Version 0.5.1 released
Post length: 258 words, just over 1 minute.
I’m pleased to announce the immediate availability of Syndicate Out 0.5.1. Due to a bug in the settings page it is not advised that users upgrade to version 0.5, 0.5.1 addresses this bug!
0.5 / 0.5.1 introduces a major new feature as well as addressing a number of bugs highlighted by users:
- Added syndication groups: an unlimited number of groups may now be added, each with an unlimited number of servers. This means that any combination of categories may be syndicated to any combination of different remote blogs. This has been on the roadmap for a while, but has also been a reasonably commonly requested feature. Hopefully this will add a whole load of flexibility to the plugin.
- Added versioning to stored options to cater for future upgrades. (This includes a whole new settings structure. When upgrading the plugin from older versions the structure of the settings should be updated.)
- Added the ability to syndicate all posts on a blog on a group-by-group basis, not just one category (thanks jc).
- Fixed a settings array related bug (thanks Dan, TJ).
As noted previously, there is an outstanding bug in the WordPress XMLRPC which may impact the plugin’s ability to post to remote blogs where one or more of the categories does not exist on the target blog. While waiting for the patch to be rolled to the main WordPress core, you can fix the problem yourself by following the instructions about half way down this post.
Syndicate Out 0.5.1 can be downloaded from the WordPress plugin page.
As always, bug reports and suggestions all gladly accepted.
8 comments
Thanks Jonathon for this update…I note in your post above “where the category.” should be “where the category does not exist.”
Also, will this new version allow one to syndicate all posts of all users, or do I have to create a syndicataion group for each user, with his password?
Thanks for spotting that 🙂
To be honest I didn’t test the case you’re talking about — I know you’ve brought this up before, but with the other changes this time around it totally slipped my mind to look into it. Sorry!
The best I can say is to give it a shot and see what happens. As you say, the categories will allow you to deal with it if it doesn’t work quite as you’d like otherwise (I know that’s a bit of a pain, but at this stage I think it’s the best I can suggest).
The update fixed the issue I was having with not having anything on the Syndication Settings page. I am able to add the remote blog credentials now. So I added the blog URL, username and password and selected the categories. Yet nothing posts to the remote blog. I get no errors, but when I add a new post, it does not cross post to the remote blog.
Glad it fixed the error you were seeing previously.
From your previous comment I’d guess you have activated the XMLRPC on the remote blog, which would have been be my first thought, so I’m presuming there’s a problem authenticating on the external blog. Another thing to check is that the user you’re trying to publish with has author permissions on the remote blog.
I’ve not yet found a great way of displaying errors on the new post page when you publish a post, but there might be some debugging information buried in your database. If your comfortable digging around in there, then read on…
In your WordPress database there is a table called wp_postmeta. If you search that table for the meta_key ‘_so_remote_posts’ you should see some saved data. If there was an error posting to one of your remote blogs then somewhere in that data you might have an entry which says ‘faultString’. Following that it might give you a reason. For example, when I was testing, I got something which looked like this: “s:11:”faultString”;s:57:”Sorry, you are not allowed to publish posts on this blog.”;”. The reason for the error was the remote user I was using was only a subscriber and not an author. Your error might give you a pointer as to what’s wrong.
I’ll look at improving the error reporting on the posts page for the next release, in the mean time if you’re still struggling I’m happy to help you out directly — just post here again and I’ll drop you an email.
Jonathan,
Since I installed this new update, my posts from blog A are not being published at Blog B, whereas before with the prior version they were! And I have the same user name and permissions at both sites.
Jonathan,
I looked at my WP database on blog B under the wp_postmeta table, and I found no meta_key called _so_remote_posts….
is that a sign of a problem
That meta data should be on blog A — that’s how it keeps track of what needs to be updated if you go back and revise a post — sorry if that wasn’t clear 🙂
If those rows don’t exist on blog A then that is a sign of a problem. My first thought would be that something’s gone wrong while upgrading the settings format so it’s not correctly recognised groups, but it’s hard to tell. If you’re willing to help me out with some debugging then I’ll drop you an email and see if we can get it sorted out!
Yeah, Jonathan, I’d appreciate the help to debug…just drop me an email, I’m on the net nearly 24/4…
I did find the ‘so remote” entry on Blog A: the entry reads
s:21:”a:1:{i:1;s:4: …..
—————
But with this version of the plugin, thinking that it would syndicate out all categories (I chose all), I had stopped using the category I had been using as an alternate/enabler (Syndication) to get the to go out….so now that I don’t use that, they don’t go out, so that probably explains my problem, because I thought when I clicked “All Posts” it would send all posts in all categories…