Dev4Press has a lot of plugins to offer, but some of them are somewhat outdated and need rewriting to make them easier to use, maintain and expand in the future. Changes this and next year will affect many of the current plugins.
Currently, most of the Dev4Press plugins use Dev4Press Library at its core, with a few older plugins stuck on the legacy version of the library that can’t be directly upgraded to the newer versions. That also means that those older plugins have outdated interfaces, use older styles of PHP classes implementation without namespaces, and are harder to maintain and upgrade, especially with the newer PHP and WordPress versions coming at the rates they do.
Because of that, the big plan for this and next year is to replace all these old plugins with new versions that will be rebuilt and based on the new version of the shared code library, using modern PHP classes and namespaces implementation and getting new features too.
I have started rewriting GD Security Toolbox Pro, GD Security Headers Free, GD SEO Toolbox Pro, and GD Press Tools Pro. Down the line, GD Mail Queue will also be included in the rewrite process. These plugins will be replaced with new plugins; they will be modular, based on Features implementation similar to GD bbPress Toolbox Pro. I am still thinking about the GD Content Tools Pro, but for now, there are no plans to make any changes to that plugin, maybe next year or the year after, depending on the ongoing work.
A new free plugin called CoreActivity will be released for activity logging. This plugin will replace logging features found in Security and Tools plugins. New plugins will then depend on CoreActivity without duplicating logging. CoreActivity will be a completely free plugin (with no Pro version available!), expandable, and updated often to include as many events for logging as possible. The official announcement for this new plugin is coming out later this week, and the plugin’s Beta version will be available for download.
A new Security plugin will be next, replacing GD Security Toolbox Pro and GD Security Headers Free plugins. It will have Lite and Pro editions, with many features available in Pro only. SEO plugin will follow, again available as Lite and Pro. Finally, a plugin to replace GD Press Tools Pro will follow, very likely to be split into two smaller plugins, but that is not yet finalized. The new Security plugin will be released in July 2023, with a new SEO plugin after that, in late summer or early Autumn. The work on the Security plugin is coming along and is currently 40% done.
All these plans are provisional, and I will do my best to keep the development on track, but delays can happen.
