The best administration add-on plugin for WordPress has just got much better. GD Press Tools 3.8 is very important release that brings several bug fixes, many changes and improvements and also many new features including backup panel, Google Page Rank, security improvements…
There are a lot of changes in this version, and for a full change log check out the plugin changelog page. And if you don’t have the license for Pro version already, check out the bottom of the post for 20% discount coupon.
Important: New backup system is tested, but I expect some bugs to be found due to wide range of changes, so please report any problems you find, and include version of WordPress, use of network (multi site) mode and what you tried to do exactly. With so many changes in a single version, bugs are unavoidable. But, I will fix them as soon as possible.
Improvements
Plugins dashboard widget has a new element displayed: Google Page Rank. It will be refreshed every week, since Google is not updating public values of Page Rank that often. Great deal of code is optimized and cleaned, old and unused code removed, some functions merged. All forms for all plugin panels are now secured using nonce protection. Maintenance mode is moved to separate class and improved with new fixes and filters for exceptions to the mode.
Old user levels used for displaying panels are replaced with capabilities, and defaults are added to administrator roles. There are options to control what is available to which user role. Because of that, a lot of old level selecting settings are removed, so check Access tab on the Settings panel.
Global settings got new panel called Multisite. Currently there is only one options: prevent access to wp-signup.php, and redirect to home page. This is useful if you want to prevent creation of new blogs and prevent this file being loaded at all.
Backup Panel
Database panel is now split into two panels. One is still called Database and it can be used to review the database tables and database tools, including mySQL settings. Backup is now moved to a new panel called Backup. New backup will have only database backup moved, but with 4.0 you will be able to backup whole website (all or selected files and folders). New backup files will be created as zip archives, so your server needs to have zlib extension for PHP enabled. Backup will be able to move files to CDN also. First CDN that is supported with this version is RackspaceCloud.
Backup allows you to create single backup with multiple tasks, and it works with normal WordPress installation and Multi site. Depending on the mode, administrator can backup whole website, individual blogs, only shared network tables or tables you select. Options you see depend on user role.
Before 4.0 is released, CDN services Amazon S3 and VPS.NET will be supported also, and other CDN’s will follow. In the next few minor versions log files for backup files will be added with all details about the process. Email confirmation emails will be improved also. New jobs tab will have a list of all cron jobs with backups. There are more ideas for all this, but it will take some time to do it all.
Future Versions
Next major version will drop support for WordPress 2.8. That will most likely be GD Press Tools 4.0. According to WordPress.org number of WP 2.8 installations is going down, and it’s getting difficult to support it. So, I recommend that you upgrade to newer version of WordPress. GD Press Tools 2.6 Lite will be released sometime next week.
Promo coupon
Starting now, and until the end of September, a coupon is available that will give you 20% discount. Coupon can be used with GD Press Tools and Dev4Press Bundle purchases. This coupon is: GDPT38PRO.
