A Joint Venture with “Role Manager”

Posted on July 8, 2007 by Joshua Sigar

The following will be likely the last feature incorporated to Custom Write Panel before the plugin enters beta phase.

In WordPress, a user could be assigned a role and, accordingly, that user will or will not have the capability to write a new Post.

With this upcoming new feature, a custom write panel could be accessible to certain roles only. For example, a custom write panel “Music Review” is created and a role “Music Review Writer” is invented. This custom write panel could be set to be visible to this new role only.

To accomplish this, another plugin needs to be installed in conjunction with Custom Write Panel, and that plugin would be “Role Manager.” Custom Write Panel will be responsible for creating a new capability as a custom write panel is created. Role Manager will allow adding that capability to an existing or a new role.

37 thoughts on “A Joint Venture with “Role Manager””

Jeroen Onstenk on July 9, 2007 at 07:36 said:

Role Manager is a great plugin. So these two plugins joining together is fantastic!
Angelo on July 9, 2007 at 14:21 said:

Using Role Manager Plugin is an excellent idea. You say the plugin enters beta phase, I wish I could install it and give it a try ASAP but I wonder if I would have to reinstall it at each upgrade. I mean I want to use it for an already running blog and I’d like to know if beta is safe enough not to mess with the database and be sure that I won’t have to redo all the typing (it’s a personal movie review blog) at each upgrade. Let me know :)
Joshua on July 9, 2007 at 17:13 said:

Angelo,

Look for upgrade instruction for each release. If there’s no instruction specified, upgrading means uploading new files. When there is an upgrade instruction, you will be given an option not to have to delete everything and start over. But you may have to be comfortable running queries in phpMyAdmin.
len on July 10, 2007 at 06:45 said:

hi there,

i do love your plugin, and i am allready using it for a cms-wordpress =)

is there a roadmap? when can we expect the beta versions?

thanks again for your effort!
Fukurou on July 17, 2007 at 10:59 said:

Hi, the plugin is awesome. I want give asuggestion:
In my personal case I have a custom field that take three or more values, but i can only give one, not 3.

Problem mine or hasn’t it feature?
Paul on July 22, 2007 at 01:05 said:

Hey Josh,
This would honestly be the most useful plugin EVER. I use WP for request forms, with templates that need to be copied and pasted into ever new post from Word. With CWP + Role Manager, I’m salivating over how easy my life could be. Looking forward to a beta and thanks for doing the heavy lifting.

Thanks,
Paul
Brady J. Frey on July 30, 2007 at 12:12 said:

Josh – I didn’t see an email around or a place for donations, I’d like to donate to help this move along faster. Please email me with whatever information you have or if you’d like to discuss further. I’ve been hacking the admin so heavily, that this would be a welcomed feature.
Andreas Freuler on August 7, 2007 at 05:04 said:

Hi,
Ho i csn show the Custom Fields in the output viewing of the blog.

thanks
andy
Charles on August 16, 2007 at 11:04 said:

Will this beta be compatible with WordPress 2.2? If not, which version of WP should we be using?

Also, any idea about when will this beta be released?

And in the meantime, with which version of WP is the last version of this plugin compatible? 2.0? 2.1?
thomasd on August 16, 2007 at 14:19 said:

i am really looking forward to see this plugin in a final version!

do you have a roadmap or something like that?
alainS on August 21, 2007 at 14:06 said:

A really god’s gift plugin! To put in short: from 1 to 10 this plugin get 50!!!

Now some concerns and anomalies noticed when using it:

1)
I am a bit scared if I’ll need first uninstall the plugin (delete the data) to upgrade it.

2)
What I have noticed is that when re-editing the post the values are gone. Custom fields have no values.

3)
When you’ll release “da beta thing”?

Keep on the good work!

to charles: I am using it with 2.2.1 and it seems to work. The only problem is with re-editing the post (see my 2nd point). But this is maybe the case with all WP versions.
Charles on August 22, 2007 at 11:39 said:

alainS, which version of CWP are you using along with WP 2.2.1?

Because I just tried the last version of CWP with both fresh installs of WP 2.2.2 and 2.2.1 and it just won’t work. The fields in the admin panel of CWP are filled with what looks like broken PHP codes.
alainS on August 24, 2007 at 15:36 said:

Charles: I’m using CWP 1.0.0a12. Your problem is a strange one. I’ve tried it aksi with 2.2.2 and it works fine (see comment 11 for known issues). I’m not a “php freak” so with my knowledge I think I can’t help you. Try on WP support forum. Cheers!
Joan Planas on September 21, 2007 at 21:21 said:

new version WP 2.3 broken the plugin

:,(
Gee on October 9, 2007 at 05:45 said:

Hi,

I planned to use you fabulous plugin Custom Write Panel on my new 2.3 version of WordPress but it seems broken.

Can we hope, you can release a new version of your plugin working with the WP 2.3?

Thank’s for your great job.
Gee on October 9, 2007 at 06:59 said:

Charles and AlainS: Just to say that this plugin use some PHP short-open tag in the code, that’s why there’s fields that looks like broken PHP codes. So try to enable it in your php.ini. I know it’s not possible in a shared host,so in the code of the plugin, try to replace all “
Gee on October 9, 2007 at 07:10 said:

Ooops, my last comment somes codes hints! i’m sorry so try to replace all short open tags by the full php open tag + echo . You will find out more on google about it.
Please, Josh, can you do something to avoid this pb in the next releases of your wonderfull plugin?
Thank’s
Charles on October 16, 2007 at 10:59 said:

Gee, thank you very much. I enabled the “short open tag” option on my server and worked like a charm. I almost loosed my faith in this plugin, but you just restored it.

All I need now is a plugin that shows writing panel’s custom fields in a little more “friendly” way, like dropdown boxes, text fields, etc.

Any thoughts?
Kevin on October 25, 2007 at 17:11 said:

I can’t believe I haven’t seen this plugin earlier.

I have a multi-author “blog” where we need to post different kind of entries every day. Reviews, previews, news, features, etc. and like someone above, I have to copy the post structure from a Word doc for each post type.

This plugin would save my and my team A LOT of hours a week for posting, since each post type needs it’s own custom fields, and it’s all a mess right now with so much custom fields.

Is there any donation button? Like Brady on comment #7, I’d like to donate something to help the development going. I really do need this plugin so badly.

I can’t take the risk to install the Alpha version yet, but I have no problem with beta releases. Any updates, roadmap or something?

Thanks so much.
armani on November 7, 2007 at 13:12 said:

i can create and edit the new custom write form but it is not visible on the post. Andreas Freuler was asking the same question but doesnt seem like he got a response. thanks
Rob on November 8, 2007 at 10:24 said:

People say the plugin is broken in the latest WP (2.3.1) but don’t say HOW it is broken, care to go into detail?
JB on November 21, 2007 at 00:53 said:

Does not work with WP 2.1, re-install the lot including the MySQL to 2.2, 2.2.1 then 2.2.2 all on a Unix backend still no good. I can see the plugin in the WP-admin. even as a contributor user logged in. Can see all the custom fields but after publishing all that appears it the bloody title (which is the only filed not hidden) no custom meta is viewed. Not keen to give 2.3.1 a crack with this. Tried both versions of report manager. I’m Over this Plugin.
Nate on November 21, 2007 at 09:06 said:

I’ve tried it on 2.3.1 because it looks like a great plugin. But it won’t let me add categories in the “Assigned Categories” field when creating a new CWP. When I go ahead and click “Finish”, and then go into edit or view the new CWP I get the following error:

WordPress database error: [Table ‘databasename.wp_categories’ doesn’t exist]
SELECT rc.cat_id, cat_name FROM wp_rc_cwp_panel_category rc JOIN wp_categories wp ON rc.cat_ID = wp.cat_ID WHERE panel_id = 3

I’m not really a PHP/mySQL guy, more of a do with what I can find others create :D so I’m not sure how to fix it but this is the problem I’m having with 2.3.1. I can’t say that it is a 2.3.1 problem because I installed the plugin until after I was already using 2.3.1.

I hope that this is easily fixed because I have multiple authors and CWP would make life a lot easier. It’s a great idea for a plugin and, even though I haven’t used it, I can see that it is a great one.

Thanks,
Nate
JB on November 21, 2007 at 20:33 said:

Nate. You need to create the wp-categories table in your MySQL DB. 2.3.1 does not have a few of the tables from previous WP versions. If you upgraded from 2.2.x this will not be the case as the tables will remain after the upgrade. I’ve had no luck with this plugin with a number of WP versions. If you don’t know much about MySQL DB’s then I’d suggest you proceed with caution. You won’t get much help from this forum.
Jeremy on November 23, 2007 at 16:24 said:

Hi there,

This is fantastic, and just what the doctor called for!!

I noticed one TINY flaw in the scheme (not the coding), and have an idea for a fix, but I’m not sure if it would work.

The problem I’ve noticed is that users logging in for the first time come to a dashboard. The first thing they might read is “Use these links to get started:”, and below that the first link, “Write a post,” links to post-new.php.

So much for hiding all the cruft!

What about creating an htaccess rule a la the permalinks that points post-new.php to post-new.php?custom-write-panel-id=1, or whichever is the user’s default custom write panel? Sounds like more coding, surely, but it would be sweet.

Right now, I’m thinking of just changing the code in wp-admin/index.php, but then it’ll break if they upgrade later…

Again, fantastic. Thanks for your plugin glory.
Josh B. on January 3, 2008 at 12:27 said:

*bump*

Any word on a beta release date? I am really excited for a successor to structuredblogging…
X on January 3, 2008 at 17:55 said:

We’re all here still… waiting for it.
Nokao on January 18, 2008 at 01:16 said:

Damn… this plugin is what I was searching for, but I need also to use WP 2.3 …

I think I’m going to make the admin interfaces with static html pages :(
Nokao on January 20, 2008 at 07:23 said:

Hi guys, I have some questions.

– I tryed the plugin with “role manager” but the “custom write pages” are visible only by the admin user, not by the other customized user even if I have activated the write pages for them.
What can I do?

– What if I want to make the “write custom post” a MAIN TAB in the wp-admin menu and not a child tab inside the “write” panel?
I want to completely hide the write panel.

Thanks…

I also would like to help in developement, I’m looking at the php code right now and I have a lot of ideas.
If you want, write me back.
Nokao on January 22, 2008 at 06:05 said:

Is this project dead?

Can we speak together somewhere?
Sarah Lewis on January 29, 2008 at 07:24 said:

I’d be interested in sponsoring the tweaks needed to make this plugin fully 2.3 compatible (no reliance on wp_categories). If you’re interested, contact me and tell me what the outlay would be. :)
Smokie on April 15, 2008 at 18:51 said:

Hi there, I’m interested in the continuation of this plug-in as well. I wish I had more to offer other than my support and love, but hey, that should be worth something no doubt?

If this plug-in were 2.5 compatible, that would be sweet. As it is, I installed it on a 2.2 blog and had panels set up, and it seems to still work correctly on 2.3 and 2.5, but if I install it new into a 2.5 blog WITHOUT making the custom write panels first, the plug-in will not make new panels.

I really enjoy this plug-in and if you need a donation to get it underway again, please don’t hesitate to contact me!
Boonika on May 6, 2008 at 14:58 said:

Will it work with WPMU? It should!

Cheers
twincascos on May 23, 2008 at 09:02 said:

ALso interested and willing to support continued development of this plugin
j.verhine on July 10, 2008 at 09:35 said:

forget role manager

make it Role Scoper compatible too
James on September 24, 2008 at 04:58 said:

Is this plugin still alive? I’d love to see it under development again, and working in 2.6… :)
Justin Adie on November 20, 2008 at 15:25 said:

do you have any intention to make this plugin compatible with recent WP Versions?