This version adds four new widgets:

• An Excerpt Widget - allows submitters to supply their own excerpt
• Comments Management Widget - enable/disable comments and pings for posts submitted from this form and even allow users to chose if they wish to enable comments
• ReCaptcha Widget - it’s been asked for so many times. This integrates the ReCaptcha service into your forms to help fight spam
• Subscribe-to-Comments Widget - this widget integrates with the ever-popular Subscribe-to-Comments 2.1 plugin to allow submitters be automatically subscribed to followup comments via email

Also these widgets were updated:

• Category Widget: Include Field enabled and a sort (and sort by) option added
• Tag Widget: Now includes options for default tags, required tags and even disabling user adding tags.

There are a few other little updates which you can check out on the Version Log. I still have quite number of entries in my Work Queue left but I’m planning to move on and look at post editing, the last big big feature. I think now is a good time to do it rather than spend so much effort adding little features and with Wordpress 2.6 revision history feature now in full operation, allowing users to edit posts should be a dream.

Don’t forget, this plugin is free, however if you found it useful you can show your appreciation via a small donation or buying me a book!

One of the big issues with v0.12.3 was that when some users upgraded to Wordpress 2.6.2, they found that TDO Mini Forms clashed with a number of other plugins.  You can read the full forum support thread here. What they found was that they would either get random Server 500 errors or be locked out of their blog. (FYI: when this happens you should be able quickly get to the source of it by looking at you’re hosts error logs.)

In my tests I found that the file .htaccess (used by the Apache webserver to control access to files among other things) had got messed up. Once I deleted it I was able to get back into my blog and then I let my blog re-create the file and all clashes with other plugins disappeared. I was abel to run the full list of “offending” plugins with no errors. 

However it seems there was another reason so if you’re on 1and1 hosting, you should check out that solution. Essentially the problem is solved by running Wordpress (and therefore all the plugins) using PHP5 (1and1 seem to be using a earlier version of PHP by default). You can easily check your version using the phpinfo link (and there is a nice little helpful message printed at the top of the TDOMF admin screen if you’re using a version less than PHP5).

I’m not going to spend any more time investigating this bug as it has completely slowed down development of new features and other bugs. If you really are desperate to get TDOMF up and running under PHP4, please consider “donating“.

I’ve also spend time updating the included Readme.txt (which is also automatically HTML-ified on Wordpress.org), with lots of useful info. So please make sure to RTFM!

So what else is actually in this release?

• More Error Checking and Error Reporting (which hopefully will help people understand what they’ve done wrong instead of needing to post on the forums)
• Disabled multiple revisions being created when a post is submitted
• Improved the AJAX code on the form
• Re-implemented Import and Export of Forms and brought back a cleaned up tdomfinfo
• Default generated forms are W3C Compliant
• Queue period time is now, hopefully, calculated correctly
• Comment Notification Emails are no longer sent to inaproppiate users, such as users that cannot flag comments as spam or delete them
• And tons of bug fixes!

If you want the full list, check the readme.txt.

What I’m still working on, which I had hoped originally to release altogether:

• Bug with AJAX and the Captcha Widget
• A New Extract Widget
• Error, Validation and CSS Hacking for the Form Hacking
• Looking at a way, maybe, to replace the current Captcha solution with the popular captcha from the Recaptcha plugin
• Updates to the Tag Widget
• And more bug fixes from the never-ending list!

And maybe, after all that, I might get around to doing Post Editing…

You can Support TDOMF by:

• Donate using PayPal
• Amazon Book List

Rate it on Wordpress.org!

I haven’t got through my current work queue, but I thought I had done enough fixes to warrant a new release for the Wordpress 2.6.2 version. (I didn’t want people to think that because there wasn’t a release that TDO Mini Forms doesn’t work with Wordpress 2.6.2. So far, for me, I’ve seen no problems).

I’ll post later about what to expect in the next release.

• Fix Import/Export Form and tdomfinfo()
• Extract Widget
• Warnings in Admin UI (pretty critical at this point to stem the number of support requests)
  • Custom Field Error checking (empty key/title, same key/title)
  • If all ERRORs turned on
  • Form configuration changed but Form Hacker not updated
• Problem with AJAX and using the Capatcha Widget
• Rolling in French localisation updates from Laurent
• Preventing multiple revisions of posts because of submission

What I’ve also put on my current plate (but may not get done next release or even the release after that):

• Bug: Internet Explorer sometimes gives “Use FireFox” on submission page
• Using the Capatcha from the Recaptcha plugin
• Including Error, Validation and Style messages in Form Hacker
• Fixing the Time calculation for queuing post
• Comments and Pings Widget (change defaults, give option to submitter etc.)
• Bug: Small fix required in tdomf-categories-widget.php lines
• Bug: No sidebars appearing for widget configuration in Internet Explorer 7
• Bug: Since Wordpress 2.6.x, there have been some conflicts reported with other plugins
• Bug: Conflict using TinyMCE with AJAX
• Bug: Strange behaviour of widgets on fresh install of wp2.6.1
• Bug: Report of “output already started” errors from tdomf-db.php on line 333″
• Update the tag widget with some new features like setting it to required.
• Bug: Upload-link error occuring for some users

However, if some of these issues are critical to you, the best way to get me to up the priority is to donate (there is a link within the plugin if you hadn’t seen it) and tell me which one you need fixing!

And there is lots to do! While TDOMF seems to work fine in WP 2.6+ there are a number of issues reported that I haven’t investigated yet and also I recieved some localised files for French from Laurent 3w3t to roll in. I plan to setup a localisation forum where people can upload .po files and I can upload .pot files in advances of big releases.

Anyway, all this to say that next week I plan to get back into active development of TDO Mini Forms!

Update #1: There is a bug with this tutorial. There is an incompatiblity between the AJAX code in TDOMF and using TinyMCE. Please disable AJAX before proceeding with this tutorial. If you have already done this, please disable AJAX. Then reset the form and then re-do the steps in this tutorial.

There are tons of javascript implementations of this that can change a normal HTML textarea into one of these WYSIWYG editors such as TinyMCE or NiceEdit. The post content field (and Custom Fields set to Text Area) use the standard textarea element and so can be “skinned” by these libraries quite easily. This is why I haven’t really integrated one of these libraries into TDOMF, I don’t want to restrict user choice and I also don’t want the huge bloat. You could, for example, use the same installation of TinyMCE to skin your comments input form as well as your TDOMF form. However I’m constantly asked how to do it. So lets take TinyMCE, and run though how you might add it to your TDO Mini Forms form.

1. Download latest version from http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/

2. Unpack the tinymce_<ver>.zip

3. Using an FTP client, upload the contents of jscripts (i.e. the tiny_mce folder) to your wordpress site. Best place to do this is under wp-content (i.e. wp-content/tiny_mce).

4. Make sure its readable from the web. You may have to set the permissions using chmod 755 or chmod 777 on the directory and it’s contents depending on your host configuration. You can probably do this from your FTP client.

5. Now, you need a form with a Content widget it on it. If you use the default, unmodified form, you will have one. If not…

5.1. Go to the “Form Widgets” page.

5.2. Drag and drop the Content Widget from “Available Widgets” to “Your Form”.

5.3. Click on the icon beside “Content” and disable/uncheck the “Use Quicktags” and “Restrict Tags” options if they are checked. You can perform any other customisation of the “Content” Widget here.

5.4. Do any other widget customisation and then click “Save Changes”.

6. Now go to the “Form Manager and Options” and go to the options page for your Form. Make sure that “Use AJAX” is unchecked. (With the current version of TDOMF, the AJAX code is incompatible with the TinyMCE scripts).

7. Now go to the Form Hacker and add this to the top:

<!-- TinyMCE -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="<?php echo get_bloginfo('wpurl'); ?>/wp-content/tiny_mce/tiny_mce.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
tinyMCE.init({
mode : "exact",
elements : "content_content",
theme : "simple"
});
</script>
<!-- /TinyMCE -->

Save the hacked form.

8. View your form. The Post Content now should have a WYSIWYG editor!

I used the “simple theme” in this tutorial. TinyMCE supports more advanced editor and other options, so please check the TinyMCE documentation and examples.

And NO! You cannot use the TinyMCE editor that is built into Wordpress. The Wordpress TinyMCE has been seriously hacked to work with the Wordpress UI and cannot be used independently.

You can also extend this approach to use TinyMCE for Custom Fields.

9. Add a Custom Field widget to your Form using “Form Widgets”. Set the Custom Field “Type” to “Text Area”. Disable “Use Quicktags” and “Restrict Tags” options. Save the widgets.

10. On the “Form Hacker” use the “Reset” button to pick up the latest changes.

11. Now scan the code of the form for the Custom Field textarea tag. It should be something like this:

<textarea title="true" rows="10" cols="40" name="customfields-textarea-1” id=”customfields-textarea-1″ ><?php echo htmlentities($value,ENT_NOQUOTES,get_bloginfo(’charset’)); ?></textarea>

Please note the name of the custom field textarea element. In this case it’s customfields-textarea-1.

12. Now at the top of the form add this:

<!-- TinyMCE -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="<?php echo get_bloginfo('wpurl'); ?>/wp-content/tiny_mce/tiny_mce.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
   tinyMCE.init({
      mode : "exact",
      elements : "content_content,customfields-textarea-1",
      theme : "simple"
   });
</script>
<!-- /TinyMCE -->

Note that I’ve appended the name of the textarea to the “elements” array.

13. Save the hacked form.

14. View your form. Now your content and your custom field widget use TinyMCE.

If you want to configure TinyMCE in even more complicated ways, please refer to the TinyMCE documentation. You can, for example, configure a Custom Field differently to the post content, by having the tinyMCE.init called separately before the different elements. In a similar way, you can add WYSIWYG editor to your comments, if you are so inclined.

Any questions and queries are probably best served on the TDOMF support forum. If you did find this helpful, please consider dropping me a few euros, thank you.

Unfortunately I’ve heard that Wordpress 2.6 will be out very soon and I haven’t prepared for it. I’m aware of the changes but I haven’t setup a 2.6 test bed to do the work. So please be careful about upgrading, as soon as I get back it’ll be one of the first things I look at.

Also in my current work-queue:

• Form Hacker:
  • Form Import/Export and TDOMF Fixes
  • Support for hacking the Error and Validation and Stylesheet
• Excerpt Widget
• Admin Error and Warning messages on some dud Custom Field configurations (such as empty keys or titles, using the same keys across multiple custom fields, etc.)
• Display an Admin warning if Error messages are enabled (with the last release you can enable all PHP errors by a magic combination of options)

BTW If you want to show your appreciation of TDO Mini Forms by just clicking, you can pop over to Wordpress.org and give it a good rating!

For TDO Mini Forms, lots of small bug fixes (including one that was preventing some unregistered users from using a form) plus an Auto Respond Email widget and the ability to get moderation emails even if you’ve turned of moderation for a form.

For TDO Tag Fixes, just some bug fixes that have been hanging around for a bit on my private test server. I also plan to do some extra work on this in the next while, specifically around adding a “Tag Surfer” widget. We’ll see how much time I get.

And because I’ve moved to a new host, I can include and my Amazon wishlist for those who’d like to see TDO Mini Forms and TDO Tag Fixes keep on improving….

It’s certainly different being on new host. Like buying a new car without driving it first and finding controls in different places and finding new features and grunting when you can’t find that one or two great features from your previous car. But so far, it looks good.

For the record, I have hosted thedeadone.net on Redbrick since about 2002, I think. Redbrick is a College based club based on computers and networking. I’ve been a “associate” member (which is ex-student/alumni member) for quite a bit. The webspace they offer is great, seeing I was able to run Wordpress (with some hacks), do Wordpress plugin development, use a domain, automatically have shell access and, for a service ran by students, a great up-time (except for the last two months or so but they were the exceptions)… all for a ridiculous low price IMHO. My new host is Digiweb and the reasons for moving are many and do not reflect on the service provided by Redbrick.

Anyway, back to doing real stuff again…

This does not affect MOC, the Irish Gaming Wiki or my livejournal page.

See you all on the other side!