We are working on a complete re-write of the plugin that will address the ajax errors and take care of many of the issues mentioned in your comments.

We were nearly complete with the re-write when client requests and other responsibilities took a toll on our schedules. We are planning to dedicate a little time each week to getting the remaining issues resolved and to post a new version for you in about 30 days.

I am sorry for the delay, and for the period of silence. Thank you for your patience!

-Cary

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.

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.

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

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…

^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…

^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.

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

^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?

This new version fixes a bug in the installation process that was causing an error in the database creation process. The restulting functional error was that you could not save a Directory Listing to the database.

In this new version, we are correctly installing the database, and updating items upon activation.

The new version is available for download from the WordPress plugin directory (for newcomers, click in the upper right of this page) and via your plugin auto update in your WordPress plugin admin panel.

We are planning to jump from ‘beta’ to a ‘release’ version in our next revision. Functionally this does not mean much more than ‘we think we have the bugs worked out’. Our Big Kahuna pro version update is still in the mill, and we hope to have something out on the streets by Spring. …of 2009.

Thanks for being with us. Let us know how it goes.

• We updated the navigation for WP 2.7. If you don’t have 2.7 yet, it is a must-have.
• We added a footer pagination navigation so that you don’t have to scroll back up to go to the next page.
• We also added a note on the Join Form that reminds your visitors that they need to provide at least one form of contact information.

We’ll be working on things over the holidays, and plan to have more for you early next year. Thanks for all the terrific comments and great feedback.

Please upgrade immediately to this latest version; this will solve a lot of issues for you as your readers try to upload their entries onto your site Directory.

We did additional testing specifically for Internet Explorer 7 and fixed the following bugs:

• The Search function on the Directory page was exhibiting unstable behavior. We believe that we found and eradicated this problem. Let us know if you still have trouble searching the Directory.
• The Join Form was not submitting properly, this has been fixed.

I am probably speaking to the choir here, but we like to recommend FireFox for the best experience.

>>>By the way; if you have version 0.6 installed, this update notice will appear in your plugins directory.

This new version has the following updates and fixes:

• ‘Rookie Mistake‘ Fixed: We updated the file structure so that when the plugin is installed for the first time it does not require a folder rename. This fix will simplify the installation and updating process. See how to upgrade to v0.6 Beta.
• Admin Manager Updated: We have added a ‘Company Website’ column to the manager so that you can quickly view the sites that have been submitted to your directory.
• Change in Label Terminology: We have altered the Join Form to use the word ‘Organization’ instead of ‘Company’. We feel this terminology will appeal to a larger audience. In the future we hope to add the ability for you to specify your own field labels on the Join Form.
• Small Join Form Bug Fix: We found that the Join Form didn’t properly save the Country field upon submission. We have fixed this bug.