I know some of you have been hopping on here from around the world – I’d appreciate some feedback in the comments to let me know if things seem snappier for you.  Be as brutal as you need to be!  We want to get this site running great for you folks.

P.S.  This is just the tip of the iceberg for some changes around here.  We’re hard at work on a complete site overhaul – hoping to get this released within a couple months.

As promised, I’ve finished going through Organize Series Cores and ALL addons and made sure they are all compatible with the newest version of WordPress.  I’m pretty sure I took care of all the existing minor incompatibilities and got a few bugfixes in too.  I was HOPING to include a new feature in the core but ran out of time and decided it was more important to get this release out the door.  Cross your fingers for a new feature release by Christmas!

If you want to view all the changes, take a look-see through the various changelogs here.

• Organize Series
• Organize Series Grouping
• Organize Series Multiples
• Organize Series Shortcodes
• Organize Series Extra Tokens
• Organize Series All In One SEO

When?  Before the end of the week.  I want to upgrade all my sites too!

You can read more about this via the changelog.

• Organize Series core needed a minor javascript change to prevent any possible future failures with jQuery updates.  (for those who want to know I just replaced removeAttr with removeProp in the series.js file).  All Organize Series users should update to this release.
• Organize Series Groups broke the quick-edit for the manage series page with the WP3.2 update.  It’s fixed now.  Organize Series Groups users should update to the latest release.

• For this release only I’ve left the old upgrader scripts active so existing users can update their addons via the WordPress backend.
• Future updates of all paid addons will require the Organize Series 2.3.6+ to work.  I suggest you upgrade to Organize Series 2.3.6 as soon as possible.
• All future versions of the paid addons will be hosted on Amazon s3 that will give much more flexibility as Organize Series grows and keep this site from getting bogged down when a new release is put out.
• Developers who have their own premium plugins.  The framework I’ve switched to is going to be released to the developer community sometime in the next couple of weeks.  Bookmark pluginupdates.com and keep watching there for release.  It will be a commercial plugin but trust me, your users will LOVE you for implementing it and it will decrease your workload in managing your premium plugin upgrades by a mile!  If you are a writer for a WordPress blog I’d be happy to give any interviews about it (get a scoop!), just use the contact form here to get in touch.

There is also a nice little update I added to Organize Series,  some notes:

• changed the way the series_navigation templates work so the &lacquo and &racquo aren’t hardcoded. In the process I made things more flexible…
• %previous_post_custom% and %next_post_custom% tokens are now deprecated (however existing users of those tokens will still find they work – for painless upgrades).
• %next_post% and %previous_post% tokens now take their values from the Custom Next Post Text field and the Custom Previous Post text field. If those fields are empty then the corresponding post titles are automatically added.
• The “Custom Next Post Text” and “Custom previous navigation text” fields are now token enabled. Default settings show ‘%post_title% >>’ and ‘<< %post_title%’ for corresponding fields. The entire contents of these fields will still be linked to the next and previous post.

Basically the above gives users of Organize Series more flexibility in controlling how the Series Navigation text appears (in response to many requests!).  This update comes after some lengthy time working on Plugin Update Engine (woops, let the name of the new update framework slip didn’t I?) and now that the majority of it is ready to go I can get back to working on some new addons for Organize Series.

Hey folks, let me know what you think!

The first was the “Use as Series Image” button not showing up in the Image Uploader for series icons.  No more need to workaround this anymore.

The second annoying bug popped up when scheduled, pending, or draft posts that belonged to series were published the total parts in series count would not be updated.  This shouldn’t happen anymore.  Incidentally this is a bug that I thought I had fixed with other version but it kept popping up.  Hopefully I hammered the final nail in the coffin for this one!

There are more bugfixes and a minor feature release that you can check out at the changelog over here.

Visual Shortcode Buttons

I’m excited to announce the newest addition to the Organize Series addons family, Organize Series Shortcodes! This new add-on gives you the ability to easily add series information where you want within a post (or page!) using the built-in shortcodes system provided by WordPress.  We’ve provided multiple ways for you to insert shortcodes:

• You can do it using the [shortcode] syntax.
• You can use the handy buttons provided via the “Visual” tab (the easiest way).
• You can use the buttons provided via the HTML tab (if you prefer going html when composing posts).

Here’s a short overview of all the shortcodes provided with the initial release:

1. Add Organize Series “Series Post List Box”

shortcode: [series_post_list_box]

info: This shortcode enables you to insert a table of contents for a series wherever you want in a post (or a page!).  It is “smart” – which means if you use this shortcode (without any parameters) within a post that is part of a series, it will automatically output the series post list box for that post.

2. Add Organize Series “Post List Box”

shortcode: [post_list_box]

info: Returns a list of posts within an indicated series (or the list of posts for the series this post belongs to).

3. Add Organize Series Table of Contents

shortcode: [series_toc]

info: This is probably one of the most powerful shortcodes because of all the options you have.  This shortcode is used to output the table of contents for the series you have written.  What’s cool about this is the amount of control over the series that are displayed.  Of course, this makes it easier than ever to setup a page on your site listing all the series you’ve written!

4. Organize Series Meta

shortcode: [series_meta] [/series_meta]

info: This outputs the series meta strip (default is series title, part number, number of posts in series), however you can also customize the output of this shortcode using the same %tokens% you used on the series options page!

5. Organize Series Navigation Strip

shortcode: [series_nav][/series_nav]

info: This outputs the series navigation strip used to smartly navigate through the various posts in a series.  Like the series meta shortcode, you can also customize the output here with the same %tokens% found in the series options page.

So there you have it!  5 AWESOME shortcodes right out of the gate.  Those who purchase this addon will gain access to even more detailed usage docs to give you all you need for unleashing the power of Organize Series Shortcodes.

You can purchase this addon via our downloads page – don’t forget to check out all the setup instructions before making your purchase!

NOTE: Just a heads up that I’m travelling until May 10th, 2011, and my internet access during this period of time is intermittent.  I will respond to any inquiries as soon as I can but my regular promptness won’t be in place until I return.