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 95% done, and front end is 60% 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.

Export / Import

With 0.7.5, plugin is already usable and most of the features completed. One rendering template is missing (related posts), and advanced filtering is not done yet, widgets are in starting stages. These missing features will be added in the next 10 days, and by the end of the month we will be very close to stable 1.0.0 release.

Import and export tools are added (image on the right), users reviews templates finished, once uploaded, images will be attached to products/post also, allowing you easier manipulation and reusing them in the product review, default styling is imporved, few new tags and directives for rendering added.

Over the weekend, plugin images, descriptions, video overview will be added, and in the middle of the next week, 0.8 version can be expected.

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.

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/

Meta box: Tags

New GD Custom Posts And Taxonomies Tools 3.2 Pro is almost ready, and this new release candidate is here to make sure that bugs are squashed before the release. All planned features are in this one including support for the new tagger API’s in the post editor meta boxes.

As you can see on the image on the right, 4 tagger API’s are supported, and on the Settings panel you have options to add API keys for Alchemy and Zemanta so they can be used.

Few more minor bugs are fixed, and few more things changed. Plugin stable 3.2 version will be released in the next couple of days. Please report any bugs or problems you may find in this version.

More about GD Custom Posts And Taxonomies Tools:

http://d4p.me/gdtt

GD Press Tools 4

Ultimate administration plugin GD Press Tools Pro will soon get new major release. GD Press Tools Pro 4.0 will get new interface, many new features and tools, updated existing features, full support for multisite/network WordPress mode… Here is an overview of this upcoming release.

I still don’t have exact launch date for the new version, but it will take another 2-4 weeks to be completed. Right now I still have to complete 2-3 new features that will require some time for testing. I plan to release a beta version in the next 2 weeks. Also, some features will work only with new WP 3.1. Here is the overview of new tools:

1. File Manager: In many cases is useful to quickly edit some files in the installation, delete some files or upload new files without using FTP client or server control panel managers. In network mode, only super admin can use it.
2. Advanced Debuger: Built into the admin bar, will open popup that displays SQL queries, all WordPress hooks, main WordPress objects and other options that support third party integration and adding other debug info.
3. File System Backup: Backing up all files on your website will be available. You can backup full installation, wp-content folder or something else. It works in network mode, and individual blogs can backup only own files folder. There will be predefined options to prepare backup for easy restore.
4. Enhancing HTAccess: This time, not only security features, but some very useful snippets that can be added to .htaccess and used to optimize and speedup your website.

Most other features will be updated and improved, plugin will require WordPress 3.0 to work and all features will support network mode. This will be first and for now only plugin that has full and detailed support for backup of files and database in multisite environment for full website or only individual sites.

If you have any suggestion about the new and existing features and how to improve them, please leave a comment.

I will post teasers about new version in the next couple of weeks so you can see how the development is progressing and how the plugin will look and work.

Also, here is the promo coupon that will give you 40% discount for this plugin (for yearly recurring payments standard and developer licenses only): GDPRESSTOOLS4. Coupon is active now, and can be used until March 1 2011.

HTaccess Control Tab

There are several HTAccess modification included in this version, and more will be added later:

• Prevent browsing of the WordPress installation folders (easier and more reliable than adding empty index files to all folders).
• Deny submitting comments for all request that have no referer set (most of the spam comments are submited this way).
• Prevent any access to files in the list (wp-config.php, .htaccess and anything else you want to add).
• Prevent website access to all requests with user agents in the list (improves website performance, since this requests will be stopped by web server).
• Limit request body size (limits upload also, and can be used to minimize effects of DDoS attacks).

Security Status

Modification switches are on the top, with two blocks where you can specify files for not allowing access and list of user agents to ban. Last part of the tab shows the HTAccess file content.

Status panel now also shows recommendation for the HTAccess modifications. If you don’t have .htaccess file in the website/WordPress root folder, you need to create it yourself. If you are using permalinks in WP, most likely you will have it since it’s used to make rewriting work.

Other changes in 3.9 include network admin improvements like a widget for network dashboard, number of minor fixes and changes.

GD Press Tools Pro 4.0 will be dropping support for WordPress 2.8 and WordPress 2.9. Right now, there are a lot of ‘dirty’ parts of plugin due to old versions of WP, and supporting all that has became a real challenge. Also, adding new features with all that is very complicated and cleanup must be done. 3.9 will be branched so that it can be fixed if needed and you can expect at least one or two minor revisions.

Work on 4.0 has already started, and as the things are looking right now it will be released in the first (or second) week of January 2011. Many things will be rewritten, backup will get file system backup, there will be more security features, new debug features and more.

More about GD Press Tools Pro:
http://dv4p.com/gdpt

New templates are for single post and single page. They have additional option to change position of the meta block. If you need logo that is wider than default space allows, and you don’t need so much space for menu, you can change width of the title block. Option in located on the Theme Settings -> General -> Title.

Theme has updated xScape 1.5.2.2 with latest bug fixes.

Promo coupon

Starting now, until the end of November 2010 you can get 40% discount for xScape Theme Club Membership (includes all current and future themes) and GD Affiliate Center plugin (both with yearly recurring payments only). For this discount you need to use coupon: XSCAPE15.

xScape Theme Club:
http://www.dev4press.com/themes/xscape/purchase/
GD Affiliate Center:
http://www.dev4press.com/plugins/gd-affiliate-center/editions/

And more

To see the theme and framework in action, visit the WordPress MultiSite powered demo website and get your own blog to see who the framework back-end works:

Demo Site:
http://xscape.info/

Sidebar Tabs

xScape Theme Framework got new widget: Recent Comments, that will support similar settings to Recent Posts. It’s built inside the default tabbed widget, and new version of that default widget is on the image on the right.

xScape also allows changing of fonts for all themes, and for some (like newsScape there will be option to changes base font size and content font sizes. Share This module got new sets this time using hover from monochrome to color. Many things are fixed in networks icons rendering and several widgets are also improved.

newsScape options are much expanded from first Beta release allowing some very interesting layouts for all types of pages. To make things even better, by default some of the blocks are not even included in default layout (second sidebar and footer widgets area)! Styling for theme is cleaned up, and the only options missing right now is to set custom design colors. So, get ready for the release of newsScape that will be available on Sunday evening.

Test the newsScape, and try them with a free test drive, for both front end and back end before deciding what is right for you. If you find any problems, please leave a comment.

Demo Loader: http://xscape.info/load/
Demo Home: http://xscape.info/

New layouts block settings

xScape changes

With more options added to layout manager blocks, a change was needed to better display all the elements without need for scrolling. So, the blocks can now show options in two columns, where needed. New global settings are added to control adding of edit post links. Networks settings are expanded with Last.fm and LinkedIn.

Uploading of files is improved, and names of files are cleaned to avoid problems with saving them. xScape will remove characters from file names that can’t be used on different file systems (Linux for the most part). Some default settings are changed a bit, more descriptions added where needed. Facebook module and Like Button have a new option used to display or hide faces of the people who liked the post.

Several things are fixed including problem with related posts in WordPress older than 3.0, inserting CSS styles with quotes, and problems with title changing colors on some themes (eScape was affected).

Released themes

All existing themes are updated with new framework, missing translation strings, improved templates to support new options, style fixes and other minor improvements. lightScape also got new release only days after previous 1.1 was released, also including updated framework and few more templates related changes.

newsScape Beta, Front Page

newsScape Beta

Beta version of newsScape is available for testing on xScape.info website. Theme will be released on Wednesday or Thursday, depending on bugs found in the next few days. So far there are only few things that need to be completed: more base styles, additional footers area, monochrome social icons, testing of second sidebar and footer widgets area.

Theme has 2 different front page content layouts, 2 different single post and page layouts, many options to control layouts. By default theme uses only sidebar on the right, but, using layouts manager you can add second sidebar and footer widgets area.

Please, test the theme, and report any problems (and there are few things to be done still), and I will fix the issues by the time theme is released.

More themes

Test all themes, and try them with a free test drive, for both front end and back end before deciding what is right for you:

Demo Loader: http://xscape.info/load/
Demo Home: http://xscape.info/

When you create new post type or taxonomy, plugin will check name against the list of restricted keywords to ensure that there will be no conflict with default WordPress features. I accidentally create taxonomy AUTHOR, and it wasn’t working properly because WP uses same word for rewriting author pages. With new version of the plugin, these things will not happen.

New panel Tools is added, and has one tool: Import Terms. From plain text file you can import terms for selected taxonomy. Taxonomy can be hierarchical. In the info folder with the plugin you have a two example files for both flat list and hierarchical list. List can contain existing terms, they will be skipped (or used to identify hierarchy). Some things in the interface are improved and cleaned up. There will be some more changes soon to change some of the strings and make the more consistent.

I got question from many user of Lite edition about adding some of the Pro edition features into Lite edition. I say one more time: that’s not going to happen. Lite version will be maintained, fixed when needed and updated to support new versions of WordPress. But no new features will be added. All that will be for Pro edition only.

Please, test new features and report problems in the forum or in comments.

GD Custom Posts And Taxonomies Tools:
http://dv4p.com/gdtt

For drop down to work with all taxonomies, an existing function for dropdown for categories was not too flexible, so I added a new function that improves on the original one. Main widget class is also improved to handle some of the new options. And, both Pro and Lite got the same updates.

Next week WordPress 3.0 RC1 will be released, and in about the same time this plugin will get major releases. Pro version 2.0, and Lite version 1.2 will have few more custom post options, various small improvements and code cleanup. But, Pro version will get another widget allowing display of drop down boxes for all taxonomies in a single widget as an ultimate taxonomies navigation for websites that use many taxonomies.

Post Editor Tool

All fixes from Lite are also in this one, but there are some interesting features added. On the image on the right. If you decide to purchase Pro edition, you will be able to access already posted video tutorial about this feature and how can you use it to add terms from the actual post content and to make them into hyper links.

All Pro editions have Roadmap and suggestions page and you can see what’s ‘cooking’, and again if you purchase membership license you will get access to Suggestions page and influence the development.

Plugin Page: http://www.dev4press.com/plugins/gd-taxonomies-tools/

This version fixes few bugs from previous release and improves on some functions. Also, we added info files with functions references and other useful info. Plugin can be updated from WordPress.org, or you can download it from this website.

Plugin Page: http://www.dev4press.com/plugins/gd-taxonomies-tools/
Free Download: http://www.dev4press.com/free-downloads/