18 March 2011 in Dynamic Widgets

Dynamic Widgets with BuddyPress – part 2

Hopefully this is not going to be a major never ending soap story.

Anyway, a couple of BuddyPress users ran into something weird with Dynamic Widgets not behaving correctly with static pages. It turns out this looks like some incompatibility between BuddyPress and the used theme. When a static page is requested, the theme notifies Dynamic Widgets of it. But the theme doesn’t say it’s a static page. It says it’s a BuddyPress component. That confuses Dynamic Widgets, going into failsave and doing nothing.

A workaround have been added to development version 1.4.0.3 to prevent this and let Dynamic Widgets follow the correct static page rules. So, when you’re using BuddyPress and seeing some strange behavior within static pages, I recommend to install the latest development version.

5 March 2011 in Dynamic Widgets

Dynamic Widgets with Prototype theme

Until version 1.4.0 Dynamic Widgets had a problem dealing with the Prototype theme throwing a PHP warning on the screen:

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /wp-content/plugins/dynamic-widgets/dynwid_worker.php on line 25

A very weird error as Dynamic Widgets is doing something completely legal on a component of the WordPress sidebar / widget system. After some investigation it turns out the Prototype theme adds some (illegal) values to this component. Dynamic Widgets in its turn doesn’t expect such values and throws the above warning. I’ve added a workaround for this in development version 1.4.0.1.

23 February 2011 in Dynamic Widgets

Dynamic Widgets 1.4.0

WordPress 3.1 is realeased and as promised, hereby I also release the next version of Dynamic Widgets. A lot has been added and changed compared to the previous 1.3.7 version. Mainly due to the great feedback from many users. Thank you all for supporting the development of this plugin!

Below you’ll find all the additions, changes and other things.

• Added more l10n text strings
• Added support for browser options.
• Added support for attachments.
• Added support for Custom Post Type Archive pages (native in WordPress 3.1, via plugin in 3.0.x).
• Added support for BuddyPress Component pages.
• Added support for BuddyPress Group pages.
• Added German language files (locale: de_DE) – Vielen dank Daniel!
• Added Spanish language files (locale: es_ES) – Muchas gracias Eduardo!
• Bugfix for unexpected behavior when subsequent widgets are in opposite config for WPML.
• Bugfix for not correct displaying of options string in the widget admin when having options set for childs in Pages or Custom Post Types.
• Bugfix for an error 404 (file not found) when an error occurs while saving options.
• Bugfix for unnecessary double creation of the hierarchical tree in Static Pages and Custom Post Types.
• Modified admin UI for compatibility with WordPress 3.1.
• Upgrade for WP Shopping Cart / WP E-Commerce to support version 3.8 *** SEE NOTES BELOW ***
• Workaround in admin UI when using (a child of) the default BuddyPress theme or the BP Template Pack plugin bombing the accordion.
• Modularized admin scripts
• Standarized the use of JavaScript (jQuery)

Notes about WPEC 3.8
With this version, Dynamic Widgets supports version 3.8 of WPEC. Unfortunately because of the change by WPEC, when you upgrade WPEC you’ll have to redo all rules you’ve created within Dynamic Widgets for WPEC manually. It was nog possible for me to find out how to convert these to the new system used by WPEC. For your convience I’ve created a WPEC config dump generator to be able to give an overview of all the WPEC rules created in Dynamic Widgets to make recreating the rules easier. Please note the generator only works correctly when the WPEC product categories database table still exists and you did not add or modified any rule in Dynamic Widgets. The generator can be found at the Dynamic Widgets overview page by clicking on the ‘Advanced >’ link at the bottom of the page.

6 February 2011 in Dynamic Widgets

Dynamic Widgets with BuddyPress

The latest version of the BuddyPress default theme and the BuddyPress Template Pack Plugin have a bug by including a JavaScript file all over the WordPress site, including the backend. This is a very common mistake made by theme and plugin authors. Due to this JavaScript, the accordion used in the Dynamic Widgets edit page is not functioning. It freezes when you try to open another section within the page making it impossible to change settings.

I have added a workaround for this by removing the BuddyPress JavaScript from the Dynamic Widgets edit page in development version 1.3.7.9. Also in this version is BuddyPress support included for BuddyPress Components and BuddyPress Groups.

29 January 2011 in Dynamic Widgets

Dynamic Widgets with WP E-Commerce 3.8

Thanks to a comment made by Sosa I’ve learned that the upcoming WP E-Commerce (WPEC) version 3.8 is not compatible with the current version of Dynamic Widgets. The developers of WPEC have changed quite a few things in the way pages and categories are managed.

Today I can happily announce Dynamic Widgets will remain compatible with WPEC. Starting with development version 1.3.7.8 Dynamic Widgets has support for this new version of WPEC added.

Unfortunately because of the change by WPEC, when you upgrade WPEC you’ll have to redo all rules you’ve created within Dynamic Widgets for WPEC manually. It was nog possible for me to find out how to convert these to the new system used by WPEC. For your convience I’ve created a WPEC config dump generator to be able to give an overview of all the WPEC rules created in Dynamic Widgets to make recreating the rules easier. Please note the generator only works correctly when the WPEC product categories database table still exists and you did not add or modified any rule in Dynamic Widgets. The generator can be found at the Dynamic Widgets overview page by clicking on the ‘Advanced >’ link at the bottom of the page.