not be usable. Right now, property types that support filtering are: select (normal, radio or check), boolean, resolution. Units and dimensions are coming in next version. Also, only one value can be selected, but in the final 1.0 plugin will use multi selection controls.

To help with filtering, plugin creates index tables in the database. Plugin has a tool for reindexing. New beta supports new context help model in WordPress 3.3. Also, many more minor changes, updates and fixes are included with this version, including updated jQueryUI and gdr2 libraries. Also, some visual elements are now updated to latest specification used for all other Dev4Press Pro plugins. About page is also added.

One more features is added to the list based on suggestions from users: integration with bbPress 2.0 plugin to assign topic to a product and integration. Hopefully, this would be possible to do for the next beta or maybe final release. I would like to see suggestions on layouts to have built in for the archives, single products and compare page. Right now there are several templates for each of these (only one for compare), but I will add as many more as needed.

Plugin Test Drive

If you want to try out the plugin before deciding on buying, use the contact form to request demo website set up for test drive. There you can try out all our plugins and themes.

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.

Resources

Theme Templates Integration:
http://www.dev4press.com/2011/tutorials/plugins/gd-products-center/theme-templates-integration/
Product Type Editor:
http://www.dev4press.com/2011/tutorials/plugins/gd-products-center/product-type-editor/

Plugin Info

Planned Features:
http://www.dev4press.com/2011/blog/development/planned-features-for-gd-products-center/
Plugin Information:
http://www.dev4press.com/plugins/gd-products-center/
Editions & Purchase:
http://www.dev4press.com/plugins/gd-products-center/editions/