Help with WordPress for Code4Lib Journal

[Tom Keays]

On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 9:53 AM, Ross Singer <rossf...@gmail.com> wrote:

Seriously, folks, if we can't even figure out how to upgrade our Drupal instance to a version that was released this decade, we shouldn't be discussing *new* implementations of *anything* that we have to host ourselves.

Not being one to waste a perfectly good segue...

The Code4Lib Journal runs on WordPress. This was a decision made by the editorial board at the time (2007) and by and large it was a good one. Over time, one of the board members offered his technical expertise to build a few custom plugins that would streamline the workflow for publishing the journal. Out of the "box", WordPress is designed to publish a string of individual articles, but we wanted to publish issues in a more traditional model, with all the issues published at one time and arranged in the issue is a specific order. We could (and have done) all this manually, but having the plugin has been a real boon for us. 

The Issue Manager plugin that he wrote provided the mechanism for:

a) preventing articles from being published prematurely, 
b) identifying and arranging a set of final (pending) articles into an issue, and
c) publishing that issue at the desired time. 

That person is no longer on the Journal editorial board and upkeep of the plugin has not been maintained since he left. We're now several WordPress releases behind, mainly because we delayed upgrading until we could test if doing so would break the plugins. We have now tested, and it did. I won't bore you with the details, but if we want to continue using the plugin to manage our workflow, we need help.

Is there anybody out there with experience writing WordPress plugins that would be willing to work with me to diagnose what has changed in the WordPress codex that is causing the problems and maybe help me understand how to prevent this from happening again with future releases?

Thanks,

Tom Keays / tomk...@gmail.com

[Tom Keays]

The Code4Lib Journal is now running an up-to-date version of WordPress on our server and all of our plugins are similarly updated and operational. I'd especially like to acknowledge the contribution of Mark Pernotto, whose good knowledge of the WordPress codex allowed him to see the problem that I could not, and write a revised Issue Manager plugin. I'll post the revised code to GitHub in the next week or so. Thanks again to the other code4libbers that also offered to help. This group's generousity and expertise is great.

For the Code4Lib Journal, many thanks!

Tom

[Tom Keays]

I spent the past week teaching myself how to properly use Git and have finally updated the repository with Mark's contribution to the Code4Lib Journal Issue Manager plugin.

https://github.com/tomkeays/issue-manager

Thanks again for the help.
Tom

[Tom Keays]

After some discussion on the Code4Lib Journal editors' back-channel, we decided to move the various WordPress plugins and themes to the Code4Lib organization site on GitHub. Besides making our process a little more transparent, we also hope to encourage participation in maintaining and improving the Journal's WordPress web experience. 

The two c4lj repositories that have been ported are:

https://github.com/code4lib/c4lj-issue-manager  (renamed issue-manager plugin)

https://github.com/code4lib/c4lj (Journal's current WordPress theme -- with 1 open issue)

Tom