Yep. Last night I made version 0.8 of TDO Mini Forms (a WordPress Plugin) available (download it now from WordPress.org). It contains a major new feature, the ability to upload files. I’ve promised this a while, so I’m glad to finally be able to deliver it. I also sneaked into two other new features; tagging and some category support.
The category support currently only allows a user to select one category not several. It’s a start. Allowing a user to select more than one requires creating my own internal version of wp_dropdown_categories(). This way I was able to release “something”.
I hope the new upload feature does what people need. If it doesn’t, please tell me. Uploading works like this. BTW the storage area should be somewhere not public, TDO Mini Forms will control who can download file. This is to prevent your site from becoming the next illegal file-sharing site without you know.
A user must first upload files before submission. These files are stored in a temporary directory, normally under either their username or IP (if not logged in). If they are not moved in an hour, they will be deleted. Once the files are uploaded, the user can then submit his post where they get moved out of the temporary directory and into another directory for that post. If the post is deleted, so are the files. There is little or no management required to handle uploads. Files associated with a post that is draft (not approved) can only be downloaded by the admins (so they can preview the content). Once the post is published (approved) the files can be downloaded by everyone. The Upload Files widget also gives a number of options. Files can be automatically added as links or images to the post content. They can also optionally be added as a WordPress attachment to the post or the link can be added as a Custom Field. I also added an option to allow a command to be run, once the file is claimed for a post. You could use this to run a virus scanner automatically for example. I was using the unix command “stat” to get more detailed info about the file. The command output gets added to the admin email automatically. You can see it in action on the demo site!
I plan to take a little break from TDO Mini Forms. I have another project I need to get back to (Reboot!) and right now with our four month old baby and our demanding three year old toddler, it’s the best I can do to support one personal project at a time. However, if there are bugs or other fixes required, I will release new versions as appropriate. Of course, if you feel like donating you can help encouraging me back (but do note, I’m doing this plugin for free anyway).
What’s next for TDO Mini Forms? More widgets I think. Improvements for existing widgets like quicktags for post content and selecting multiple categories. New widgets like URL submission and Custom Fields. Any and all ideas are welcome (just drop a comment or head over to the forum).
This is my current TODO list.
- Allow moderators append a message to the approved/rejected notification
- Allow admins to modify messages to user for…
- Submitted post awaiting moderation
- Submitted post automatically published
- Banned IP, Banned user and other insufficient privileges messages
- Multiple copies of the same widget – not applicable to all widgets but a generic widget, say like a descriptive text, this would be very useful.
- Widget Manager Menu
- Info about loaded widgets
- Disable loaded widgets?
- Add/select custom styles for form
- Multiple form support – some day, in the far future…
- Edit post support – actually quite possible though how to support unregistered users?
- AJAX support – maybe not
- Spam Protection – integration with Aksimet? This will only cover post-content though. Is spam a problem yet?
- Force Preview – user must preview first before submission
- Allow newly submitted posts be set to “Post ready for review” (WordPress 2.3 feature) or alternatively also include “Post ready for review” in the moderation screens too.
- A “manage download” menu (like manage users and IPs)
- Some general improvements on widgets including documentation on creating your own.
Anything in particular you’d like to see? Ideas? feedback?
Comments (49)
Great job! looking forward to trying it! Custom fields is deff the feature I’d vote to get in next!!
Tremendous. We will install and check it out. Thanks so much!
-Dave
wow, you know what I would love to have too? Thumbnailing of the uploaded images, with a link to an attachment page. Also, some image information would be great (file type, size) E-mail or IM me if you want ‘encouragement’ to put this at the forefront of your plans
Thanks for the donation Adam!
Actually the file type and size are stored with the post but kept private. So you can access them if needs be. Try:
As for Thumbnailing… hmmm. I kind of danced around this with the file uploading. You can have the uploaded file be added as an attachment to the post, but it doesn’t automatically insert it in the post content. Also the attachment is for the download link, not the actually file so WordPress can’t generate a thumbnail for it. To use WordPress attachment feature correctly, you’d have to upload files to a public location (which opens your site to abuse). I’ll have another look at it… there might be a way around it, at least to use WordPress’ built in Thumbnail generation. And also it would be good to have an option to automatically add a link to the attachment page in the post.
something interesting / odd : submitted images don’t show up in the RSS feed.
Submission through don’t work on pages/post pages/ archives/ tag pages… other than homepage.
ver 08
wp 23
I get the white page and error “TDOMF: Bad data submitted”
… through [?php tdomf_the_form(); ?] dont…
system ate the code in the last comment
the system ate the fragment with the php code
Hi zazik, could you try switching to the default or classic wordpress theme and seeing if you can submit from pages/post/archives etc.?
Also, does your theme use “get_header”? If it doesn’t, then TDOMF shouldn’t work, but it’s quite easy to get it to work. It’s odd that it works with tdomf_the_form template tag though.
Hi adam, are you sure that images don’t show in RSS feed? I just checked the demo site and they do appear.
@mark
You’re absolutely correct, the problem must have been on my server’s end.
About the thumbnail and public / private issue, perhaps your plug in could pass the attachment along to the wordpress thumnailer / upload directory when it’s approved?
Yes, I was thinking something like that. The only reason I’ve done it the way it is, is because I wanted to control if you can access a file depending on if the post is draft or published. What you could do is, if the post is published, it gets moved to wp-content/uploads (like normally WordPress uploads).
Right, I’m looking at how full my tdomf upload directory is getting already (a folder for each post?) and I can see it getting out of hand pretty quickly, as there’s usually about 50-100 submissions a day on my site, with images attached. Thank you, thank you for making this plug in and releasing it right as I needed it
I was previously doing all this by hand, which was tedious at best.
I checked on default theme, works.
Hi Adam,
I did some playing around with the WordPress attachment stuff. I have it now that it does properly generate a thumbnail if the upload is an image. I added some options to automatically include the thumbnail in the post. You can try it using the development branch. I hope its what you are looking for.
As for a folder for each post, it was that or appending the post id to the file-name. Is the number of folders a problem?
Hi zazik, then it sounds like your theme doesn’t use “get_header()” template tag on the page, single, archives, etc. If you want to confirm this, try the dev branch as I’ve added some more verbose error messages. If you add the form to a page where session_start has not been called, it’ll display an error saying so.
The solution to is it add <?php session_start() ?> as the first line on the template page you have the form on, i.e. if you have the form on a page, then on the page template of your theme (normally page.php), you’ll have to add that as the very first line.
Thumbnail function is working 100%, but now, I get this new error :
ERROR: session_start() has not been called yet! This may be due to…
* Your theme does not use the get_header template tag. You can confirm this by using the default or classic WordPress theme and seeing if this error appears. If it does not use get_header, then you must call session_start at the beginning of /home/mcs1/public_html/wp-admin/admin-header.php.
Also, the post title isn’t being submitted with the post, all I’m getting now are blank post titles. Related to my session_start error?
Also, do you know what’s going on when I try to view the image by itself? (right click > view image) Here’s an example : http://www.myconfinedspace.com/?attachment_id=16075 when I try viewing just the image, it seems like wordpress is trying to spit it out as text.
Hi Adam, the post still submits even when you get the error “ERROR: session_start() has not been called yet!”? That shouldn’t be. Are you submitting from the user area (“Your Submissions”) as opposed to a page on your blog? Are you using WordPress 2.3?
Could you check your /home/mcs1/public_html/wp-admin/admin-header.php as see if there is anything printed before it starts executing PHP? Even a blank line will cause problems. As a quick hack, you can add <?php session_start(); ?> to the first line of /home/mcs1/public_html/wp-admin/admin-header.php. This should make the error go away, however it shouldn’t have been a problem as TDOMF calls session_start when admin.php gets loaded (before admin-header.php).
I’ll try this code on the demo blog and see what happens. As for the missing post title, hmmm, you’ll still be able to upload with the missing session_start stuff but when you submit, nothing should happen. Could explain it, I think. Could you point me to an example of the error?
BTW Your attachment link doesn’t work. I just get a “missing page” error.
Sorry about the attachment page, this one does the same thing : http://www.myconfinedspace.com/?attachment_id=16084 Actually, testing that url, I realize that you’re not going to be able to see drafts without being an admin, ugh. Suggestions?
The odd thing about the session start error is that it would only show up once per browser session. I’ve added the sessionstart at the top of my admin-header.php and haven’t seen the error since. Thanks for the suggestion. Still getting the no post title error, which is weird. I made a couple test posts after updating the files, and it worked fine, but then I messed with the widget’s settings (making the title mandatory, and the post content not) and now there’s no post title
Guess I could just link to a post that’s already been posted, lol, sorry about that : http://www.myconfinedspace.com/?attachment_id=16044
again, my question is about viewing the image by itself (right click > view image in firefox) When I open it by itself, firefox tends to crap out, and IE doesn’t even offer the option to view the image by itself. Trying to view the image in IE via it’s URL ( http://www.myconfinedspace.com/?tdomf_download=16043&id=0 ) permits viewing, but it looks like it’s bypassing my htaccess rules, which puts a ‘hosted by’ watermark on the image…
Hi adam,
Looks like something very odd is going on with your upload files. The types seem to be set to just “image” instead of something like “image/jpeg” and when go to the download link, the type is “text/htm” which is just plain maddness! I suspect it might be something to do with your server configuration. If you can go into tdomf-upload-inline.php and around line 134 modify it like this:
if(move_uploaded_file($upload_temp_file_name,$uploaded_file)) { // Remember the file $myfiles[$i] = array( "name" => $upload_file_name, "path" => $uploaded_file, "size" => $upload_size, "type" => $upload_type ); tdomf_log_message("File $upload_file_name uploaded to $uploaded_file with size $upload_size and type $upload_type"); $count++; // within an hour, delete the file if not claimed! wp_schedule_single_event( time() + TDOMF_UPLOAD_TIMEOUT, 'tdomf_delete_tmp_file_hook', array($uploaded_file) ); }This will log a message about any file uploaded. What I’m interested in, is the type of the file. If it’s an image, it should be “image/jpeg” or something similar. If it’s okay at this stage, then it’s getting mucked up somewhere else. I wonder is this related to the session_start issues your having, because the info about type get’s initially passed around that way first and it could be getting mucked up.
As for the post title thing… I need more info about how you’ve configured your form. Is the “File Uploads” before the “Content” widget on the form? Have you enabled: “Use filename as post title (as long as the content widget doesn’t set it)” on the “File Uploads” as well as making the Post Title mandatory & show?
Hi adam, I’ve made some small changes to the code including some new log messages. It’d be great if you could try the latest dev version. This will log the type of file when it gets upload and when it gets moved from the temp area. I also changed the way files are downloaded, this might improve your problems with viewing the files.
oh, as for the watermark stuff, I don’t know how you are doing it using htaccess. It might be okay with these changes.
As for the post title stuff, still need more info.
Here’s a bit from my log :
[19-10-07(7:07:00)] Someone is attempting to submit something
[19-10-07(7:07:00)] Attempting to create a post based on submission
[19-10-07(7:07:01)] Post with id 16134 (and default title 19-10-07(7:07:00)) created as draft.
[19-10-07(7:07:01)] Logging default ip xxx.xx.xx.xxx for this post 16134
[19-10-07(7:07:01)] Let the widgets do their work on newly created 16134
[19-10-07(7:07:01)] File images.jpg saved from tmp area to /home/mcs1/public_html/wp-content/uploads/tdomf/16134/images.jpg with type image/pjpeg for post 16134
[19-10-07(7:07:02)] Added images.jpg as attachment
[19-10-07(7:07:02)] Attempting to update post with file upload info
[19-10-07(7:07:02)] Content Widget: Stripping tags from post!
[19-10-07(7:07:03)] post 16134 is number 109 submission!
[19-10-07(7:07:03)] Could not get any email addresses to notify. No moderation notification email sent.
[19-10-07(7:07:08)] Headers are already sent before TDOMF could call session_start in file /home/mcs1/public_html/wp-content/themes/vertigo-enhanced-20/index.php on line 1
that last bit about the headers is repeated about 50 times, so I didn’t feel the need to put those here too
Re: the post title, I did have the widgets in this order : content, upload files. After seeing your post, I tried it the other way around, and the post title is working again.(yay!)
I do not have the “use file name as post title” option selected.
I’ve made the post title mandatory, and to show, and I’ve made the post body not mandatory, but shown.
The image is still showing up as text (when right clicked / view image) in Firefox, but working IS correctly in IE.
The only other feature for future features that would really float my boat is for it to automagically set the post’s date for sometime in the future. My site currently does a single post every hour, and it’d be nice to be able to just hit “postdate publish” and have it thrown an hour behind the last post in the queue.
Greetings Mark, please please add a way for rich text formatting (font colors, size, text highlighting, quickly add hyperlinks with target option (ahref), button to directly insert images from remote urls (img src), option to add and accept object, embed and js tags in the form post (as many want to submit inline videos) and now that you have upload, an option to insert and place the uploaded image inside the post. Most of my submitters and posters are not html savvy at all and they don’t know how to use html tags or insert links and images from external urls and they also want to insert inline videos from video sharing sites. There can be an admin option to switch on or off this html text option and it can be off by default. I am willing to donate for this customization as I really need it for your very cool plugin. Thanks and kind regards.
It’s in the plan, quicktags and maybe tinymce support. However there are other things that need to get done first.
Not so easy to do. WordPress passes the posts though a kses filters which filter it all out. If the submission is made from a registered user (and you don’t restrict any html tags), then object, embed and js tags don’t get filtered out. Another option is to use some sort of WordPress Video plugin that provides special tags as those kind of plugin tags won’t get filtered out when a post is submitted. If we had quicktags, you could embed them that way… but it’s in the works. Custom fields and multi-form support come next…
Should already be available. There is an option in the upload files widget to have a link and/or an image tag automatically added to the post. If you take the latest dev version build, you can even have WordPress generate a thumbnail and add the thumbnail to the post.
Donations are always welcome and they certainly are a great incentive. But right now I’m only doing bug support as I’m concentrating on another project. Work on new features will commence soon though.
Any news on the headers situation? I get the headers and session_start errors everytime I load up the plugin, so I’ve disabled it for the time being, but it looks like disabling the plugin also nukes all the images that were uploaded using it
Is it possible to make the images not dependent on this plugin being active?
Again many thanks!
Em. I though we had resolved that? From the last log you posted, check out the file “/home/mcs1/public_html/wp-content/themes/vertigo-enhanced-20/index.php”. What is on the first line? If you have even a single blank line, it’ll cause these errors. If you have some code *before* get_header() is called, then before that insert a call to session_start(), make it the first thing that happens.
TBH I never even thought of that, I mean God forbid, why would you ever want to disable my wonderful plugin?
The reason the images are wrapped is to prevent your site being used as free-for-all file downloading site, as in, when a post is awaiting moderation, the images can only be viewed by admins. It also allows users to have the files stored in a private place and also, if you ever go and delete the post later, the images are also deleted. Having the files still available after the plugin has been disabled would mean that the files would need to be in a public place and all links updated (including in posts)… That’s not easy to do.
If I get the time, I’ll look at adding an option to the Upload Files widget that would avoid using the wrapper at all, but then files would have to be uploaded to a public place. Which means people could upload a file to your site and give the link to someone else before you can approve or delete it. I guess I’ll have to add an option to modify the timeout too, right now it’s set to 1 hour, which would be aple time to download a mp3…
The only reason I would ever want to disable the plug in is because with the rate of change with WordPress, no plugin author is going to guaranty that they’ll be around to fix everything that got borked with the latest upgrade
One option for the file uploads would be to move the images from from non-public folder to a public one on approval, but then we’d be faced with having to change the html links within the post.
Also, from previous posts where I was having issues with uploaded images in firefox, apparently microsoft created a new mime type for jpgs : image/pjpeg, which firefox has no clue what to do with. As this is an IE/FF issue, I don’t expect you to worry over it
Onto the main problem:
Just confirmed that my theme has nothing before it loads ‘get_header’, no spaces or lines in index.php. There was no mention of session_start() anywhere in the index file, nor in the header.php file. Tested it with the default and classic themes and receive the same error. What’s really twisting my mind is that the error only shows up once per session. If I log out from the site, clear my cookies and go back in, it’ll show back up, but only then. I’ve installed in on a couple of my other sites, and get the same error with multiple themes.
Here’s a copy of the error : http://myconfinedspace.com/temp/session_start.jpg
The image you posted, thats from the WordPress user page isn’t it? What file does the log say the error is coming from? I can’t reproduce it here on my site. If your using the user page from WordPress, the theme has no impact on it. The error in the image points to wp-admin/admin-header.php. This file seems to generate the header for admin pages. What you can do, to get rid of the error, is to put session_start() at the top of that file. This should fix it. Still like to know what it is happening though… it sounds very odd.
“The image you posted, thats from the WordPress user page isn’t it? What file does the log say the error is coming from?”
It is from the user page, the log now mention:
[][02-11-07(6:37:07)] Headers are already sent before TDOMF could call session_start in file /home/mcs1/public_html/wp-content/plugins/tdo-mini-forms/include/tdomf-upload-functions.php on line 146
[admin][02-11-07(9:16:28)] session_start() has not been called before generating form! Form will not work.
[][02-11-07(9:16:49)] session_start() has not been called before generating form! Form will not work.
“The error in the image points to wp-admin/admin-header.php. This file seems to generate the header for admin pages. What you can do, to get rid of the error, is to put session_start() at the top of that file.”
Just tried this, and still receiving the error. At least I’ve figured out how to get the error routinely
“This should fix it. Still like to know what it is happening though… it sounds very odd.”
Sadly that did not fix…and yes, I would love to figure this out too. If you’d like to e-mail or IM me, I can give you admin priv on one of my sites that’s having trouble with the script, instead of bouncing around your poor comments area, lol. Contact info: http://www.myconfinedspace.com/about/contact/
Thank you mark!
I just wrote out a rather lengthy response to you mark, but it seems to have been lost to the ether of cyberspace. Long story short: still not working
If/when you have the time, please contact me so I can show you the errors.
Hi Adam, your comment wasn’t lost. It’s just that WP-Cache can take a few seconds before allowing the comment to appear. I can certainly see a long comment by you right now.
The “tdomf-upload-functions.php” file mentioned in the log should have zero impact. I see the same error and have fixed it in the upcoming release of TDOMF.
How so? What steps do you take to reproduce it? BTW you can try creating an account on the demo site and seeing if the same steps reproduce it.
I’ll drop you a mail early next week about it. I have your eamil address from the comments.
I can’t get the file upload option to come off in the widgets area… i don’t want file uploads to be available but it won’t come off the form, any ideas?
Hi Jason,
I don’t know. Can you not just drag it off and place it in the Widget Pool area? Failing that, you can always go to the uninstall option (just options, not the full install and please use 0.9.1 first as 0.8 has a bug about uninstall) then recreate your form on the Widgets page. “Upload Files” should not be included by default on the form.
It must have been the PC I was using, because I tried dragging and dropping it there and it wouldn’t budge, but when i came to this pc it moved as expected. Thanks for the help and the plugin, appreciate it, I’ll be sure to follow its development.
Hi
Is there an automatic upgrade available?
I am extremely interested in posts including website urls.
PS, TDO Mini Forms is a very userfriendly wordpress plugin
What do you mean? Besides the standard automatic upgrade that WordPress 2.6 provides?
Is there a way to insert the uploaded images genreated thumbnail into a custom field “thumb” via the form hack? This would make this a truly useful plugin for automation
I’m not sure what you’re asking? Do you want a custom field with a link to the “thumbnail”?
In my posts I have two custom fields that display images, “image” which is linked to the original uploaded file from TDO Mini Forms. And the “thumbnail” field that is supposed to display the thumbnail version of the uploaded image. Can I make this happen automatic via TDO Mini Forms?
There is an custom field generated automatically for the thumbnail (see the readme.txt for details). The name of the field is “_tdomf_download_thumburi_0″.
I like what I have been able to do with your forms with the exception of having to redo the hack part after I add another widget. However, what would be nice is if you could add a field in the upload files for a caption. I have been using the upload files widget to add photos and I would like to add a caption that will display on the bottom of the photo.
I can add another text box but if I have more than one picture the captions won’t be underneath each one.
Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Ken
I know that wordpress has a ‘caption’ field for uploaded images and it’s [gallery] shortcode, perhaps Mark could use that?
This post is old, but anyway,thanks a lot for this great plugin, you made me gain a lot of time.
@mark
Have you seen my post at the forum?
http://thedeadone.net/forum/?p=12768
Thanks and sorry for this comment
Jörn
Great work! I’m using TDO Mini Forms for a new project and I really like the new upload feature. The thing is, I do not seem to be able to use upload on the edit form, only the create one
Is there some way to enable the upload system for when users edit a post? I would really appreciate the help, I will even pay you $100 to add this feature… It is very important for the site I am developing.
Thanks again for such a great tool!
Cadamie
Mark Cunningham,
PLEASE HELPPPP!!!! Were you able to resolve the above problem with the user ‘Adam’? I am getting this error in the log:
[TerraVida][03-02-11(23:04:09)] Headers are already sent before TDOMF could call session_start in file /home/content/16/7310416/html/wp-content/plugins/tdo-mini-forms/include/tdomf-upload-functions.php on line 160
It’s been aggravating me as I went through your preliminary steps listed above, to no avail.
I intend to donate money to this plugin if I can just find a solution to this error. The plugin seems excellent other then this obstacle.
terravidathreads.com is the website I’m developing.
Thank you!
-Nathan
is there a way to upload image and attach as feature image of post created using tdomf ?