WordPress approved my latest plugin project this morning and the first iteration has just hit the WordPress Plugin Directory.

I finally broke down and spent a day writing a plugin to help WordPress site admins and developers find quality WordPress plugins.    There are plenty of good plugins in the WordPress Plugin Directory.  There are plenty of bad plugins as well.    That is the problem.    It seems like every time I go searching for a new category of plugin that I’ve not found a “go to” solution yet I end up installing at least 3 or 4 plugins before I find one that doesn’t suck.

My newest plugin is a start toward “separating the wheat from the chaff”.    I’ll likely extend the filter set when I get more time, or if the WordPress community shows an interest in the plugin.   For now the basic filter set will “block” any plugins from being listing in the WordPress admin panel “Add New” search results based on these criteria:

Minimum Rating / Maximum Rating

Filter out any plugins that are above or below a specific star rating.   This  filter uses the raw 100-point numerical scale that WordPress uses to rate plugins.    The WordPress plugin directory translates numbers like “80″ to 4-stars based on this number.    Don’t want to look at 3-star plugins?  Set the minimum rating to 65.

You can also set a maximum rating, though in most cases you’ll want to leave it at 100.    Often new/low-volume plugins have a perfect 100-point rating.   This setting provides an easy way to sort those “outlying plugins” out of the mix, setting it to 99 will eliminate most “perfect plugins” from the list.

Default settings: 65 / 100

Minimum Number of Ratings

This allows you to filter out plugins that do not have at least this many ratings recorded.   This can be useful when searching for popular plugin categories such as the “cache” category where you may want older, more established, plugins.

Default setting: 2 ratings

Minimum Tested Version

Use this setting to filter out plugins that have not been tested on a recent version of WordPress.   If you only want plugins that have been tested on WordPress version 3.5.1 you can change this setting and eliminate older plugins.   Many defunct plugins have not been tested on the latest version of WordPress.   This is a great way to filter out plugins that are no longer in active development.

Default: version 3.3

Changing The Settings

After installing PlugIntel your WordPress admin panel will start filtering out the plugin search results based on the default filters noted above.    You can deactivate PlugIntel to get the full search results back.     You can also go the Plugin / Intel sidebar menu and change the default values to a wider range to increase the number of results returned.

Enjoy!

Just got back from a weekend business trip to Atlanta and wrapped up the patches for Store Locator Plus 3.11.1. You can always find the change log at the Release Notes page, here is the summary of what was released today:

Store Locator Plus 3.11.1

Fix: address without geocodes are highlighted again.

The highlight bar for uncoded addresses went away in a recent release, this is back now.

Enhancement: slp_manage_location_where 3rd party add-ons can control the manage locations screen.

Updated the base plugin with features that allow for more add-on pack features to be developed, like the Pro Pack “show uncoded” feature.
Enhancement: Added ja_JP language files

Thanks Shohei Tanaka for posting a Japanese translation of the main Store Locator Plus plugin.  It is for a slightly older release but will help translate most of the built-in text.

Do you want to submit a language translation for inclusion in a future release?  Read this post for helpful hints on how to do that.
Enhancement: Force alternate index keys to 255 characters to try to fix WordPress dbDelta bug.

I am still battling a bug in the core WordPress dbDelta function that impacts updating the base plugin.   The bug causes duplicate indexes to be created on each install until you reach 64 total index files, then MySQL starts to have issues.   A patch that was put into an older release would seek out the duplicate indexes and delete them on every update.  Unfortunately some systems, especially on shared hosts, do not allow a WordPress app to access the MySQL system information necessary to check for the duplicate indexes and thus the upgrades generate errors.   This latest attempt to work around the problem implements a workaround that has been discussed in the WordPress community that may obviate the need to look up the indexes in the restricted systems table.    I won’t know if it works until the next patch comes out.  Fingers are crossed.

Pro Pack 3.11.1

Show Uncoded Fixed

The show uncoded button broke at some point.  This has been fixed in this patch.

A minor patch for Enhanced Map, which in retrospect should have been labelled a patch release “3.7.11″… too late now… is out.

It fixes the map settings “center map at” feature, which broke when 0.7 when the center_map_at=”<blah>” shortcode attribute was added.

A request that often shows up in the forums is “how do I put the find locations button next to the search form”.   This example explains how I used Store Locator Plus to tailor the map interface to our needs.   The map site is built on the WordPress 3.5 Twenty Twelve Theme with Store Locator Plus 3.11, Enhanced Map 0.7,  and Pro Pack 3.11.

The “trick” of moving the button next to the address input is to manipulate the CSS rules. These rules are slightly simplified because I am hiding the radius drop down menu in this example, but the same principle applies. I am using the Pro Pack to simplify the input of the CSS rules.

The CSS rules used in this example are:

table#search_table {
margin-bottom: 9px;
padding-bottom: 0px;
}
div#address_search {
display: inline-block;
position: relative;
width: 100%;
}

div#radius_in_submit {
position: absolute;
right: 0;
top: 0;
width: 180px;
}

Other modifications to the user interface include:

• Custom CSS, as noted above, is simplified with Pro Pack.
• Hide the radius drop down is a  Pro Pack option (will be moved into Enhanced Search, eventually).
• Setting the center of the map (home icon) is done with the Enhanced Map add-on.
• Changing the Find Locations label to “Show My Place On Map” is done via  a Pro Pack setting  (will be moved to Enhanced Search, eventually).
• Tightening the “padding” that goes around the home icon and the destination icon is done by setting the Zoom Adjustment to zero, the tightest possible bounding around multiple points.  This is a standard Store Locator Plus feature.
• The map scroll wheel zoom and map type selector has been disabled by using Enhanced Map.
• I have enabled Immediately Show Locations and left the Radius to Search Initially at 10,000.   Results is set to 5 in case we add more venues at a later date.   This ensures the map shows our venue(s) when the visitor first comes to the page.   These are a standard Store Locator Plus features.

This is what we end up with, an easy way for people to enter their home address and, if desired, get directions to the venue where we are current playing volleyball:

Find Button Next To Address

You can see this in action at the Charleston Beach Volleyball and Social Club website.

Here is what is new for the mid-may updates of Store Locator Plus and the add-on packs.

Store Locator Plus

Version 3.11

Edit Latitude and Longitude

Previously  a Pro Pack feature, editing the latitude and longitude of an existing location is now part of the base plugin.

Edit Lat Long

Manage Location Interface Tweaks

The rows on the manage location interface are now highlighted on mouse over.

The coloring of odd, even, and non-geocoded rows are now 100% CSS based as is the hover feature.   For Pro Pack users that means you can now change these elements by entering the modified CSS rule in the CSS settings entry on the Pro Pack panel.

Manage Locations Row Highlight

Other Patches And Stuff

A typo in the search form CSS has been fixed, which cleans up a number of themes that lay out the search form with side-by-side form entries.  The term “add_in_address” should have been “addy_in_address”; if you made your own custom CSS rules you will want to make a note of the change to the div ID.

JavaScript files now have the main plugin version associated with them, helping ensure they are cleared out by caching plugins.   Some fixes have been made so Tagalong stops mis-behaving in some areas.   Hooks and Filters have been tweaked to make for better integration with Enhanced Maps.   Some bugs have been fixed like retaining the lat/long when editing a location and keeping track of a store ID after doing an edit.

Speaking of JavaScript, the map processor has a couple of interesting fixes.  One of them stops the map from breaking on IE8 when the Pro Pack location sensor is enabled.   Another bug fix ensures map markers show up if one of the locations does not have a custom map marker when the Pro Pack, Tagalong, or Enhanced Maps custom map markers are being shown on the same map.   The JavaScript warning from Google Maps saying “g undefined” has also been eliminated when users search for a location the returns “no results found”.

More hooks and filters have been added, giving even more control to the add-on packs and third party developers.  Things like add-on packs being able to filter the location data the is selected during a search from the front end user interface.   The filter for AJAX/JSONP processing also happens to make the base plugin a bit lighter and faster by moving Pro Pack specific processing into the Pro Pack.

Enhanced Map

Version 0.7

Custom Location-Specific Map Markers

Thanks to the folks at Integrated Listening and their sponsorship of this feature, you can now set custom map markers on a per-location basis.  Every location can have its own custom map marker.

Per Location Map Markers

Center Map At Attribute

Now you can set the center of the map on a per-page basis.    The new center_map_at attribute on the SLPLUS shortcode will help you here.

Pro Pack

Version 3.11

Set “Any” Text on Tags Drop Down

No more code editing or language file editing to change the text “Any” on the tags drop down menu.  It is now a setting on the Map Settings admin page.

Pro Pack Tags

Run Reports Fixed

The run reports link is fixed and no longer generates a “permission denied” error.

Tagalong

Version 0.9

Search By Category

The “show categories on search form” option has existed in Tagalong for a while but the Store Locator Plus was heavily re-worked, breaking this feature.  The category data was both serialized and attached to custom WordPress page types.   This made filtering and searching the data exceedingly complex.   The serialized categories has finally been wrangled and a brand-new Store Locator Plus data processing filter provided the tools needed to make search by category functional again.   Yup, you can now display the Tagalong categories on your search form and have it actually only return results that match the user’s selection.

Category Selector from Tagalong

Bug Fixes

Tagalong has been misbehaving after the last few updates to Store Locator Plus.   This release patches several bugs including:

Duplicating addresses during edits.

Forgetting the assigned Tagalong categories.

Forgetting the lat/long when editing a location.

Other Enhancements

There are also some minor modifications that guide you toward how to use Tagalong.

For example, the Hide Empty Categories feature has been re-labelled and has better instructions.   Since it only works if Store Pages is enabled, it is only possible to turn it on if Store Pages is installed.   It also automatically de-activates if Store Pages is de-activated.   The help message also lets you know that draft Store Pages are considered “empty”.

Speaking of category lists, both the edit locations form on the admin panel and the drop down category list on the user-facing map page have been cleaned up.   Categories are now shown in their proper hierarchical format with parent categories appearing above children with the children indented.

There is a lot of stuff coming for the next Store Locator Plus release including an update to Enhanced Map, Pro Pack, and Tagalong add-on packages. There have been a number of bug fixes as well as some notable internal updates that have bumped the next Store Locator Plus version from the “patch release” version (3.10.4) to a “minor release” version (3.11).

More details will follow when the versions of the base plugin and add-on pack pass testing. In the meantime the main highlights are:

Store Locator Plus gets the edit lat/long feature that used to be a Pro Pack exclusive. There have also been a number of bug fixes including a CSS typo that was messing up the search form on the map page. There are also JavaScript updates that allow the map to work on IE8 when location sensor is turned on and a fix for a series of settings that cause map markers to disappear.

Enhanced Map gets the per-location map markers as well as the “center_map_at” shortcode attribute.

Pro Pack has a setting to allow the “any” text to be set on the tags drop down and reporting has been fixed.

Tagalong search by category is now working. A half-dozen other quirks and ailments that have been in Tagalong for a few releases has been patched. It should be far more usable in its current state.

With WordPress it is very easy to debug the activation process of a plugin and get a detailed log file of exactly what is going on.   I use this method to look at activation problems with Store Locator Plus on various servers.   Most often I uncover server security settings that are too strict, memory issues, or even blocked MySQL connection requests on mis-configured shared hosting environments.

How can you do the same?   Easy.    I only have FTP access to many of these client sites, which means you should be able to employ the same technique.

Enable WordPress Debug Logging

Login to your server using your FTP client.

Download the wp-config.php file.    Hopefully you’ve moved this out of the root directory of  your website (that is noted in various security articles on this site).  If not it will reside in your web root.

Find the line:

define('WP_DEBUG', false);

Edit that line and add another to the wp-config file to turn on logging:

define('WP_DEBUG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_LOG', true);

Put the wp-config.php file back on your server.

Now you can go and activate your plugin or run whatever other things are causing you problems. I find it best to only chase one problem at a time and empty/delete the debug log file between tests.

After you’ve tested the issue, such as activating a plugin, go get your log file with FTP. Download the file in your ./wp-content directory named debug.log. This contains any errors and warnings generated from within WordPress.

When you are done make sure you turn OFF debug logging so you don’t slow down your site and fill up your disk storage.

Edit these two lines and put the file back on your server.

define('WP_DEBUG', false);
define('WP_DEBUG_LOG', false);

The past few days I’ve been mostly working on client projects related to the plugins, helping people with their websites and server issues, and dealing with my own server issues.   Along the way I’ve learned some new tricks.

Tagalong 0.9

Tagalong version 0.9 is in development.  I am working through some reported bugs and trying to iron out the kinks.    This version also has patches to make it  work with SLP version 3.10.4.   This is where my focus will be until I get some of the more notable bugs squashed.  As soon as this is ready testing will ensue on SLP 3.10.4, EM 0.7, and Tagalong 0.9.

This version will require SLP 3.10.4

Store Locator Plus 3.10.4

Store Locator Plus 3.10.4  is entering testing.  There are no notable features but there are hooks and filters as well as minor updates that help make a new Enhanced Map v0.7 feature come to life.

When this version is ready you will need to update Enhanced Map to version 0.7+ and Tagalong to version 0.9+.

Enhanced Map 0.7

This version is entering testing.  As noted previously, the most notable feature of Enhanced Map 0.7 is the ability to set per-location map markers.

This version will require SLP v3.10.4

Store Locator Plus 3.11

This is in development.  Future release date is not yet set.    I am trying to get a version ahead of the public release that is in beta/testing in order to give the beta group more time to test an upcoming release.   This version has some notable improvements to how the plugin information is loaded and passed to the JavaScript process on the UI.  This lightens the load on the server when processing the map page load.  This all came about due to the Enhanced Map 0.8 tweaks.

Enhanced Map 0.8

Another future release.  Thus far the notable feature is the “center_map_at” shortcode attribute that a few people have asked for.    It was a lot of work to get this wired into Store Locator Plus, which uncovered some of the produce inefficiencies in the code logic that loads the JavaScript.

Trello

While exploring Easy Digital Downloads I was introduced to Trello.   I’ve only been playing with it for a few days and already love it.  It has a super-simple interface for task management.    If  you are juggling a half-dozen tasks at once, this is a great list management tool.   I already like how it organizes my thoughts and visually lets me see what I’m working on which allows me to easily see dependencies and move tasks/projects around in the queue.  It is all AJAX with a great drag-and-drop interface.  I’d love to emulate some of this user experience into Store Locator Plus but I need to up my UX skills first.

BrowserStack

I discovered BrowserStack while testing IE8 for a client.   They have customers that are complaining about compatibility with IE8.    There are some issues with the location sensor on IE8 that I thought were resolved.   It looks like SLP 3.10 through 3.10.3 have an issue which is resolved in 3.10.4.     Using BrowserStack is a simple solution for doing multiple browser tests on different platforms.  You can get a 3-month free trial if you follow the link from the modern.ie website.    It is costly, at $20/month.   However if you don’t want to fire up a dozen virtual machines to test IE8 on XP or IE10 on Windows 8 then this may be worth the expense.

I’ve been working mostly on support issues and paid customization work the past few days, in addition to trying to do some system admin on my own servers.  You can read about those trials & tribulations on my other blog posts.  This post is about product progress and some operational notes related to Store Locator Plus.

Enhanced Map

I am working on an update to Enhanced Map that will add a couple of new features that I hope to release next week.  The primary feature that some people will be interested in is the ability to set an individual map marker on a PER LOCATION basis.    Immediately prior to the release of Enhanced Map with this feature there will be a price increase.   If you are interested in this feature and don’t yet own Enhanced Map, you may want to buy the add-on now.    For now upgrades are free, which may not be the case in the not-so-distant future.

Enhanced Map Per Location Marker

W3 Total Cache and Store Locator Plus

If you read the blog you will note that I have recently been playing with site cache and PHP cache tools.    One of the tools I’ve started playing with is W3 Total Cache.    By mere coincidence, one of the support requests related to Store Locator Plus is for a client using W3 Total Cache.

After installing the latest version of Store Locator Plus 3.10.3 that included several patches that I KNEW would fix an issue on the site, I found that some of my test systems would NOT load the results below the map.  Instead I was seeing an “UNDEFINED” message in the results on Chrome and IE.

As it turned out, W3 Total Cache was caching the JavaScript on the site.   Even though JavaScript minify was not enabled the page cache WAS enabled.    Apparently a plugin upgrade is not enough to flush the W3 Total Cache page entries.    If you are using W3 Total Cache you will want to flush your Store Locator Plus related pages, if not the entire page cache for your site, whenever you upgrade the plugin.

Speaking Of Upgrades

After a lot of review and some support dialogue with the folks at WooThemes,  there is a good chance I will not be doing the crowd funding or Enterprise Subscription programs any time soon.  Not only is the Woo site broken in many areas related to the Codex, there was a very clear response from the WooThemes support guys that they are not support third party development nor listing any third party plugins any time soon.   That issue combined with the fact that there are a LOT of patches, tweaks, and adjustments I’ve had to make to get the WooCommerce system working well on my site means I will likely be changing store software soon.

Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) looks promising.  I’m waiting for some feedback from them about the Enterprise Subscriptions and third party development of add-on packs, but thus far it looks like they are a lot more focused and more open to outside influence… sort of how Woo started out.   They also actually have an updated Codex, similar to what I’ve done here. EDD may be a good fit for Charleston Software Associates.

Just last month, Microsoft announced that their Windows Azure Virtual Machines were no longer considered a pre-release service.  In other words, that was the official notification from Microsoft that they feel their Virtual Machines offering is ready for enterprise class deployments.   In fact they even offer uptime guarantees if you employ certain round-robin and/or load balancing deployments that help mitigate the downtime in your cloud environment.

Essentially the Virtual Machines offering on Windows Azure equates to a virtual dedicated server that you would employ from most hosting companies.  The only different with the Windows Azure platform, like most cloud-based offerings, is that you need to serve as your own system admin.   This is not web hosting for business owners but for tech geeks.    In other words, it works perfect for guys like me.

Or so I thought.

Different Shades of White

As I learned tonight, there are differences between the various cloud offerings that are not easy to tease out of the hundreds of pages of online documentation touting how awesome a service provider’s cloud services are.   Sure, there are the metrics.  You can compare instance sizes in terms of disk space, CPU, and bandwidth.   You can comparing pricing and the relative costs of operating your server on each of the cloud platforms.    You can even get the background information on the company providing the virtualized environment, getting some clue (though never a clear picture) of where the servers are physically located, how many servers they have, how secure the environment is, and more.

At the end of the day they all look very similar.  Sure there are discrete elements you can point to on each comparison spreadsheet you throw together, but in the end the differences are relatively minor.   They pricing is similar.   The network and server room build-outs are similar.   The support offerings look similar.     When all is said-and-done you end up making a choice based on price, the reputation of the company, the quality of the online documentation, and the overall user interface experience (UX) that is presented during your research.

After a lot of research, and with quite a bit of experience with Amazon Web Services, all the cloud based offerings were very similar.   Different shades of white.     In the end I decided to try the Microsoft Windows Azure offering.    Microsoft has a good reputation in the tech world, they are not going anywhere, and as a Microsoft Bizspark member I also have preview access and discount services.

My decision to go against the recommendations I’ve been making to my clients for years, “Amazon was one of the first, constantly innovates, and is the leader in the space”, was flawed.    Yes, I tested and evaluated the options for months before making the move.   But it takes an unusual event to truly test the mettle of any service provider.

Breaking A Server

After following the advice of a Microsoft employee that was presented in a Windows Azure forum about Linux servers, I managed to reset the Windows Azure Linux Agent (or WALinuxAgent) application.    No, I did not do this on a whim.   I needed to install a GUI application on the server and followed the instructions presented.  It turns out that Microsoft has deployed a custom application that allows their Azure management interface to “talk” to the Linux server.  That same application DISABLES the basic NetworkManager package on CentOS.  To install any kind of GUI applications or interface you must disable WALinuxAgent, enable NetworkManager, install, disable NetworkManager, then re-enable WALinuxAgent.  The only problem with the instructions that are published in several places is they omit a very important step.  While connected with elevated privileges (sudo or su) you must DISABLE the WALinuxAgent (waagent) provisioning so that it does not employ the Windows Azure proprietary security model on top of your installation.  If you do not do this  and you log out of that elevated privs session y ou will NEVER have access to an elevated privs account again.

Needless to say, you cannot keep an enterprise level server running in this state.  Eventually you need to install updates and patches for security or other reasons.

As I would learn, there is ZERO support on recovering from this situation.

Support versus support

In the years of working with Amazon Web Services and hosting a number of cloud deployments on their platform, I had come accustomed to being able to gain access to support personnel that actually TRY to help you out.   They often go above-and-beyond what is required by contract and try to either get you back on track through their own efforts of at least provide you with enough research and information that you can recover from any issues you have with limited effort.    Amazon support services can be pricey, but having access to not just the level one but also higher level techs is an invaluable resource.

The bottom line is that Microsoft offers NO support services for their Linux images, even those they provide as “sanctioned images”, beyond making sure the ORIGINAL image is stable and that the virtual machine did not crash.    Not only do they not have any apparent means to elevate support tickets, as it turns out there is NO SUPPORT if you are running a Linux image.

Clearly Microsoft does not put this “front and center” on ANY of their Windows Azure literature.  In fact, just the opposite.  Microsoft has made an extended effort in all their “before the purchase” propaganda to try and make it sound like they EMBRACE Linux.   They go out of their way to make you feel like Linux is a welcome member of their family and that they work closely with multiple vendors to ensure a top-quality experience.

Until you have a problem.   At which point they wash their hands, as is evident in this support response along with a link to the Knowledgebase article saying “Linux.  Not our problem.”:

Hello Lance, I understand your concerns and frustration, but Microsoft does not offer technical support for CentOS or any other Linux OS at this time.

…

 Please, review guidelines for the Linux support on Windows Azure Virtual Machines: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2805216

No Azure Support

Other Issues

While the lack of support and the inability to regain privileged user access to my server is the primary concern that has me on the path of choosing a new hosting provider, there have been other issues as well.

A few times in the past several months the WordPress application has put Apache in a tailspin.  This consumes the memory on the server.   While that is not necessarily an issue with Windows Azure, the fact that the “restart virtual image” process DOES NOT WORK at least 50% of the time IS a big issue.   Windows Azure is apparently overly-reliant on that dreaded WALinuxAgent on the server.   If it does not response, because memory is over-allocated for example, the server will not reboot.   The only thing you can do is press the restart button, wait 15 minutes to see if it happened to get enough memory to catch the restart command, and try again.  Ouch.

The Azure interface is also not as nice as I first thought.   While better than the original UX at Amazon Web Services, it is overly simplistic in some places and downright confusing in others.  Try looking at your bill.  Or your subscription status.   You end up jumping between seemingly dis-jointed sites.    Forget about online support forums.  Somehow you end up in the MSDN network, far removed from your cloud portal.    I often find myself with a dozen windows open so I can keep track of where I was or what I need to reference, lest I lose my original navigation path and have to start over.   Not too mention the number of times that this site-to-site hand-off fails and your login is suddenly deemed “invalid” mid-session.

Azure Session Amensia

Moving Servers

So once again, I find myself looking for a new hosting provider. Luckily I recently made the move to Windows Azure and not only have VaultPress available to make it easy to relocate the WordPress site but also Crash Plan Pro to get all the “auxiliary” installation “cruft” moved along with it.

Where will I go?

In my mind there are only two choices for an expandable cloud deployment running Linux boxes. Amazon Web Services or Rackspace. I’ll likely end up with Amazon again, but who knows… maybe it is time to try the legendary support at Rackspace once again. We’ll see. Stay tuned.