I’m making good progress on the next release of TDO Mini Forms. I’ve managed to clear out much of my “TODO” list and I’m only left with updating widgets before I move to a live test server. On the live test server I’ll be testing and finishing admin notifications and akismet spam integration for the editing feature. More screenshots after the “more” link!
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I’ve been toiling away on TDO Mini Forms for a while, but I’m finding it hard to get a big stretch of time to work on it. So work is done in bits and pieces and I’ve had to priorities what work is done. Right now I have a long list of bugs and other features to be implemented because of being concentrating on getting Post (and Page) editing implemented.
It’s still a long way to go, however the core work is done. I can create forms that allow you edit posts and to moderate edits. It should work with Akismet, much like submissions do, but I haven’t yet tested that part of the code. The Form Options screen has been updated and the Moderation screen is much more WordPress 2.7 now. Still there is a lot of work to do and even when I have it basically finished (and release it), I’ll still have tons more to do. The admin UI is still in a transitionally design between WordPress 2.5 and 2.7 look and feel and most of the other widgets will incrementally get added to the editing feature.
However, to wet your appetite, here are some screen shots of the moderation screen and edit form:
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The new TDO-Mini-Forms default editing form
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The new TDO-Mini-Forms moderation screen
So I’m finally getting over being poorly last week, but I’m finding I’m not up to full speed yet. I’m quite tired from the run of antibiotics. Last night, after the kids were in bed, I planned to do some writing (on Lost Heroes) and some painting (bought some new watercolours) but instead, all I could do was zombie out in front of the TV for half an hour before I crawled up to bed.
Today has turned out to be a frustrating one. Work was going fine till after lunch, when my PC started to act weird. It’s a new PC that I’ve just got up to spec with all the software I need and have been using fine for two weeks. So I reboot and it won’t start – can’t find “boot device”. As it turns out my hard drive is fecked. So the whole afternoon is lost, I couldn’t even go and do something else. I’ve lost some stuff, nothing critical, but I have lost some work on TDO Mini Forms which I hadn’t been backing up.
Anyway, chin up. I’ll get a new harddrive tomorrow, spend the rest of the day re-installing all the software I need and trying to recover as much data as I can and just getting on with it. 
I don’t particularly won’t to post to complain about being sick. I’m not bad or in a dangerous condition, but I’ve been hit by a continual stream of colds, flus and infections this winter. I’m genuinely frustrated by it and it’s been the whole family, not just me. This recent one I got from my young son and the two of us have been at home all week till today and last week was certainly no picnic.
So if I haven’t responded to comments or emails, please understand. I will get through the backlog in time.
I haven’t been able to do much work on any of my projects including TDO Mini Forms and Lost Heroes, my drawings, gaming or even spend time just reading. I have been just about keeping up on my TV watching (for another post I think). So apologise for my invisibility over the last week. I’m hoping, with the sun showing in the clouds more and more, I’ll be able to get back into things quickly.
Best of health to everyone!
I’ve just committed v0.12.7 of TDO Mini Forms into WordPress Extend SVN, so it should be available for download shortly from WordPress.org/Extend.
I know I said the next version will be v0.13 with Editing Support, but that’s not to be. This release includes a fix for a pretty critical bug. If you are using a Windows host please upgrade immediately!
A combination of WordPress legacy implementation, Windows file name and TDOMF could end up attempting to delete you’re hosts harddrive. This sadly lead to a number of users, who were using their personal Windows PCs as development hosts to lose many personal files.
This would happen if you used the Upload Files widget and uploaded files and then attempted to delete the file using the WordPress admin. The file path would be stored by TDOMF in a Custom Field. However, the WordPress internal API (add_post_meta specifically), currently strips back-slashes from all data put in. This was because originally add_post_meta was only used by the admin backend, but is now a wildly used function by plugins and other parts of WordPress. (IMHO it doesn’t make sense that add_post_meta modifies your input data and also this “feature” is not currently documented anywhere). Windows paths uses back slashes as directory separators, however Unix and Linux systems use forward slashes. Therefore file paths in Unix were stored successfully but Windows file paths were corrupted. So when the post was deleted, TDOMF would try to delete the associated files with that post but end up attempting to delete the hard drive because of the corrupted file path. This problem is not specific to any single version of TDOMF, but any version of TDOMF with the Upload Files widget.
Additionally in this release is a fix for the Queuing of Submissions which was broken on the move to WordPress 2.7, a “double-opt-in” feature to Auto Respond Email widget, a necessary update to the core widget class (which may break your existing configuration, so make sure to double check) and a fix to the default Form code for the Form Hacker.
Please keep in mind that this plugin is free and any support I provide is also free. If you found it useful you can show your appreciation via a small donation or buying me a book!
Just a quick post to give you an idea where I am with the next release of TDO Mini Forms. I’m currently working on supporting Forms to Edit posts and pages that support all the other lovely features of TDO Mini Forms. However it is not a “simple” extension and it’s taking me some time to work thought it. I’m only about, I think, 30% through. 
Which means my usual bug fixing and support has been affected and apologise to anyone waiting for support or bug fixes.
There seems to be a pretty critical/lethal bug when you delete a post with files uploaded by TDOMF on a Windows host. It’ll delete everything right up c: !
So please be careful if you’re on a windows host. I’ll try and make sure this bug is fixed for next release.
Thanks to Nick and Lance for bringing this to my attention.
Back from the Christmass holidays, but still catching up. Will be a little while before I can start going through the forum comments and emails – so please be patient!
And BTW Happy New Year! 
Yep. A new version for you all. A new permalink widget, integration with Geo Mashup plugin (for all your geo-positioning needs), enhanced user permissions and some 2.7 testing. You should be able to get it shortly from wordpress.org or via the new plugin update system in 2.7.
I won’t be around for Christmass/New Year so they’ll be no support really for bugs and fixes.
My original intention was that the next release of TDO Mini Forms would include post editing. I’m afraid this isn’t going to manifest till the new year. I wanted to do some intial ground work by adding the enhanced user permissions and creating a widget class (which was used to create the two new widgets in this release) first but when I had done that I started to procrastinate just a tiny bit and when I procrastinated, I ended up bug fixed or add the new widgets so I don’t think it was time wasted!
Lots of bugs got fixed: slashes in posts, breaking comments, errors during upload, ’0′ not being accepted in text fields as valid values, slow loading of admin menus when you have too many users, recaptcha not working in AJAX mode and a few more other little things.
The new widget Permalink allows you to let users set a different permalink for the post. This allows you to let users submit links that when a user clicks on the post, they’ll be redirected to the URL. The Geo Mashup integration widget is based on the original hack of hitekhomeless and its something people have been asking for a while now. It seems to work fine on my test setup (but there are some minor display issues if using a heavily customised theme).
Also, I’ve created a Widget class. If you’re not into code don’t worry – if you are, I hope in the new year to write up a very simple tutorial on how to create your own widgets to add some fields to the form and process them after submission. The new widget class really simplifies it.
And yes. TDO-Mini-Forms is compatible with 2.7 and I’ve now updated the info on wordpress.org to reflect this.
So enjoy and have a Merry Christmass.
Don’t forget, this plugin is free, however if you found it useful you can show your appreciation via a small donation, buying me a book or giving this plugin a high rating on wordpress.org!
