Second release this March, sixth this year. Nice pace all things considered. And we come bearing gifts of new features, improvements and fixes.
Upgrades
For a quick and hassle-free upgrade:
- Go to the backend of your site > Dashboard > Updates (go here, instead of > Dashboard > Plugins, trust me)
- Select all PeepSo plugins that need to be updated
- Click ‘Update Plugins’ (note: this will deactivate all of the add-on plugins), don’t worry, they’ll come right back on during Step 6 promise!
- Update PeepSo Core
- Go to the backend > Plugins
- Reactivate all PeepSo plugins
The whole operation doesn’t take more than 3 minutes. Should you have any issues or questions, please do contact us. ALSO IMPORTANT. We release all plugins at the same time. Sometimes, it can take some time for all available updates to show in the backend of your site. If some plugins’ updates don’t show, wait. Just Wait. Don’t upgrade just some of them. Drink some coffee and wait. Your site needs to catch up to show them all. If you feel like it’s taking too long, contact us. We’re here to help!
Alternatively, if you feel you can’t take the wait, you can go to your account, download the latest versions and do the following: Backup everything. Deactivate all PeepSo plugins from your site. Install the new versions from the zip files, just like on the first installation.
Mark Banned Users
Banning users was a feature in PeepSo since the very beginning. Then we added temporary ban where you can decide how much time the condemned should spend in the Purgatory before being released. Maybe not the best metaphor, but hey. I’m no poet. But to get to the point. Apart from admins, nobody knew whether a user was banned or not as there was no visual indication on frontend. I’m glad to say, it’s something that we’ve managed to add in this release. Banned users will have their name / username stricken.
Assign Multiple VIP Icons
All users are VIP but some users are more VIP than others.
George Orwell
Ok, ok, perhaps that quote went a bit differently. We’ve been asked a lot A LOT to allow multiple VIP icon assignment to users. When creating the plugin we thought all VIPs are equal, but apparently some are more equal than others 😉
Email Notifications Overrides
Email notifications overrides could have always been done within PeepSo and well, let’s call them ‘proper’ template overrides. It does require you to know how to code, though. Not only the simple html and CSS but also the feared PHP… Brr… To use them you will need to know a bit of code too but hey. It’s much better than it was.
It’s my pleasure to announce that right now you have the option to override PeepSo’s styling in the backend of your site > PeepSo > Configuration > Advanced > Emails > Customize entire e-mail layout section. There are some variables that can be used in the email template too:
{email_contents} – e-mail contents *
{unsubscribeurl} – URL of the user notification preferences *
{currentuserfullname} – full name of the recipient
{useremail} – e-mail of the recipient
{sitename} – the name of your site
{siteurl} – the URL of your site
*The first two are compulsory and must be included in the email template. {email_contents} displays the actual notification text. {unsubscribeurl} – gives users the possibility to change their email preferences in their profiles so they can decide whether they get those notifications or not.
What about the notification content and its styling? Well, we’ve not yet finished that. We’ll try to get it done in the upcoming 1.9.8 version of PeepSo and all of the plugins that actually send out notifications. You’ll be able to use html and CSS also in the content in the backend of your site: PeepSo > Configuration > Edit Emails.
Why is this important?
Email overrides and creating own template give you 2 very basic things out of the box.
First and foremost, you can style it however you want so that the look and feel of the notifications is resembling your website’s theme. That unified look and feel does makes users see you in a more professional light too. It’s something that we’ll be implementing on our end as well. So be on the lookout for the newly styled notifications from our own community.
Secondly, you can use that as advertising space. Monetization done well and you only need the FREE PeepSo Core. Just make sure not to overdo it. Do read up on mailings and how spam is recognized. There are some basic rules: too many photos in the email, font too small, font too similar in color to background etc.
PeepSo Ultimate Bundle Single License Key
With the introduction of the bundle we made sure that you have only one license key to deal with. Right now you can apply that single key in one field and it’ll populate across all of your installed PeepSo that require a license key. It’ll also work for all newly installed plugins. So pretty much, download. Install. Activate. Done.
In the future we’ll be looking into a one click installation of all of our plugins so you don’t even have to download them in the first place.
Other Improvements And Fixes
See full changelog for all the things that are included in this version.
