Fantastic, minimal plugin

  • Nothing in this world is perfect, but this plugin is still fantastic and worth a try for those looking for a very minimal yet effective way to put their blog members in groups and restrict content.

    I love it a lot because it’s not bloated at all and did not negatively affect my website’s speed. I don’t need any payment features – as I am just a non-profit hobbyist – so Groups serves my purpose much more than paid membership plugins (that are directed more towards for-profit websites and come with an excess of features I don’t need and won’t use).

    There are a few things I would want to change in this plugin so far (based on my projects and experiments with it). First, it would be great to have a way to assign a Group slug and to use that slug when restricting content with the shortcodes. This is because IDs are hard to remember, and could change, and also since my Group names are sometimes in a foreign language. While Groups deals with UTF8 characters like a pro, it’s a bit of a hassle to switch languages (and language directions) when writing shortcodes. Also, my group names are for study projects, so they tend to be long…very long. Hence, a group_slug would be handy and more practical.

    The other feature I’d hope to see is a new conditional shortcode. So far, shortcodes exists to show content to members or a group or nonmembers of a group (or groups). But the rules are that content in shown/hidden to group members of any of the IDs/Names listed in the shortcode. What I sometimes need is to show content to members of Group A who are also members of Group B, and at the same time keep the content hidden to members of Group A who are NOT members of Group B. I don’t know why I must complicate things (I’m working on adopting a keep it simple attitude, but here in this review I am just taking a moment to dream out loud a bit).

    Still, all in all, I still love Groups. I like it so much I intend to make a mug or sticker with I ? Groups, and I am serious about this. The day I came across it was a day to be thankful for, no joke, I only wish I remember the exact date…

    Anyway, I will definitely be looking at the for sale add-ons to this plugin because I feel if this free, base plugin is this good then the add-ons must be worth it. And also, just because I want to support whoever is behind this. You are amazing.

    Keep up the good work on this plugin, please! It’s a gem. ??

    Thank you.

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  • Plugin Author Kento

    (@proaktion)

    Hi there,

    Thank you so very very much for taking the time to write this. I’m going through the reviews on Groups today to say thank you and take notes of useful suggestions.

    it would be great to have a way to assign a Group slug and to use that slug when restricting content with the shortcodes

    I think that the idea with the slug is great. I was going to suggest using the names, but as you explain, that wouldn’t help in cases like that. Adding this should actually be quite easy, we’d have to add a column in the group DB table and integrate the field in the UI. It would also need to generate the slugs for existing installations when it’s added. The slugs would need to be unique, both among slugs, group names and ids.

    I’d hope to see is a new conditional shortcode

    Regarding the conditional shortcode, it makes a lot of sense. We have this little extension https://github.com/itthinx/groups-cmember that provides a shortcode [groups_cmember group="Apples,Pears"]Only visible for those who belong to Apples and Pears![/groups_cmember] so you could use that I guess.

    But … what could really be great is conditional expressions inside the [groups_member] shortcode … e.g. [groups_member group="Apples+Pears"]...[/groups_member] so you’d have to belong to both to see the content; another [groups_member group="Apples+Pears+!Oranges"]...[/groups_member] – this is something that would cover pretty much every reasonable case I guess. Something to think about in more detail as I can see implications that could affect performance if it’s not done the right way. We actually have something like that on our roadmap for Groups, there was just not enough time and resources to make it happen yet.

    I intend to make a mug or sticker with I ? Groups

    Awesome idea!!!

    Keep up the good work on this plugin, please! It’s a gem.

    Yes, absolutely! Thank you so much for your encouraging words, you’ve made my day! Even though it’s months after you posted this that you get a reply, I hope it still reaches you.

    Cheers!

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
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