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

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?