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.

I’m writing this post because of my love for WordPress and especially all the developers out there who contribute code to both the opensource project and the thousands of plugins and themes that make it such a great tool for all of us.  There has been discussion over the years of ways in which we can express appreciation to the developers who freely offer up their code to the world to use (and all the hours put into developing, maintaining, and supporting that code) but as a plugin developer myself (only one at that),  although I’ve appreciated gratitude sent my way and reviews posted on people’s blogs nothing has stoked me more than seeing that little notification from PayPal that someone has donated a sum of money to me.  The dollar amount doesn’t really matter – it’s more the realization that someone thinks what I’ve invested so much time in worthwhile enough to pay for.

How are the above two paragraphs connected?  Well, I’d like to propose starting something this Friday called “Donate Friday” – each Friday for as long as I can do it – I’m going to pick a plugin that I’m using on any of my websites and donate to them and then tweet about the plugin (including linkies of course) with the hashtag #donatefriday (I checked it and it’s not in use at the time of this post).  If enough of us do this, it will be an incredible way to express our appreciation to the developers in the WordPress community who help make WordPress so awesome.

How can you participate? In keeping with the #followfriday example:

• pick who you will donate to.  Most plugin or theme authors have a donate link either on their plugin/theme listing at WordPress extend OR on the page they host their plugin/theme at on their own website.  You may also just want to donate to someone who contributes code to the WordPress project.
• Pick an amount.  It doesn’t have to be a lot,  even as little as $5 is fine!  Some of you may be able to donate more than others – if you can, think of what you would be willing to pay for what you are using if you had to pay for it.  However, remember the whole point is just to lift up that developers day and give them reason to keep on working away at it!  Surely, you can spare around the cost of a gourmet coffee once a week?
• Tweet about it using the #donatefriday hashtag.  Make sure you include the plugin/theme name,  the developer and link to the plugin page in your tweet.  Do something like, “Just donated to {name of developer} for {name of plugin/theme}.  Makes my blog purr. #donatefriday”
• MAKE sure you actually donate!

What do you think folks?  A good idea?  I really do hope it gains traction – think of the impact this will make (especially for developers in between jobs) in the WordPress community?

UPDATE: I realize I posted this fairly early in the week, but by doing so I hope the idea gains more steam before this Friday so it maximizes participation.  If you are reading this and want to participate but think you may forget this Friday let me remind you, follow me on Twitter and you’ll catch my #donatefriday this week (or you can use something like Peoplebrowsr.com to save a #donatefriday search).

UPDATE (JULY 31, 2009): I  made my first donation for #donatefriday.  Sure hope more people do this!! Also Dave Moyer, the cohost and producer of WordCast (the #1 WordPress and blogging podcast) has picked up this idea and is helping to promote it.  He got in touch with me and if you tweet your donations with @wordcast and #donatefriday (he is also said #df but that tag is already in use so I think it’d be better if we stuck with #donatefriday) then he’ll read your name on the air.  Thanks Dave!

UPDATE (August 14, 2009): Using “Twitter for WordPress Extended” by Marc Schieferdecker to display #donatefriday tweets in my sidebar on this page.  Wanna give you peeps donating more recognition!

So far it’s looking like it’s on track to be another useful addition to my curve. Remember though that it’s still only in beta so mileage may vary.

NOTE: I just posted this as a draft using my BlackBerry and then touched it up via my laptop to add the links – there’s still no easy way to add links in the app.

Download Organize Series 2.0.8 development version

UPDATE (12/6/08): Just a heads up that the link above downloads from the trunk of the Organize Series subversion repository so you will get the bleeding edge version of Organize Series (currently at 2.0.8beta4).  I’m not going to be responding to bugs listed here as frequently (unless I can reproduce easily…so make sure your report is as thorough as possible) because I’m ramping up to get a release ready for when WordPress 2.7 is released this week.  OrgSeries 2.0.8beta4 currently WORKS with WordPress 2.7 RC1

• Fixed the bug that caused an incorrect url for the “Manage->Series” and “Settings->Series” pages.  My fix should work for all future versions of WP.
• Added a fix to allow OrgSeries to work as expected if users customize the location of their wp-content folder (which was made possible with WordPress 2.6+)
• Added fix for any calls made to the ‘wp-config.php’ file in orgSeries (see here for my reference)
• Think I’ve nailed the “future-posts-that-are-a-part-of-a-series-showing-up-live” bug that’s been reported by some users.  If you “future-publish” a post that is part of a series it shouldn’t show up on your live blog to users anymore.
• And of course fixed the incorrect numbering of parts in the series issues brought on by the new revisions feature in WordPress 2.6+
• There are more fixes/updates in this version as well – you can see the full changeset here.

Thanks for your patience folks (and for the kind words from some of you in the interim )