1. OrganizeSeries.com -> YES!  Organize Series now has its very own website.  One of the reasons this release has been such a long time coming is because of the development work I’ve been doing on the new home for Organize Series.  Going forward.  Everything organize series related will be found on its own website.
2. Neurotic Forums shutdown:  With the switch over to the new website I’m shutting down the support forums here and moving everything organize series related over to the new website.  For a few weeks yet I’m going to leave some things up and point them to the new website so people coming her on searches and whatnot will be able to find their way there.
3. Paid Support:  The core Organize Series will continue to be free and that will not change anytime in the forseeable future.  However, because my time has become such a valuable commodity I can no longer offer free support.  I’m excited about the potential this creates though because with the new Basic Support package users will get access to a growing library of support docs and the brand new Private Support Forums (accessible only to those with a Basic Support status).  If you have any bug reports feel free to post them on the WordPress Support forums or you can use the contact form to get in touch with me.
4. ADDONS!  One of the things I’ve regretted not being able to do is spend time on adding new features to Organize Series that users have requested.  With the changes I’ve started to develop premium addons for Organize Series that will provide some of the extra capabilities that people have been asking for.  On OrganizeSeries.com you can pay for these addons individually or take advantage of the “All-Addons” package or “Lifetime” package for access to all the addons that get released.  Currently, there are two addons that have been released.
   • Organize Series Publisher: This was originally bundled with earlier versions of Organize Series but has been unbundled as an addon.  It is still free and available either on OrganizeSeries.com or WordPress extend
   • Organize Series Grouping:  This is the first premium addon to be released that provides the ability to group series together.
   • There are still 3 more premium addons waiting in the wings for release.  I’m just finishing polishing them up and you’ll probably see them start to appear in the next couple of weeks.

I want to take the time to express appreciation to all the existing users of Organize Series.  Your kind comments (and awesome implementations) contribute to keeping Organize Series alive.  I hope you enjoy all the new stuff!

The big question of course is “Does Organize Series work with WordPress 3.0?”.  The answer is it should but I haven’t tested it completely and have not upgraded my own blogs yet.  I haven’t heard of any issues arising from any users yet so I’m assuming that things are okay.  As always though, make sure you back up your blog before upgrading if you are a user of Organize Series.

The other reason for this quick update is to let you folks know that I’m in the midst of a pretty major rewrite of Organize Series. Here’s some highlights:

• WordPress 3.0 brought in some much needed love to the custom taxonomies api which makes a lot of the coding I did for Organize Series obsolete and redundant.  This rewrite will make OrgSeries leaner, faster and even more future proof against future WordPress updates.
• I’m also going to add some goodies in to this next release thanks to some fine users in the Organize Series community who have mailed me some custom work they built around the plugin for me to include.  So there will be new features with this release.
• A much broader api for developers to hook into Organize Series and extend it’s features.  This will also lay the groundwork for some exciting things I have planned for a “pro” version of the plugin.  There have been a significant number of users that have requested certain features that I don’t have time to code for free but will offer part of a paid upgrade package (built around support) down the road.  Don’t worry, the core of Organize Series will always be free and updated.
• The new release will only work with WordPress 3.0+
• I’m taking care to ensure that the new release will be back-compat with people using the template functions etc. in custom designs/development. What that means is that I’m going to do what I can to make sure the new release doesn’t break any custom work based on the older versions of organize series.

Feel free to let me know if you are experiencing any problems with Organize Series in WordPress 3.0 in the comments.

Oh, one more thing, while I am intending to get out the next release of Organize Series before the end of July, I can’t commit to any date because if any more freelance works comes up between now and then that will be the priority.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This release is mostly bug fixes.  Please make sure you read through the changelog if you want all the details.  Some of you will be happy with some persistent bugs you’ve been dealing with (I hope!).

What’s next?  Well, I have had a number of different feature requests that have come my way.  Some I may be doing as custom work in the new year (that means getting paid to implement) and others I have quoted on but I think it’s outside of the budget of those wanting them.  I’m strongly considering doing some work on some plugins to Organize Series that will implement some of the most requested features and offer it up for sale on a service like the wpplugins app store for a nominal amount (between $10-20).   Anything I do this way will still be release GPL etc. but it will be a way for me to still contribute new features to Organize Series and help pay my bills as well.   The core Organize Series plugin of course will still always be offered free of charge and I will continue to do maintenance and bug fixes on it going forward.  All I would be doing is offering new features as a paid option.

Why am I posting this?  I want some feedback, what do you think?  Would you pay $10-20 for a plugin that would extend the features of Organize Series?  Let me know in the comments!

• New Feature: A bundled plugin called “Organize Series Publisher”.  You don’t have to activate it if you don’t want but it’s there if you want to try it out!  This new add-on for Organize Series is a take-off of the Issues-Manager plugin created by Jonathan Brinley and was sponsored by Amanda Giles who hired me to port Issues-Manager so it works with Organize Series.  Amanda graciously agreed to have this released to all users of Organize Series!  Basically, this add-on allows you to set a series so any posts assigned to it won’t publish until you explicitly publish the whole series.  Read more about it on the Organize Series Plugin Page
• New Feature: custom base for series permalinks.  Yeah, now you can change ‘series’ to something like ‘myawesomesequenceofposts’…well, you can..
• New Feature: Added a new function for you power users who want to be able to fully control the output of series data.  get_series_ordered() has joined the party and you can thank Amanda for it too!  With this function you can get series data from the database and manipulate it however you want when it’s returned.  Do the tango with it if you want! Uh…yeah…
• MAJOR fixes:  As always, the users of Organize Series have been doing a great job of reporting bugs and stuff that doesn’t work and its kept me hopping spraying the raid code.  I managed to knock off some major roaches in the process and I think some of you will be happy with that (I know I am!).  Wanna know what I fixed?  Head on over to the changelog and you can catch up on it.

There’s some other typos and minor stuff that I managed to polish up for this release as well.  As always, I’ve tested things as much as I can but there may have been some nasties that slipped through.  If you spot any, head on over to the support forums and let me know.

Oh, and one more thing.  I’ve partnered with a company called wphelpcenter.com which is billed as “Your On-Call WordPress experts”.  It’s a great newish service that has a team of cool folks who can help you with all your WordPress needs.  If you have something that you need done with Organize Series “right away!” you can contact wphelpcenter.com (email: help@wphelpcenter.com or phone: 512-788-9236).  If you give them my affiliate code: 14322, I’ll get commission on the help you buy for Organize Series.  It’s a great way to help support the development of Organize Series and get help when I’m not available.   However, I’ll still entertain any custom work you may have, just get in touch with me.

Well, what are you waiting for?  Go try out the new version of Organize Series already!

1. Organize Series 2.1 will only work with WordPress 2.8 and higher.   The code was starting to get bloated with trying to support all the previous releases and I really don’t have the time to keep supporting earlier versions of WordPress.   If you really need to use Organize Series with an earlier version of WordPress then I suggest you keep using Organize Series 2.0.8.
2. Because of some of the feature add-ons you really should read the note about upgrading (read this – scroll down a bit for the upgrade notes)  so you don’t have any unexpected stuff happen.
3. Going forward I’m still going to be offering limited support via my support forums.  What does limited mean? It means I will answer basic questions that don’t take me a lot of time to answer and I will also respond to bug reports (and work on fixing them).  However, I am unable to devote any more time to significant usage related questions or new feature requests.  Feel free to post such requests in the forums and there may be other users willing to help you.   Another option is to contact me and hire me to do custom work for you related to Organize Series.

You can read all the release notes at the plugin listing found on WordPress.org/extend – or you can visit the Organize Series Plugin Page here on my blog.

Click here to download Organize Series 2.0.8

Here’s a list of fixes/features with this new version:

New features

• Added a new argument to the “wplistseries” function – “number” which enables users to limit the number of series displayed
• Reworked the layout of Organize Series administration integration with WordPress so it “fits” with WordPress 2.7 – including showing “Series” in the Dashboard “Right Now” widget.
• Organize Series interface can be floated around and respositioned in the write/edit posts screen for WordPress 2.7
• moved the “Manage Series” menu item to the Posts submenu area for WP2.7 (previous versions stay in the same location)

Minor

• fixed an inconsistency with ‘showlastupdate’
• fixed some bugs with the atom feed (was an early update…not sure if it’s still working correctly now)
• fixed the ‘series_description’ function (it wasn’t working)

Major

• Organize Series will now work correctly with the post-revisions feature introduced with WordPress 2.6
• redid the plugin file locater code to allow for changes with the admin menu filters.
• redid the plugin file locater code to allow for users customizing the location of their wp-content folder
• redid all code referencing wp-config.php to allow for users customizing the location of their wp-config.php file (see http://planetozh.com/blog/2008/07/what-plugin-coders-must-know-about-wordpress-26/ for reference I used).
• Fixed posts that are a part of series but not published showing up in the series list on published posts that are part of a series-taxonomy
• Fixed a bug where custom navigation text set on the Series options page wasn’t showing up correctly.

What’s on the horizon?

Something I had hoped to do with Organize Series with this release was to localize it so it can be translated into different languages.  Some of the framework is there but I still have quite a bit of work to go before I’m ready to give it to translators to begin working on it.  If you are a user of Organize Series and are interested in translating it into another language leave a comment with this post (even if you’ve offered to help before) and that will give me a list of people to contact once it’s ready to be translated!  Be aware that I don’t have a timetable for this yet though as I’ve got a busy couple of months ahead of me…