Call For Help: Are You Having Trouble?

By Cary Snowden | March 4, 2010

In an effort to make some sweeping improvements to the BizDir plugin, we are looking for a handful of sites that we can work with for testing. We would like to see a range of different hosting environments and options, and our own testing lab is simply too limited to provide what we need.

If you are willing to let us root around your site for a few hours, please send us a note using our Contact Form by the end of the day on Monday, March 8, 2010.

(NOTE: Please Do not send usernames and passwords in this initial response; we’ll get in touch with you to make the exchange.)

Here are the details:

  1. We need FTP access – username and password. If you can’t provide this, we understand; please do not apply.
  2. We also need access to your database. This will require username and password access to your server or Control Panel (PHPMyAdmin).
  3. You must be running the latest version of Wordpress.
  4. You must be running PHP5
  5. You must have Business Directory installed and active on a live public page.
  6. You must backup your site files and database prior to our testing.
  7. You must understand that we will be working on your site, and thus it may go down (up to 48 hours). We will do our best to prevent the site from going down for an extended period of time.
  8. You must agree not to change the structure of the site (by adding plugins or changing a theme, etc.) while we are looking at it. Adding posts is not a problem.

We will:

  1. We will test your site for a maximum ‘testing period’ of 48 hours.
  2. We will keep your access information safe and secure. We will uphold your privacy and will not share any details of your site files, structure, etc. with anyone outside our testing process.
    1. We will delete our access information at the end of our testing and will not revisit the site after the testing period without your written permission.
  3. We will do everything in our means to keep your site up and alive, however you must understand that your site may go down for a brief period during any point during the testing period (48-hours). We don’t anticipate that it will go down at all, but it could.
  4. We will work to fix the problem on your site. We do not guarantee a fix, but it is our intent to do so.
  5. We will not charge you (of course, but I knew it had to be said).
  6. We will select a small handful of candidate sites and then respond to you. Please don’t take it ‘personal’ if we don’t select you.
  7. We will build any solutions we find into a new version of BizDir and post it for everyone to enjoy.

Submission Deadline: Let us know by the end of the day on Monday, March 8, 2010.

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Working On A Chain, Gang

By Cary Snowden | February 26, 2010

A quick update on the Ajax errors.

We have discovered that Internet Explorer is having trouble with our chaining of commands. To optimize for speed and efficiency, we combined several commands in our scripting. Think of this as asking your friend to run to the store to pick up ‘milk, eggs and bread’ all in one trip. That’s ‘chaining’.

What we have discovered is that Internet Explorer seems to have a problem getting all the items in a single trip, and would rather that we only ask for one thing at a time: ‘go to the store, get milk, come back, repeat for eggs…’

We’re pretty sure this is the reason many of you are experiencing Ajax errors, and ‘errors on submit’.

This discovery has pointed us in a direction that we think will result in a more robust update and better performance for most of you.

It is hard to say when we think we’ll fully solve for the issue, but we are working on this over the weekend and into the first of the next week and would very much like to have this resolved by March 1. I’ll keep you posted.

Thank you all for your comments and feedback. We are not always quick to get back to you (or at all for that matter), but we do read the comments and emails and we are working on your suggestions and requests.

Thank you for your support.

-Cary

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New Version Released: v0.8.5beta

By Cary Snowden | January 28, 2010

We released a new version of our Business Directory for Wordpress plugin today. We are at v0.8.5beta.

We imagine Apple’s embarrassment as they realized they timed their announcement of the iPad on the same day as ours. Oh well; you can’t win ‘em all.

Anyway, this is a fairly minor update, but may fix a few known issues.

In particular, we have increased our URL handling, made Business Directory compatible with WordPress MU, and fixed a compatibility issue with our own FAQ Builder.

We are not completely certain, but these simple fixes may cascade their compatibility-goodness to other plugins that may not be friendly toward us (or visa-versa, but we’re not about to admit that in public). In other words; this simple update may help in other areas, too.

In any case, this new version is an improvement in a few areas, and a rewrite of several code elements should go a long ways to make things better, today and in the future as we continue to make improvements.

Thanks for your support and we’ll appreciate any tell-a-friends, re-tweets, or social mentions.

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Evolution Took Time, Too…

By Cary Snowden | January 4, 2010

I’d like to take a moment to clarify that we are still alive and well, and that the evolution of Business Directory for Wordpress is still in progress.

It’s just been really busy and the paying projects have taken the priority; though we love working on the Business Directory.

I am happy to report that we are currently working on a new revision to the classic version of Business Directory, and we are again working on the Premium version, which we have been touting since the dawn of man. We have received and are grateful for the many comments, suggestions and bug reports. Please keep them coming.

If you have a feature request that you would like us to consider in the next or premium version, please send a suggestion.

In the meantime, we continue to appreciate any donations you can send our way. Or, better yet, if you would like to support us and get something great in return, please host your next website with Bluehost using our affiliate link. Bluehost provides awesome hosting, great support and outstanding Wordpress compatibility for a great price.

Thank you!

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FAQ Builder for Wordpress Released (updated)

By Cary Snowden | November 6, 2009

A new star is born! (At least we hope so…)

FAQ Builder for WordpressWe have unofficially launched a new plugin called FAQ Builder for Wordpress. Please go check it out and share with all your friends.

FAQ Builder for Wordpress is a great way to add and manage Frequently Asked Questions on your Wordpress blog. It provides a convenient way for your readers to submit questions, and a handy administration tool that allows you to add, edit, and answer questions for posting to your site. FAQs can be assigned to categories, and you can define which questions appear on your FAQ page, which questions are available in the handy search tool (but not displayed), and which questions you’d rather not present to the public at all.

You can download FAQ Builder for Wordpress right now from our site. We have presented it to the great folks at Wordpress for inclusion in the Wordpress Plugins Directory and we are awaiting their reply.

UPDATE: We have been accepted into the Wordpress Plugin Directory!

FAQ Builder is the latest of three terrific plugins from Square Compass.

Business Directory for Wordpress
Quick Contact for Wordpress
FAQ Builder for Wordpress

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New Update: v0.8.3 ß (‘…for the love of umlauts’)

By Cary Snowden | October 16, 2009

special charactersWe updated our Business Directory for Wordpress plugin today. Those of you who expressed your need to add special characters; we have added them back in and you are now free to walk about the cabin.

You asked, we listened; thanks for all the feedback and friendly pleas.

You should be able to find it in your Admin control panel as an automatic upgrade option. If not, please follow the trail to the right and download from Wordpress.

The details, in only slightly more detail:

  1. Compatability with all characters except “\” and multiple quotes (i.e. “”). You want to add special characters; have a ball.
  2. PHP Short Tags have been removed. This should help with some of the operational problems we have been hearing about. At least we hope so.
  3. Increased data handling validation, which we hope will clear up some of those random AJAX errors.
  4. We also took the time to make a few minor adjustments and tweaks while we were under the hood. We even fixed a spelling error for those of you who noticed.

Thanks to Jesse for getting it all worked out, and thanks to all those who kindly nudged us into submission; your special characters have been restored.

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Posted in News, Versions | 45 Comments

Closing the Forum

By Cary Snowden | October 12, 2009

thinkingmanAfter much thinking and deliberation, we have decided to close the forum on this site.

From now on, please make comments here in our blog.

We are doing this for a number of reasons, primarily to help reduce the amount of time and impact our feeble customer service effort requires of us.

We try to keep up with things, and make a somewhat regular effort to respond, reply, and even develop new versions. However the forum has become a breeding ground for negative comments regarding our inability to spend extra time on the site rather than an interactive forum for community support. Moderating the forum was taking an extra amount of time that we just don’t have, and obviously became a source of frustration for many of you. My apologies to any of you who are offended by this action; I simply cannot keep up and have determined that it is best not to allow a handful of complainers to dwell on this fact and ruin an otherwise great experience for the rest of us.

We started this open source project as an experiment to learn more about the open source community, to participate with what we think is a wonderful utility, and to give back to a community that has given us so much. We are overjoyed at the positive response we have received and thank you all for participating with us. We’ll keep working on better versions as we move forward.

At the same time, we have been flabbergasted at the mean and demanding tone of a few commenters. Gratefully we have only had a small handful of these experiences. I’d like to take this opportunity to remind everyone of a few important factors that dictate the time and effort we can spend on this project:

  1. It’s free. We’ll continue to provide a free version of this, but until it becomes a source of more than a handful of donations, we still have to focus on our revenue so that we can feed our children and go to an occasional movie.
  2. Hobby priority. We love working on this project, but because love doesn’t pay the bills, we have to prioritize this among other things that we love, but that don’t bring in revenue. This includes wives, children, cycling, trips to the aquarium and a few other pet projects. We have a lot going on.
  3. Simple Support Structure. We designed BizDir to be as simple as possible so that it wouldn’t require a huge support effort. We thrive on customer feedback and requests, and hope that what we provide will work for anyone interested, however we are not able to test for every possible scenario and often can’t afford the many hours it takes to make this work for your custom install of alien technology. We have designed this to work with most standard configurations; please go easy on us if it isn’t working for you, and especially if you are trying to wedge this into something that is ‘out of the ordinary’.

If you have feedback for us, we want to hear it. Please response to one of our blog postings, or send us a note in our feedback form.

As stated, we accept praise, advice, and even criticism, though we do appreciate you being nice about it.

Sincerely: Thank you.

—Cary and Jesse and the rest of our Square Compass Team

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New Version Released to Fix IE Bug: v0.8.2 Beta

By Cary Snowden | September 16, 2009

BizDir 082bBusiness Directory for Wordpress v0.8.2 Beta is now complete. As you can see by the clever graphic on the right*, we now have Categories, IE Compatibility, and Security. All built-in, and still for the same great price.

Thank you for being patient, and thank you for your comments and feedback.

We have finished our testing and have released v0.8.2 Beta, which should be in your Wordpress Auto Updater in your Plugins Admin. If not, you can download it from the Business Directory for Wordpress download page.

We discovered that under certain conditions our plugin was effected by a known Microsoft IE Bug. We were able to make the necessary changes and as far as we can tell we have things working for all environments.

My apologies for not catching this in the earlier version; we are Mac heads and scrimped on the Windows testing on the first go-around. Even if we were Windows users, however, we would still be using Firefox, and recommend it to everyone we meet. Nevertheless; we acknowledge that much of our world must be filtered through IE, and so we have expended a few more days to make the appropriate accommodations.

Let us know what you think in our comments. Rate our plugin when you have a second, and tell all your friends about us.

Oh, and don’t forget that we are running on SpareWare; if you like what we have done and want to support us, send us your spare change.

*Please do not comment on our inability to produce actual clever graphics; We know.  :-)

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Posted in News | 31 Comments

Interim Update to 0.8.1

By Cary Snowden | September 15, 2009

padlockUpdate: We have released a newer version listed as v0.8.1. However, we will be releasing 0.8.2 in the next day or two. So ‘hang tight’ if you can.

Here’s the scoop:

v0.8.1 includes new updates to enhance the security of the plugin. We used an older Wordpress standard in the original code and took the time to update the security this week to make sure we are protected against SQL injections. It looks like we have improved the security considerably.

We are currently working on a javascript error that our research indicates is a known Microsoft bug. There are some workarounds that we are incorporating and are confident we can get things working. This will help with the pull down menu, and specifically the issue where the new categories are not functioning correctly for some of you.

We plan to have the update posted in the next day or two.

FYI: The Microsoft bug that we are dealing with is discussed here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/276228

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Ohhh Point Eight!

By Cary Snowden | September 9, 2009

BizDir_0_8We’re There!
Thank you, everyone, for your suggestions, support, and patience.

We are proud to release Business Directory for Wordpress v0.8 Beta. It has been submitted to the gods at Wordpress and should appear in your auto-update soon. In the meantime, here’s a quick rundown on what you will see, namely: Categories!

New in This Version

  1. Added Categories: you can now create your own categories, assign listings to categories, sign up into a category, and search by category.
  2. Fixed Bugs: We fixed a few issues that were troubling some of you, and found a few items that we improved under the hood.

This version is a little more stable, and sets the stage for future development of some nifty features that will let you take advantage of categories.

Upgrading Instructions For Current Users

  1. Back up your database.
  2. Seriously; while we are pretty confident in our stuff, we don’t want to be responsible for ruining yours. Back that thing up.
  3. Deactivate your current version of BizDir from within your Plugins Admin.
  4. Upload or Auto-update the new version 0.8 Beta.
  5. Reactivate BizDir.
  6. Add categories, assign categories, tell all your friends.
  7. Seriously; tell all your friends.

New users can simply add the new plugin as you normally would, though we still recommend the back up.

Here are some screen shots for you…

BizDir_2

^On your Business Directory page you will now have the ability to search for categories. This is a great feature for now, and sets up the ability in future versions to create separate pages in your blog for each category. Stay tuned…

BizDir_3

^In your Sign Up page you will notice a new field for Category. Your visitors are required to select a category before their submission will be accepted. This assures that all new sign ups are assigned to a category. You can name your own categories in the BizDir Admin panel.

BizDir_1

^In your BizDir admin panel, you can assign or change categories for your users before or after you approve them.

BizDir_4

^In the BizDir admin panel you now have the ability to add as many categories as you want. We create a category called ‘General’ for you, and assign all your existing listings into that category when you upgrade or install this new version. You have the ability to change the name of the General category, or can delete it. Note that your visitors will not be able to submit a listing unless there is a category for them to choose, so make sure you always have a category in there.

WARNING: Deleting a category will ALSO delete all the listings in that category. We warn you about this before we allow you to go through with it, but it is a good think to think about before you go deleting all your categories and flush your listings along with them. To avoid this, simply re-assign all the listings in a particular category to a new category. We’ll tell you how many listings are left in a category before you delete it, so you can be assured that you have cleared everyone out.

Did I mention backing up your database before doing any of this is a good idea?

:-)

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Posted in News, Versions | Tagged , , , | 28 Comments