After several minor revisions, now its time again to get deep into a longer development cycle that will lead to another major revision for GD Press Tools. 4.1 development is starting soon, and read on to find out what will be included in that version and when to expect it.
On Monday, GD Press Tools 4.0.9 will be released with few more bug fixes and also some minor new features. Most important new feature is addition to the admin bar control and new toggle tab added to it allowing to show and hide the admin bar. You can see this on the image on the right. You can control position of the tab and default status for both admin and blog side, so you can have admin bar hidden when page is loaded.
Now to 4.1. Based on requests and suggestions I got in the past couple of weeks, I have created a list of features that will be added in 4.1. This is not final list, and maybe some more things will be added, this is just a current status.
- Integration into Admin Bar: some of the most important plugin options can be added to Admin Bar for quick access.
- Backup restore script: finally, you will be able to restore backup to another location or another server. A simple to use script will be available for this purpose. Process will be simple: select the backup file, set database access data, and script will unpack the archive with files and database, and it will execute the database. After that is done, script will modify wp-config.php with new database access parameters. There will be some restrictions (as it is to be expected), but process will be really simple and easy to perform.
- Actions database logging: plugin will be able to log into database wide selection of actions and operations about sent emails, login and registrations and more. This will be useful for analyzing the website activity and can be used to generate activity streams for users.
- Improved backup panel: this will be fully reworked to allowing more flexible tasks creation and editing. I still don’t know exactly what will be done here, but I have few mockups for new interface and new operations that plugin will support.
Development on 4.1 will start once GD Posts and Taxonomies Tools 3.0 is released (expected in about 2 weeks). I expected that the work on GD Press Tools 4.1 will take about 2-3 weeks, and I will release couple of beta versions for testing purposes. Plans for 4.2 are still not completed, but they will include SEO module (parts of that maybe end in 4.1, depending on time to do it). As always, all suggestions and welcome.
