Work has recommenced on TDO Mini Forms…



Yep. As of last week, I dusted off the code and started working on TDOMF Plugin for Wordpress.

I’ve been reviewing refactoring the code and trying to fix as many bugs and other wiggles as I can. So far:

  • There is now a nice TDOMF Overview page, like the Wordpress Dashboard
  • Move the various admin pages to it’s own submenu rather than have the various pages scattered all over the place.
  • Updated the TDOMF panel on the edit post page. It now uses Wordpress’ built in AJAX and is much cleaner.
  • Added a logging feature. All actions of the plugin are logged so you can easily see when someone has approved a post, saved options, submitted a post etc. This is especially useful if you turn off moderation for example.

Currently I’m working through the options again. I will be adding two new options.

Auto Trust Submitter option will allow you set how many times a user’s submissions are approved before they automatically become trusted.

Moderation On/Off option will allow you to turn off moderation. Submissions will be automatically published. I really hate this idea as it opens your blog up to bots and spammers, however it is consistently requested. You can already “trust” users and the “Auto Trust Submitter” option would allow you to automatically trust users after their submissions have been approved.

The big change I have planned, but I haven’t started on, is to allow users to customise the form, completely. I’m going to try and base it on Wordpress’ existing widget model. Basically, your form will be made of individual “widgets” that you can drag-and-drop, order and configure individually. Also, I hope, other people can write their own widgets for TDOMF. This is the best approach I can think off. Coming up with a “language” to allow people to design their forms is very hard to do right. This method is intuitive to use and for the hardcore, hopefully, easy to extend.

Other little things I’m going to try and do are:

Rejection emails - Currently users can subscribe for notification if their post is approved. This will also notify the user if their post is rejected.
Append messages to email notifications - Allow approvers to append a message to the approved/rejected emails, explaining why their submission was rejected or approved.
Bulk moderation of submitted posts - Easy to reject or approve lots of posts.
Delete plugin settings - Wipe out your plugin settings so you can properly remove the plugin, if you so wish.

I did also consider trying to put a button on the post/page edit screen to allow admins to easily add the form. However the interface to do this is atrocious. The good news is that upcoming versions of Wordpress will have a better and neater interface to add buttons, so I’ll hold off till then.

I’ll keep you all informed of any other progress.