Next version of Post Levels

August 16, 2006 Tagged: postlevels, wordpress

It’s been a while since the last release of the Post Levels plugin, I believe it is just about time for a new release.

I’m a selfish developer, so I’m prioritizing based on my needs. Here is what I need for the next version:

Non HTTP-auth private RSS feeds: My web host runs PHP in CGI mode, which doesn’t support the HTTP authentication
Flickr integration: This will depend on what I can implement with the Flickr API, but I’d like some tighter integration with their contact list and privacy

There are a few features that people have frequently requested as well, I’d like to get the following done:

Tell users there are private posts: Frequently requested option, would allow non-logged in users to know there are hidden posts
Category-based level: Set default levels for certain categories
Level quick tag: Allow some kind of shortcut for setting the post level

Any other requests?

BTW, don’t expect me to have this all coded tomorrow :)

Viewing 26 Comments

Mike B. 2 years ago 1 point
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Someone mentioned being able to label privacy levels with custom text fields. I thought that was a good idea.

My only other feature request would be a complete re-design of the privacy system: it would replace the levels with tags. So I could mark labels as being "private", then I could assign any of these private tags to individuals. So, as an example, I could mark the following tags as secret: "private", "superprivate", "family". Then I could assign as many of these tags to each user, allowing them to see all public posts and only those posts that also have an assigned tag.

I only suggest this because you asked - the plugin in it's current state is EXCELLENT!

2 /people/mcbarron/ /people/mcbarron/following/ http://mike.shannonandmike.net 540361553

theo2112 2 years ago 1 point
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hey, great plugin. Would there be anyway to print out text next to the view level drop box on the write/manage post page. I would love to have it say: post level [1-10] 10-admin, 8-board, 6-coaches.... and so on. this way everyone knows what level to make things so the appropriate person can see it. thanks again.

theo2112 -@- gmail.com

SexySam 2 years ago 1 point
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What about having private posts show up in archives?

Ryno 2 years ago 1 point
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Fantastic plugin, just used this in a project and it was the foundation upon which the majority of my custom code works on, great work!

I did have problems however getting it to work in Wordpress 2.1, although I'm not neccesarily saying that's your fault. Have you had any problems using this in 2.1? Everything worked and all private posts were visible if I was an administrator but if I was logged in as a subscriber with post level of 0 trying to look at posts with a post level of 0, nothing was visible?

Apart from that, well done and very much looking forward to this plugin getting better and more feature rich.

Adam 2 years ago 1 point
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I'd love to see the Flickr API and privacy levels used. My site currently uses gallery and post levels to display my photos and posts to specific users, however adding Flickr users would allow me to switch from Gallery to Flickr, saving me a lot of storage space!!

Joefish 2 years ago 1 point
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The one thing I'd most like to see has almost nothing to do with Post Levels. I've been struggling with listing recent comments in the sidebar. What I'd ideally like is something that will show recent comments attached to posts that a reader has permissions to see. I've experimented with plugins and tried writing my own functions, but it's always all-or-nothing, that is, either the most recent comments are listed regardless of privacy, or comments on private posts are never listed.

Any chance you could hook a guy up with a function for that?

Mike B. 2 years ago 1 point
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<pre class="code">h2?php _e('Recent Comments'); ?/h2
ul
?php
global $wpdb, $postlevels_current_user_level;

$sql = "SELECT {$wpdb-comments}.comment_ID, {$wpdb-comments}.comment_author, {$wpdb-comments}.comment_date, {$wpdb-posts}.id, {$wpdb-posts}.post_title
FROM {$wpdb-comments}, {$wpdb-posts} LEFT JOIN {$wpdb-postmeta} ON {$wpdb-posts}.ID = {$wpdb-postmeta}.post_id
WHERE {$wpdb-comments}.comment_post_ID = {$wpdb-posts}.id AND {$wpdb-comments}.comment_approved='1' AND {$wpdb-comments}.comment_type != 'pingback' ";

if (!empty($postlevels_current_user_level)) {
$sql .= " AND ({$wpdb-posts}.post_status = 'publish' OR ({$wpdb-posts}.post_status = 'private' AND {$wpdb-postmeta}.meta_key = 'post_level' AND {$wpdb-postmeta}.meta_value = $postlevels_current_user_level))";
}
else {
$sql .= " AND {$wpdb-posts}.post_status = 'publish'";
}
$sql .= " ORDER BY comment_ID DESC LIMIT 5";

$LatestActivities = $wpdb-get_results($sql);

foreach($LatestActivities as $LatestActivity) {
//print 'li'.date("j M", strtotime($LatestActivity-CDate)).' '.$LatestActivity-auth.' on a href="'.get_permalink($LatestActivity-PostID).'"'.$LatestActivity-post_title.'/a/li';
print 'listrong'.$LatestActivity-comment_author.'/strong on a href="'.get_permalink($LatestActivity-id).'"'.$LatestActivity-post_title.'/a span style="font-size: smaller;"('.date('Y.m.d', strtotime($LatestActivity-comment_date)).')/span/li';
}
?
/ul</pre>

http://mike.shannonandmike.net/

Joefish 2 years ago 1 point
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Ooh, smashing! I'll try that out within the day. Thank you very much!

Dave U. 1 year ago 1 point
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I agree with Mike B. that an awesome feature would be to have tags (maybe in addition to user level since I can see the merrit of that) but I would like to see them be customizable.

kim 1 year ago 1 point
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multiply.com? and then also making groups so that only people in that group can view the other posts? and if people subsribe, they get to see only those posts meant for them to read in their feed.

another thing is implementing something like , but instead have or or that way you can have a post and parts of it not meant for some will be inaccessible to them. those parts wont show up in their feed either.

i'm aware that these requests may be a bit ambitious and i don't know if its even possible but those are some features i would love to see, it would make for the perfect plug in for personal blogs, i think a lot of people would really go for it!

:-)

kim 1 year ago 1 point
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, but instead have or or that way you can have a post and parts of it not meant for some will be inaccessible to them. those parts wont show up in their feed either.

kim 1 year ago 1 point
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, but instead have [!--contentlevel#--] or [!--contentforgroup'name','of','group'--] or [!--contentforuser'name','of','user'--] that way you can have a post and parts of it not meant for some will be inaccessible to them. those parts wont show up in their feed either.

[ and ] are in place of the left and right arrows

kim 1 year ago 1 point
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[!--protectcontent--]

[ and ] are in place of the left and right arrows

DaÃ°i 1 year ago 1 point
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It would be great, at least for my page if I could display what level the post was posted in.

Just so you know whom and whom not to speak to about the post :(

Is there maybe an easy way to but this in the theme through code?

Ollie 1 year ago 1 point
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Excellent stuff Filipe! The one feature you already mentioned "Tell users there are private posts" is certainly needed ;) On top, I second SexySam's comment on private posts showing up in "cats" and archives...
Thank you for your effort! Your work is greatly appreciated!
Oliver

Gebann 1 year ago 1 point
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I tried this plugin and it works well and does what I need with one exception. It doesn't play well with WordPress MU. So I am in search of another solution. I will keep an eye on development here though and may try the next version to see if it works with MU

John P 1 year ago 1 point
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Can't wait for the update to be released!! Any idea when that's gonna be? Thanks for all your hard work!

Preston 1 year ago 1 point
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This is one of my favorite Wordpress plugins, and probably the one I use the most. How about some way to set post level through a blogging client (via xmlrpc.php)? I've been futzing around with source to see if I can come up with a way to make that work, but all of my solutions thus far have been kludge-ridden and not very pretty.

Nathan Neulinger 1 year ago 1 point
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This may have been reported before, but the setting for subject suffix doesn't stick if you have in it... Each time you submit, it converts the encoded entity into an actual space. If you only submit once, it works fine, but if you submit again, it then strips off the leading space.

Nathan Neulinger 1 year ago 1 point
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A feature request - allow editing/labelling the post levels, just to be able to more easily keep track of what you use for particular purposes.

Andy 1 year ago 1 point
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Maybe this is just me, but I think it would be great if this plugin would also allow you to set levels for pages as well as posts. Maybe it's just something I'm missing, but that's about the only thing I can think of to improve this already lifesaving plugin.

Kristi 1 year ago 1 point
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My question is similar to what Andy said in the previous comment. I use the Post Levels plugin on my blog to offer subscribers access to more personal entries that I don't want to show to just any casual visitor to my site. It works great for that purpose.

However, I'd also really like to be able to restrict certain content pages (shown in the sidebar) to only subscribed visitors at a certain level. For example I'd like to have a detailed "About Me" page that only logged-in subscribers can see.

I'd also like to display my Flickr thumbnails in the side bar, but only to higher-level members.

Is there a way to do this... either with Post Levels, or some other plugin, or a combination of both? My old blog was on pMachine and I was able to show/hide content in the sidebar easily. I don't want to give that up.

And another unrelated question: on the "Write Post" page, is it possible to modify the "Post Level" drop-down menu so that it displays level names instead of numbers? That would make it easier for me to keep track of which level is which. I was able to modify this on the "User Levels" page, but can't figure out how to change it on the Write Post page.

Thanks!

Josh 1 year ago 1 point
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Hey there! Awesome work so far, but really looking forward to the next version with the added functionality...any idea when we can expect an update? thanks much! -josh

ipeppas 1 year ago 1 point
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please fix the problem with the private posts not showing up in Categories/Archives for authorized users when they are logged in? (even to me that i have level 10)

Really thanks and congrats for ur masterwork!

Andi 1 year ago 1 point
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How about an update on the progress :)) Can't wait for a new release!!

Ryno 1 year ago 1 point
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Wordpress 2.1 is coming soon and an article has just been released about ensuring your plugins are compatible. http://wordpress.org/development/2006/12/naught...

An update on progress would be awesome, cheers.