We are very happy to announce a maintenance release of 1.0.25 for our Intercom Subscription plugin. This release addresses the API update to the latest version from the platform author – Intercom.

We have learned that Intercom has released their API version 1.1 with some structural changes to the API. This may make our previous code to not function properly. So it asks for an urgent and prompt maintenance release with a fix.

As you know, maintenance releases are not always exciting, but they are crucial to have a stable working software. This release is just that. We are looking for more improvements to be added to the plugin in future, but until we find time in our busy schedule, this is the release we have for you at the moment.

Let’s check the updates that await you:

Intercom API version updated

Intercom has pushed a new update to their API. When we first introduced our plugin it was at 1.0. The latest update made it to 1.1. It has some notable changes in the API structure.

To enjoy the new features, you will have to select 1.1 version of the API from the Developer Hub’s App settings if it’s not already selected:

Our plugin was not ready for 1.1. So using the new API with our plugin for example, would result in users to be not listed. There might be other problems on the way, but we have found this issue to be prominent.

The latest version of our plugin 1.0.25 has been updated to include Intercom API 1.1. This will result in smoother performance with the new version of the API, if you choose to use it.

The latest version of our plugin 1.0.25 has been updated to include Intercom API 1.1. This will result in smoother performance with the new version of the API, if you choose to use it.
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Fixed Intercom user not being listed

In our brief testing with API 1.1, we found out that user is not placed correctly on Intercom from the previous version of our plugin. This is due to using “users endpoint” feature of the API. Users endpoint has changes in data structures which was incompatible with our existing code. Intercom suggested to apply changes to code for compatibility. So we changed our code in 1.0.25 of our plugin and it ultimately fixed the issue.

Notice about PHP version

Intercom API 1.1 requires at least PHP 7.2 to be present on your server. As we are using the latest API, the requirement would apply to you as well. Please contact your developer or webhost to ensure that you have the version or later installed.

In summary, this version provides important update to the plugin to ensure continuous stability of the plugin. It might not bring new features into the table, but it is essential to make the plugin functional for the latest API changes.

The post Intercom Subscription v1.0.25 is Here: A Timely and Important Maintenance Release appeared first on 79mplus and is written by 79mplus Editor

We are excited to announce another release of the versatile and feature-rich Mplus Intercom Subscription plugin. 1.0.24 is a minor release, but not to mention an important one.

We are excited to announce another release of the versatile and feature-rich Mplus Intercom Subscription plugin. 1.0.24 is a minor release, but not to mention an important one.
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In this latest batch of changes we have updated the logo to a new one, fixed admin menu icon not showing issue and updated company field description to be more natural.

Let’s see in detail the newest of changes:

New Branding

We have redesigned our logo for Intercom Subscription and all its addons. We had fitting logos before, but they lacked uniformity and consistency across products. So we initiated a redesign of all the logos.

Please welcome our new set of logos for the Intercom Subscription family:

The top one is for our base plugin and the others are for Addons — all 12 of them.

So we applied changes to our WordPress.org plugin page also:

We have changed the logo and banner accordingly. Redesign is always exciting. We hope you enjoy the new logos as much as we did designing.

Admin Menu Icon Fix

It went under our radar for quite a long time. Humans are not without errors. This is a case to confirm it. The reality is, we had the menu image right committed properly in our GitHub plugin repo (luckily). But when committing with SVN, it missed the file for some reason. We fixed it by using –force with our svn add command.

The issue should now be fixed.

“Create it” vs “Create here”

We had lots of internal debate on whether to use “Create it” or “Create here”. The text is a link under the company selection field (if you have it enabled). At the end we decided that “Created here” sounds more friendly, easy to understand and natural to our human users. So we decided to stick with it.

It has been two months since we last released a version. Sorry, we were busy with other projects. We have many features in the wish list, but we also try to keep the plugin lightweight as possible. That’s why we think every feature through before implementing them on the codebase.

So, to wrap up, we have more plans for future with this amazing Intercom plugin. We are constantly striving to improve the addons as well. But there could be many improvements to be made that could be missed by us. We hope you have suggestions for improvements too? Please let us know if this is the case. Till then enjoy the release!

The post Intercom Subscription v1.0.24 is Here: Find Out What’s New appeared first on 79mplus and is written by 79mplus Editor

We have recently released an update to our Intercom Subscription Plugin. We have introduced some timely changes and minor fixes on this recent release. Let’s go through the changes here to see what new features are now available to you.

This version introduces Honeypot Spamtrap as a measure to fight spam requests. Also, we have updated the structure of the form that creates companies.

Honeypot Spamtrap

We open our sites to all the people of the world. But unfortunately, not all our users are good. There are some bad guys out there who are after your site to cause harm and disruption. You may have heard before that some bad guys setup artificial programs to submit the forms in random websites with fake information. These programs are called “Robots”.

These are usually setup by ill-mannered people who try to push their ill-fitted products on your website. Maybe you’ve noticed, you get loads of new comments on your website, even if you’ve just set it up a few days ago and nobody else knows about it. You should also notice that the comments are somewhat out of context and not useful for your content. These comments are artificial and posted by these Robots. If the comments get published it will not be good for you. You will be supporting something which you do not stand for.

Maybe you've noticed, you get loads of new comments on your website, even if you've just set it up a few days ago ... the comments are somewhat out of context and not useful for your content. These comments are artificial and posted by…
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The same risk is true for our Intercom Subscription form.

There are many ways this has been handled in the past by security experts. One of them is CAPTCHA, which is easy to solve by humans but hard to solve for robots. But they are a User Experience nightmare. Who likes to solve CAPTCHA every now and then?

Another clever way to tackle these Robots is to use Honeypot Spamtrap. It works by placing an obscure, hidden field that act like it is a part of the form, but actually isn’t. It does nothing and it is meant to be kept blank. A human like us can’t see the field so we will obviously leave the field blank. But Robots are programmed to fill every field. They are designed this way so that it does not get rejected for having a blank field. Whenever this field is filled, we can detect an automated submission and reject the entry from getting into our system.

With this trick Robots can be detected and stopped from clogging up your website. Plus, no annoyances from our lovely happy users. Users will have to do nothing extra to get validated.

We have implemented Honeypot Spamtrap as a first and basic measure to fight spam on your intercom form. You can enable it from the settings. It is disabled by default.

We recommend that you enable this option if you expect heavy traffic on your website or expecting some spam requests. This should be a basic defense against those pesky spammers.

If you are expecting better spam protection, we are thinking about implementing a CAPTCHA feature for people who need it. Of course, we plan to keep it as optional as every other feature so that it is not pushed against you by force. Please also let us know if you have any better ideas for fighting spams.

Company Creation Form Fields

If you enable company integration, this change might be useful to you. We have introduced a shortcode in our previous release that puts a form to create companies in Intercom so that it can be selected as a company on the subscription form. The field names on the form are now made to match with the labels on the Intercom Dashboard, so you can relate them easily. The field names are often times confusing by itself, so we added helpful hints to go with the fields.

We hope it will now be more user friendly when creating a company for the subscription.

Besides these changes, we have also updated the screenshots on the plugin page to reflect the changes.

That’s about it for today. These are probably minor but important changes for how you use Intercom Subscription on your website. Go ahead, install our plugin and have a great time!

The post Intercom Subscription v1.0.22 is Now Available: Find Out What’s New appeared first on 79mplus and is written by 79mplus Editor

The post Intercom Subscription v1.0.20 is Now Available: Find Out What’s New appeared first on 79mplus and is written by 79mplus Editor

Around a month ago we published our Intercom Subscription plugin to the WordPress.org repository. We are excited to announce that we have released 1.0.18 version of our versatile and flexible Intercom Subscription plugin with important features and improvements.

This version brings consent checkbox options, cleaner admin interface and new hooks for your greatest new WordPress website. Exciting indeed!

This version brings consent checkbox options, cleaner admin interface and new hooks for your greatest new WordPress website. Exciting indeed!
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So let’s go through all the exciting new features we worked on for v1.0.18 release.

Added Consent Checkbox

Consent checkbox is a nice option. We think it should be an “option” – meaning, admin should have the control to enable or disable the checkbox. So, we have introduced an option for the admin to either provide a consent checkbox, or not. You can also play with the hook we introduced for the checkbox option.

Added Lots of New Hooks

Hooks are always a nice thing to play with. Especially if you’re a developer. So many new hooks have been added to this already great plugin, including user creation, settings fields and addon activation. Hopefully this covers every basic customization needs. We’re also open to requests for new hooks.

Cleaner Menu with Easier Activation Options

The Admin menu for Intercom Subscription plugin has been updated to be simple and more user friendly than before. Every setting page is available under one single menu, which does not clog up your WP Admin menu. It also has a colored icon to distinguish from other plugin pages.

Code Refactoring + Improvements

We have updated minor code structures and applied subtle naming changes. We have also added a class_exists check for all classes, so that they can be overriden from outside. These are under the hood changes. So, a user may not feel these changes happening but developers would love these.

Minor improvements:
– Revised readme
– File access security
– CSS formatted according to coding standards
– Removed debug code
– Minor code changes

Note: We have changed the option name for the “Access Token” field. If you suddenly find out that your access token is blank, this is normal! Please fill up the access token again.

We are very happy to release this version. We certainly hope to improve the plugin more and bring out new, fresh addons to help you achieve what you always wanted to do with Intercom. Feel free to let us know what you think of the changes and what we can implement in future versions.

The post Intercom Subscription v1.0.18 is Here: Find Out What’s New appeared first on 79mplus and is written by 79mplus Editor

We have recently worked with integrating WooCommerce Subscriptions and MailChimp. Our solution includes a plugin which enables to manage MailChimp Mailing list members from WordPress. It features automatic subscription, unsubscription and PayPal payment processing. So, it works for itself automatically and without action from admin.

Summary:

Allows to subscribe and unsubscribe to a paid mailing list through Paypal which let the users enjoy email subscription through MailChimp.

Features:

– Automatic subscription and unsubscription from the MailChimp, happens without action from admin
– Paypal integration supported (tested through Stripe)
– Payment processed by Woocommerce
– Works with Woocommerce Subscriptions
– Adds first name, last name etc. to Mailchimp so that it can be used in email body
– Handles payment problems
– Instruction manual available

These features can be customized if you hire us

Requirements:

– Woocommerce
– Woocommerce Subscriptions

The post MailChimp Integration with WooCommerce Subscription appeared first on 79mplus and is written by 79mplus Editor

We have recently worked with integrating WooCommerce Subscriptions and MailChimp. Our solution includes a plugin which enables to manage MailChimp Mailing list members from WordPress. It features automatic subscription, unsubscription and payment processing. So, it works for itself automatically and without action from admin.

Summary

Allows to subscribe and unsubscribe to a paid (multilingual) mailing list which let the users enjoy email subscription through MailChimp.

Features:

– Automatic subscribing and unsubscribing in and from MailChimp, happens without action from admin
– Payment processed by Woocommerce
– Utilizes Woocommerce Subscriptions
– Integrates into product page
– Adds address, postcode etc. to Mailchimp so that it can be used in emails
– Gifting Supported
– Allows to update user info from user profile to MailChimp
– Supports Multilanguage mailing list (WPML Supported)
– Instruction manual available

These features can be customized if you hire us

Requirements:

– Woocommerce
– Woocommerce Subscriptions
– WooCommerce Subscriptions Gifting

The post MailChimp Subscription System for Wendelins Friday appeared first on 79mplus and is written by 79mplus Editor

Here at 79mplus we are some developers working on some awesome custom plugin solutions that will blow your mind! From Digitally signing contract pages right from your browsers with touchscreens, to managing virtual users that can post to multiple instances of WordPress with a single click – you would be amazed to see what we do as part of our work.

With a client we faced, we had to deal with a weird issue. The website was using the Booked plugin from the good fellows of Boxy Studio. It is a plugin that lets you create a calendar on your website that then can let users book certain dates for appointments that the website was configured to take.

This is great for people who provide services based on tight schedule in specific days, such as, musical bands, contractual lecturers or maybe even a plumbing service.

The Issue

The client was describing this issue that seemed to be strange to us at first. He stated that on the calendar on their website, if someone books a date for All day, then the current day is unavailable, which is fine. But the problem is, the previous day is also unavailable for some strange reason.

We wanted to make sure that it is not our fault, so we tested only the Booked plugin in a blank WordPress installation. But the issue persisted. So, the problem is not with any of our custom plugin solutions that we designed for this website.

To simulate the same problem on an isolated environment, in a blank WordPress installation we have installed the Booked plugin:

The WordPress version was 4.6.1 and the plugin version was 1.5.7.

Then we created a calendar to keep our appointments, from Appointments – Calendars.

Then we go to Appointments – Settings – Default Timeslots, Select our calendar “Mycal” from the dropdown list. A blank timeslot list awaits us.

We click Add… under MON, then a popup setting opens under that day. We select All day time slot option to ensure that we have at least one All time timeslot that we can test in this scenario. Then we click Add and then OK.

An All day timeslot has been created. So, just for a test, we also create a normal timeslot having a range of time, which is not All day. So we click Add… again and create a time slot like below:

Our client had many more slots like this. But let’s keep it simple – let’s just have one slot.

We did this for Monday. We have to do it for other days as well, or at least for 3 consecutive days just for the testing. We want to test one appointment day and days before and after it.

Now we need to show it in our website’s frontend, so that users can use it. While still in the Settings section, click on the Shortcodes tab. You will see some shortcodes under a section titled “Display a Custom Calendar”:

I had other experiments before. But don’t mind, just copy the code under Mycal. Your code must be something like:

[booked-calendar calendar=2]

Now, we create a new page and paste the code in it:

Now, we visit the page and go to a desired month. The months that have passed away are not bookable and the dates are disabled. So, I always skip a month or two ahead for the test. Let’s say I have chosen January 2017.

We select a date from Tuesday. Say, date 10. We get options to book available dates, as they pop up in the screen.

We click the “Book Appointment” button next to All day, and finish the booking. Now we see what is expected.

The all day option is gone, because we have booked the All day option for that day. This is working fine. But wait till you click on the day before, the date 9, in our case.

Whoa!! What just happened?!

The All day option just disappeared! Although we booked All day, for the next day, we don’t have All day for the day before? What gives?

(By the way, date 11 was just fine, showing the All day appointment option.)

The Investigation

We have gone through the leaps and bounds to find out what our fault was. It turns out there was none. At least to our knowledge, we have configured the plugin correctly and used the feature set within the ability of the plugin.

So, the problem should be in the code of the plugin. That’s why we tried to add bebug lines (actually some test print_r or echo lines) to find out what data was going where and how it was being processed.

At last we found out, the problem is with how the timestamp meta is searched through the WP_Query call in the file wp-content/plugins/booked/includes/functions.php in line 261.

The Background

Mostly, everything that can be added or removed through the panel in WordPress is called a “post” (only internally). You can go to the wp_posts table to check out this fact.

Everything, even a “page” is stored in the table wp_posts, not in a table named wp_pages. The appointments booked in the calendar is also stored in the wp_posts table.

And if we have some extra data that we want to attach to it, it is stored in the wp_postmeta. Mind that in the above screenshot we have the appointment’s id as 40. And in the postmeta table we have all the meta associated with this particular booking with id 40.

Here,

The _appointment_timestamp is the starting time of the appointment stored in an integer form

The _appointment_timeslot holds the start and end time in 24 hours format. We know that in 24-hours format the hours are counted as 0, 1, 2, 3, 4… 12, 13, 14,… 23, 24. In our data, 0000 means 00:00 which translates to 12:00am in 12 hour format. 2400 means 24:00 which represents the last minute of a day. As this is an All day event, it starts from the beginning minute of a day and ends at the last minute of the day.

The timestamp can be generated through php mktime() function. The syntax is something like this:

int mktime ([ int $hour = date(“H”) [, int $minute = date(“i”) [, int $second = date(“s”) [, int $month = date(“n”) [, int $day = date(“j”) [, int $year = date(“Y”) [, int $is_dst = -1 ]]]]]]] )

You would notice that it returns an integer value. What it does is that it takes a time and converts the time into a number, which can be later decoded through date() function. Every second, minute, hour in this universe can be encoded into a number through this function.

Just to test how it works, let me show you a code:

https://gist.github.com/adnan360/c763046424f9fde0609bbe54e8ef565f

This code prints the value mktime() then takes a 1 second break and then prints again. You would notice that it prints something like this (your output would be different since you are going to run it in a different date and a different time):

1477541172

1477541173

1477541174

1477541175

1477541176

Notice that the last part of the value is changing. It is increasing by 1 each second. Like this, all the time in the world, every minute, every second can be expressed as a single integer. An integer is easier to store and great for searching for range of times.

For example, you can search all the records from 1477541172 to 1477541176 and you will get the above 5 records! In a database other than WordPress, a field of INT(11) is just great for storing the time in a compact form. You will find many other popular php codes use this to get around managing date and time.

The Testing

The problem in our case, is that it includes the next day as today when it is showing the available appointments. You can check these lines (around line 236-247 in booked/includes/functions.php):

https://gist.github.com/adnan360/1f32ec9f69b8426a92d83c1b5027393e

You can see there is a range that is being sent. Sent to where? The whole $args array is sent to a WP_Query in around line 261:

https://gist.github.com/adnan360/fb360566f1f9992f6e0ccfa1ddf8b4cb

After this line, we added these lines to test if the range checking is correct:

https://gist.github.com/adnan360/2d842f0c3cf8cb2ef78434de8bcbfc85

So, we now can select the date 10, and we would see something like this:

Remember that the date 10 appointment that we had in our database had a timestamp of 1484006400. It ends in 6400 and the range checking is starting to look from 6399. So, already it is wrong. If we are at date 10 the range check should start from 6400, as our database value states.

What if we select date 9? Let’s test it.

Date 9 is checking records upto 6400 which should not happen. It is bringing in record of date 10 into date 9, just because the range is just one second here and there. That’s why you cannot see an All day appointment available for booking in the date 9, as it is thinking that we have an All day appointment today. (But actually we don’t.)

So, we know that the start range is wrong (first screenshot) and the end range is wrong too (second screenshot).

We, along with our boss were astonished with what was printing and we needed to fix this ASAP.

The Initial Fix

Just to test if our doubts were true, we modified the two lines which generated the range values. We had these lines (line 225-226):

https://gist.github.com/adnan360/f65d180ae431b045fbd18661853d8466

We changed them to:

https://gist.github.com/adnan360/da1e0d0fb46f7b35f09983f182efca2d

And it worked!

Date 10 is not showing the All day booking as expected:

(Notice that the range is also right, starting from 6400)

Date 9 is not booked for All day, so it is showing the All day option available for booking, just as it should:

(Notice that the end range ends with 6399 and not 6400 which keeps the appointments from next day out of the current date.)

The Final Fix

So, we found out the problem and fixed it. But editing the source of a plugin is not a good idea. So, with the help of my boss we made a plugin that takes advantage of the apply_filter() call in the line 261. The plugin had other lines as well, but the gist of it is following:

https://gist.github.com/adnan360/86f507347a1ce72b8a55055b7fb947e1

When applying the plugin, we also restored the original lines in the booked/includes/functions.php file.

The Last Words

As we have presented the evidence here, the problem exists in the Booked plugin – that is for sure. We are thankful to the plugin authors for making such an wonderful plugin. We are thinking of contacting the plugin authors about this little trouble we had with the plugin. We would love to hear from the plugin authors regarding this issue.

But here at 79mplus, the adventure continues.

Conquering the next challenges everyday.

The post WordPress Booked Plugin All-day Booking Showing on Previous Day issue appeared first on 79mplus and is written by 79mplus Editor