It’s time to give back to the community again. With Location, Tags and Moods joining PeepSo last year are now followed by 4 other premium plugins. With that we want to give back to you and others who have supported PeepSo. Oh, and we also have a new version of our Gecko Theme 🙂

PeepSo

The BIG merge

Reactions, BlogPosts, Hashtags and Extended Profiles have been merged into PeepSo. Those are 4 previously premium paid plugins not only made free but merged completely with PeepSo itself. That means that you can just remove those separate plugins. 2.1.0 version delivers ’empty shells’ of plugins. Since all the functionality is in PeepSo not, just remove Reactions, BlogPosts, Hashtags and Extended Profiles. There’s no need for them anymore.

The merge is also a part of the big architectural changes that are happening with PeepSo and its plugins. With this we’ll be able to streamline the new notifications system and ensure that it’s as efficient as possible. More on that topic will be coming in the next releases, though.

A huge thank you to all of you who were and still are supporting PeepSo. As we grow, we want you to grow with us. Within the last 2 years, we’ve not only dropped our prices but also merged seven premium plugins into PeepSo.

Better Security & Validation

The latest release also comes with a small but important feature that forces the removal of illegal characters from username field during registration – that definitely helps to protect your site and make sure users don’t end up using ‘impossible’ usernames, as well as making sure that username and name fields aren’t confused. To add to the security we improved the IP address detection in Brute Force Protection so that your community is even more secure.

Better UX/UI

We put more work into improving the mobile experience not only on phones but also tablets. The toolbar responsiveness on tablets was improved as well as navigation tabs on all mobile devices. With those in place we’re able to ensure a better experience for you and your community on the ever-growing mobile market. There’s also a new setting within PeepSo > Configuration > Advanced > Storage for deciding on the cover images size and quality. That’s especially helpful with the full cover width

All of PeepSo plugins’ widgets have also had their maximum count limits raised. There were limits to show max 30 items, for example max 30 photos. Now you can set these up to 100.

Better Performance

We’ve looked into the overall performance of PeepSo as well and greatly improved the queries in the Friends plugin. Additionally, with the aforementioned merge of the 4 plugins into PeepSo you should also see performance improvements especially with big and active communities.

Other Improvements and Fixes

This release also comes with other improvements and fixes. For example, comments on reposts should not be cloned from the original post, Brute Force alerts shouldn’t be sent when the feature is disabled, PeepSo interference with Media Grid View for Editors was fixed. We also improved compatibility with Divi Builder (don’t confuse with Divi Theme). You can see the full changelog here.

Gecko Theme

What’s new?

Right To Left (RTL) languages support was added to Gecko with this version. If your site is in Arabic or Hebrew or any other RTL language, this is very good news for you. We finally got your back with this too. Mobile devices were a big part of this release. New customization options like hiding footer widgets on mobile view or menu changing the colors to match an even better experience for your community.

Pages and Posts also got a setting per that page / post. Introducing the ability to hide a specific sidebar: left, right or both. Per page or post. With that you have better layout control if you decide not to use any page builders.

Landing pages are great, but not always people get to see them. Right now Gecko introduces a possibility to redirect guests to a specific page. It’s a forceful redirect. If you’re not logged in, you’ll only see that one page. It’s a great option to protect your content and community and at the same time nudge (force) users to register rather than just come, read a post and leave. The option for this can be found in the backend of your site > Gecko > Settings. From a dropdown pick a landing page of your choice, save changes. Done.

On top of that we’re also introducing the option to set whatever gradient you’d like on your widgets. That will definitely help you customize your entire site to match your brand colors. Not only gradient itself but also the text colors in the widgets can be changed so that not only PeepSo widgets but all of them blend perfectly with your site. That can be found in the backend of your site > Gecko > Customize > Widget Styles. The options you get are:

• Gradient bg color
• Gradient bg color 2
• Gradient text color
• Gradient links color
• Gradient links hover color

Improvements & Fixes

With this version we also improved the profile header height on mobile view. The header menu, search & user bar alignment on webkit browsers (iOS, Chrome) was also improved to make sure everything not only works fine, but also looks fantastic. As far as fixes go, we got the time to fix a problem with white/Invisible photo options.

Thank You… Again & Again…

We can’t thank enough to all of you who have already decided to get Gecko. We’re working hard to make sure your investment is worth every penny. With all of that in mind, we’re planning to release a finally stable version within the next two weeks or so. We’ll also install it here, on PeepSo.com and start using it ourselves beyond the demo site and our own testing environments.

Pricing

Gecko is in a BETA. Because it’s a beta release and because love to give back, plus we’d like to hear your feedback, Gecko prices are slashed 50% for the first year. Below you can see regular pricing for the theme. Be sure to use the promo code marked nicely in red just under pricing to get the 50% discount. The discount EXPIRES once Gecko is released as a stable product. That’ll happen within the next 2 weeks or so, so don’t wait.

On checkout please use the promo code: gecko50 to get 50% off of the Gecko’s price. – EXPIRED

Of course, an active license gives you access to: downloads, updates, upgrades and technical support. After the license expires, you can keep using the theme indefinitely, but access to downloads, updates, upgrades or technical support won’t be available. If you feel you need more than 100 Sites License, contact us.

Please note that PeepSo Theme: Gecko is already included for free in all three PeepSo Bundles. There is no need to purchase Gecko separately, unless you need it for more websites than you need the PeepSo plugins.

Brought to you by Eric Tracz

I’m a Digital Nomad currently living in Manila, The Philippines. Co-Founder and CEO of PeepSo.com. First time WordCamp Speaker at WordCamp Kuala Lumpur 2017, WordCamp Singapore 2019 and hoping to speak more soon. I started my journey with open source nearly a decade ago as a simple support guy. Joomla! was my first encounter with the world of Open Source. After that period of my life got phased out I fell in love with WordPress and never left. I have been both lucky and at the same time I worked my ass off to get to where I am right now. Free time, if I have any, is usually spent with my wife and / or travel around South-East Asia. Even when I’m supposed to be on a little vacation, not a day goes by when I don’t check up on PeepSo. So far visited or lived in: Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Hungary, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, China, Japan, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Norway, Germany, Scotland, England and more… Whenever possible, I jump on my Ducati Monster and just ride.