[wp-pro] Upgrade and fixes of Wordpress Petition Plugin

Mon Jul 12 19:58:04 UTC 2010

Hello. My name is Mouad, I use the petition management plugin called Wordpress Petition Plugin on my www.3areda.com website. I will present you with the following needs and you report to me the estimated cost. 

Please take into account that this website hosts petitions not for profit at all, with me being a self financed university student. The profits from the adsense ads that appear on the website have now reached to only $19 since I opened the service like two years ago :D

There are couple of bugs in the plugin, and other MUST HAVE modifications which shall make the plugin the really perfect plugin for petitions.

I have reported all these to James, the developer of the plugin, as feedback comments on his freecharity.co.uk blog, which he has approved as should-have. But some of them (my comments) got deleted for no obvious reason (to me), and others are still there. In any case, I would like to draw your attention to the following: They are very simple but I will explain to you in details in order to fully express the situation, and pardon any language mistakes as I am no native speaker of English :)

BUGS

1- The "first petition bug", as I call it

There is a bug in the Petition Management section of the Wordpress admin panel. If I choose a specific petition of the ones I created, from the dropdown menu in the top of the page, and then choose either to "Resend all [unconfirmed] emails", or to view the "next 10 [signatures]", (see attached image no 1), that command I choose is executed Not on the petition I selected from the menu, but on the very first petition that I created. The url of that command is : 

http://www.3areda.com/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=fcpetition.php_manage&resendall=yes&po=8

What I do to override this is, after I am obliged to resend confirmation emails to the first petition, if I re-choose the petition I want from the menu (in the page that appears directly after the resend process, which shows a message "confirmation emails resent"), the command is again executed but now for the petition I want. That means that I have to resend confirmation emails to the first petition everytime and then , from the page loaded after the sending is done, I can resend to the petition I want.

The url that appears upon the second resend command is:

http://www.3areda.com/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=fcpetition.php_manage&resendall=yes&po=8

The same applies for the "next 10 signatures" link, as well as viewing a custom number of signatures in each page. To do any of these, I have to go through the first petition first. Imagine, if I click next 10, it shows signatures from 11-20 of the first petition, even if I was in the window of the petition I want. Now I can choose the desired petition from the dropdown (again), and now it shows 11-20 of that petition. If I click Next 10 again, it again shows 21-30 of the first petition, untill I rechose the desired petition from the dropdown, and so on. 

This is frustrating when dealing with signatures and deleting spam or improper comments. 

I wish you understood what I meant to say :)

2- Custom fields

 When I was setting my first petition, I added the information and came to the “custom fields”. I added a field and hit “Add” and it added it, and automatically refreshed the page where all the texts I added above in the petition text were deleted because I didnt yet save the changes, and I had to fill them in once again, but this time saving, then adding a custom field. So, the option to add a custom field should load inline not refreshing the page, or that it should be shown only after all the fields have been created. This , because.

Must-have Modifications

1- In the signatures management page on dashboard, There should be checkboxes near each signature in order to carry out bulk actions. Imagine, a number of spam signatures in one petition. I have to click "delete" on each of them, the page reloads, and then I can delete another one, and so on. The same applies for erasing a comment. If there are checkboxes, one can "select all" or select the ones he want removed, and execute "bulk actions" like, delete on them. Just like in wordpress. Can you imagine how wasy that will make it ? 

If that can be done from the wordpress post which shows the petition, that will  be really really great, you know, like the "WP Ajax comments", which enables an admin who is logged in, to edit, delete, or hide any comment directly from the index of his blog without the need to enter the admin panel only to delete one spam comment.

2- Numbers should be added to signatures too, both in the admin and in the blog index. In the recent updates of the plugin, it is said that this is available, but its not, actually.

3- The manual confirmation of unconfirmed signatures, it is also said that this is available in the recent updates, but its not. If that is added to the "bulk actions" list, it is really great too. 

4- Verification method should be optional between either email confirmation, or "answer this question". Email confirmation is very tricky for unfamiliar users, and emails are very likely to go to junk. If I choose my own question which users have to answer, it will be great and troubles free. 

5- Separating the CSS of the theme, and making an independent stylesheet that one can modify, instead of simply adopting the theme's CSS.

6- Another thing I wish you to consider. When I was setting my first petition, I added the information and came to the “custom fields”. I added a field and hit “Add” and it added it, and automatically refreshed the page where all the texts I added above in the petition text were deleted because I didnt yet save the changes, and I had to fill them in once again, but this time saving, then adding a custom field. 

So, the option to add a custom field should load inline not refreshing the page, or that it should be shown only after all the fields have been created..

THis is it ill now, Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, and I will be waiting for your hopefully quick response 

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