Doodlebee

Well, it *kinda* already does this. not 100% how you’re asking for it though.

There’s a setting to make the Instructions searchable – but through the front end. By default, it keeps the instructions hidden from search results, but you can turn that off. Then you clients can go through the front end of the site and search, and results will come up.

You can also already set user-level access for each instruction (in the right sidebar as you are creating the instruction). So you *can* set the overall user level to “subscriber” in the settings, and it’ll display the instructions in the Help menu, but only people with that level of access (and above) will see the instructions meant for them.

Hm. I’ve never really thought about that, TBH. That’s an interesting idea.

I don’t know that I *will* add this future, but you’ve given me a bit to chew on, so I may add it in the future (if I feel it does, indeed, add to the plugin’s functionality).

In the meantime, I know Mark Jaquaith has a plugin similar to mine, called WP-Help. I’m not 100% sure, but I think his is based on the exact functionality you’re asking for.

Excellent! Thank you for letting me know. I’ll be sure to have that in the next release.

It’s a plugin. it’s the main file for the plugin. My plugin has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with themes.

I did see that wpMandrill is now free. (when I checked before, it was not, or perhaps I was looking at the wrong plugin, I don’t know, but the one I saw before was premium only) I’ve just downloaded and checked it.

wpMandrill rewrites the wp_mail() function. it doesn’t appear to check and see if it’s loaded first. (it kinda does – but if it is loaded, then it just spits out an error message and stops.) pulling in pluggable.php does load the wp_mail(0 function – but wpMandrill’s intent is to rewrite that function, and set it before the WP default function is written. So calling the pluggable file prevents it from doing this. The plugin could easily avoid this conflict (there are actually several out there that conflict with wpMandrill because of this) by either using rename_function(), or override_function(), but I guess he chose not to do that.

In any case, I did find a possible solution that is working locally. Another plugin was having the same issue (calls in pluggable.php, and getting the same error in wpMandrill), and someone came along and popped in a solution that they used for one of their own, since the wpMandrill plugin author doesn’t seem to have a fix for his code.

So try this, in instructions.php, change:

/**
 * I know.  I'm sorry.
*/

if( !function_exists('wp_set_current_user')	) {
  require(ABSPATH . WPINC . '/pluggable.php');
 }

to this:

/**
 * Call in my plugin with plugins_loaded instead of directly
 */
function bei_call_pluggable() {
    if( !function_exists('wp_set_current_user')	) {
      require(ABSPATH . WPINC . '/pluggable.php');
    }
}
add_action('plugins_loaded', 'bei_call_pluggable');

That’s working for me, locally.

I’m currently working on this plugin to make some improvements, but they aren’t complete yet. I’ll be sure to put this in the next release (if you can verify that this works) so making the change won’t be affected on the next update.

There’s nothing I can do to fix this. My plugin *requires* pluggable.php to be called in to function. I have it surrounded by an “if” statement, to ensure it doesn’t conflict with other plugins – i.e. if it’s already called, don’t call it.

wpMandrill appears to be a premium plugin, so I can’t test my plugin with it, unless I buy it first. My *guess* would be that wpMandrill is also calling in pluggable.php – but their code doesn’t have an “if” statement wrapped around it – so it’s still trying to call it in even though it’s already been called. (but without access to the plugin files, I can’t verify that information)

Plugins are called in alphabetical order. “b” comes before “w”, so mine is getting called first. Again, I’ve wrapped an “if” statement around my call to pluggable.php, so any plugin that was called before mine won’t have a conflict. but I can’t force the order of plugin load to change (nor would I want to) to make this go away. I can’t do anything about the plugins that are loaded after mine. if someone else needs pluggable.php to be loaded, and doesn’t check to see if it’s loaded yet, there’s really nothing I can do.

If it’s a serious issue, I would recommend contacting the plugin author for wpMandrill. I’ve already done everything I can with my plugin to ensure it doesn’t conflict with other plugins – but if other plugin authors don’t put those checks in, I can’t do anything about that.

And yes, I’m still searching for an alternative to calling in pluggable.php, but I have yet to find one.

Just letting you know I’m updating the plugin, and there will be a new option to “show all comments open by default.”

To answer your initial question, there’s a few stylesheets in the plugin folder (under /css) that have the different CSS calls so you can style them as you will. You can position the “reply” link with CSS to place it wherever you like.

@seth – I would hope so ?? I’ve been working solely in WordPress since version 1.5 XD Have a couple of plugins in the repository, myself ?? If you want to email me directly, that’s great, thanks.

@sidney – that site isn’t loading for me, but I’m in crappy Comcast so I’ll try again later. Thanks for that.

Thanks. Actually, as I noted in the original post, I *did* go to the forums first (as requested by the sticky at the top of your support forums). I even created an account and logged in. I could see no responses – they were all blocked, so I decided to try my luck here.

I’ve already done the file/folder permissions settings, as well as checked user:group ownership. All are as they should be – none of the other plugins (or themes, for that matter) I’ve installed are having any issues like this, so I’m not sure what other special permission this particular plugin needs that the others don’t.

Actually it *should* be doing this by default. (the person who posted *just* before you asked the opposite question)

My guess is, if they are showing by default, there’s a jQuery conflict somewhere.

I know it’s been 2 months since you asked this question (sorry about that – I don’t get notified when someone asks a question here) but if you’re still trying it out, can you pass me the URL to the site you’re using it on? Maybe I can find the conflict.

Sorry for the delay in responding – WP doesn’t notify me when someone asks a question here, so everyone has to reply on me having the time to come and look, which is sadly not frequent.

These are good ideas. Right now, the answer to both questions is a “no”…but you’ve given a me a couple of ideas. I’ll see what I can come up with ??

Thanks for letting me know. (However, for the record, the “reviews” area is not the place to post for support questions.)

Awesome review – thank you! This is exactly the sort of feedback I’m looking for – ways to improve it ??

The custom tab is affected by CSS. It has a default stylesheet, but you can supply your own and change how it looks.(actually, I think it calls in whatever the back-end default is, but I haven’t had a chance to do anything with the plugin since 3.7, I think – except just to verify it’s still working. So I might need to add the new stylesheets.)

Thanks for the ideas! As soon as my workload dies down a bit, I want to dig back into this and improve it – I use it all the time for my own clients, and I’m *constantly* rewriting things to fit my needs for each project (and can definitely understand your points here – I’ve said many of the same things, myself!), but I just haven’t had a chance to put the goods I’ve written into the free one here.

Yes, I’ve already removed it completely and reinstalled (a few times actually, but I did it two more times just for you ?? ) – both by uploading directly to the server, as well as just installing directly from the back end. As soon as I activate, it shuts the whole site down.

I can’t “deactivate” it because once it’s activated, my only option is to delete it (or move it to another folder) because I get the lovely white screen of death ??

Any other ideas?

It’s there because the plugin needs access to the current logged-in user level. The order WordPress loads things means that the plugin gets loaded *before* the user level is checked. That line of code is to force the user level to be checked before the plugin loads. The reason is because the plugin relies on knowing what the user level is for the end user – logged in or not. That’ how a lot of the functionality is displayed properly (i.e. not displaying the back-end link to anyone but admins, knowing which user level to show instructions to, etc.) it’s a fairly common issue, actually, but one I haven’t yet found a workaround for.

In any case, it doesn’t make sense that wp_mail would stop working because of this call. I know I have it running on several sites, and it doesn’t affect wp_mail at all. since wpMandrill is a mail plugin, I’m wondering if the issue lies with that plugin (plugin conflict?) I’ve never used it, so I don’t know. I’d have to look at the code for that plugin.

EDIT: according to the plugin description: “It replaces the wp_mail function included with WordPress.” So that’s probably why you’re getting an error – it’s not checking to see if mail is actually loaded before it attempts to do whatever it does. I can’t really do anything for that – the plugin author should have it in the code to check and see if wp_mail is loaded and running before it assumes it’s not. (that’s why I have an”if” statement before calling pluggable.php – if it’s loaded, don’t load it again) There are a LOT of plugins that use the pluggable include to access user information – this is a pretty common solution to the problem. I would LOVE to find an alternative solution to obtaining that information though, because not everyone checks to see if stuff is loaded before they start doing stuff to it, and it’s kind of a common issue with plugin conflicts.