Finally, everything is ready to start with development for GD Press Tools Pro 5.0. There are many important changes and new features planned for this plugin, and it will take some time to finish it all considering number of core changes, rewritten modules and many new features planned.
Ever since first Pro version of GD Press Tools is released, plugin has been growing with features, but not much is done to change the way it looks and how easy are some of the features easy to use. Now is the good time to make some very important changes and make this plugin even better than it is. New plugin will require WordPress 3.6 or newer, and will no longer support older WP versions. This will be inline with practice to support up to 6 major WordPress versions with each plugin.
One will be split into Three
Most important change is that GD Press Tools Pro will be split into 3 plugins. Main plugin will remain with GD Press Tools name, and the other plugins are right now nameless. All security related features will be removed from GD Press Tools and they will be part of the new security related plugin. New security plugin will have many more features than current GD Press Tools and it would be quite inefficient to merge everything inside GD Press Tools. Current security features in GD Press Tools are only 20% of features new security plugin will have. And there will be one plugin to merge all SEO related features. More info on both plugins will be released at the later date.
What is important for all GD Press Tools Pro users is that all users with purchased GD Press Tools Pro licenses active at the moment of release of GD Press Tools Pro 5.0 and new plugins, will get new 5.0 version as usual, but they will also get both security and SEO plugins without any extra purchase. Dev4Press Plugins Pack licenses have access to all plugins including new ones. GD Press Tools Pro license that were obtained as gifts are not eligible for free license upgrade to include these 2 extra plugins.
Interface changes for 5.0
New plugin version will use same interface as in GD bbPress Toolbox 3.x. This means that all plugins panels and options will be completely reorganized. This will take some time to adjust to new look and new panels. Also, plugin will have more modular structure and that will reflect on the interface. I am still finishing plans for this reorganization and how much modules will plugin have and what features will end where.
Current Settings panels will be mostly removed. Features and settings on these will be moved to different modules depending on the settings and plugin will have Tweaks panel with better organization.
Current development status
Right now, interface is mostly ready and new plugin is reorganized into modules. During November plan is to finish new Sitemap XML module, Tweaks (former Settings) module, Robots, Meta Robots and Auto Tagger module. After that, it will be time for Backup and Debug tools (December and January). When all modules are completed, plugin will begin to take shape. Plan is to have monthly announcements about the development progress. Right now it is hard to predict when everything will be done, but I will have better information after I progress with plugin modules development.
