WPMovieLibrary 3.0 Alpha 2
I guess I’ve been a little too optimistic when I first said version 3.0 wouldn’t take that long to come out, considering how time flew since the initial announcement. Alpha1 was meant to be solid ground for version 3.0, consisting in an updated movie editor and more objet-oriented coding, while Alpha2 would focus on the frontend, leaving Alpha3 to implement the remaining features, including the importer. But more than 18 months later, WordPress evolved so much that it took an incredible effort to put together this Alpha2.
Unique Grids
Grids are now (almost) fully editable
As announced an eternity ago, Grids are now a much more powerful tool than they used to be, handled by a new dedicated custom post type. This is very similar to what most sliders plugins do, and gives a lot more possibilities to show lists of movies, actors, genres and collections than simple shortcodes did. Grids are pretty limited at the moment when it comes to customization, but that will be improved as time goes to feature new themes and sorting options. Thanks to the REST API now being part of WordPress Core all grids are fully powered by Ajax, solving days of headaches caused by the v2.x grid URLs system.
Better taxonomies
Taxonomies now support custom images
The existing actor, genre and collection taxonomies now support custom featured images, and therefore can be displayed in grids just like movies. I also added cool default images for each taxonomy that I hope you’ll like. If not, add your own! This opens the way for more advanced features like dedicated people posts, customized templates…
Archive pages
Archive pages have been implemented. While version 2.x handled archive pages as a setting, version 3 is switching the logic, handling archive as pages with a specific purpose. Rather than selecting archive pages in the settings panel, you can now define any page as an archive pages directly from the page editor.
Permalinks
Permalinks are more customizable and support translation
Permalinks settings have been implemented. Just like archives pages, no need to browse the settings panel, all permalink-related settings are editable in the standard Permalinks dashboard page, including URL structures and default archives pages permalinks. Support for custom tag is limited at the moment, but is subject to updates in future releases.
Headboxes
The default Headbox has been updated, along with the version 2.x Headboxes (Allociné and IMDb). The plugin now ships with 6 Headbox themes: Allocine, Allocine v2, IMDb, IMDb v2, Vintage, Default and Extended.
Shortcodes
Shortcodes are back with aliases and unified parameters
Shortcodes have been implemented. Most of what you’ve been used to has been imported, although some Shortcodes have been removed or altered to reflect new features, mostly grids. We’ll talk more about this later.
But Also
Butterbeans and haricots
The plugin now includes two more dependencies : the ButterBean and Haricot frameworks. ButterBean is a neat, simple and efficient Metabox framework developed by Justin Tadlock too build beautiful tabbed custom fields metaboxes. It only supports posts meta, so I built Haricot, a fork of ButterBean for terms meta. This is what allows version 3.0 to features custom taxonomies images, and possibly other useful data in later releases.
REST API
Grids extensively use the REST API introduced in WordPress 4.7; Alpha3 will extend that usage to the Movie Editor and the brand new Importer.
Where do we go from here?
Alpha3! The final step before the beta version. This should mostly concern the removal of the existing settings panel, the implementation of the plugin’s custom dashboard and the update of the existing movie editor to use the REST API rather than more complex –and less efficient– internal code.
Side-note: Decisions, not Options
I’m very aware of the fact a lot of options aren’t available anymore, and it’s not going to get better with Alpha3 since plans are to completely remove the v2.x settings panels and provide much less apparent freedom to customize the plugin. There are very good reasons to this choice that, after all, reflects the WordPress philosophy: decisions, not options. But don’t worry, we’ll talk more about this later too. For now, have fun with that long-awaited, probably-cool release!
Hi Charlie,
Plugin looks very interesting. I very much like features of version 3. I hope with grids you are utilizing lazy-load or pagination of some kind because this is vital for people with many movies.
If I haven’t used this plugin before – would it be better to start with version 2 and upgrade or just start with version 3?
Also, will there be an option to integrate version 3 features into regular posts types instead of custom post type? Just asking because i’ve had bad experiences before with custom post type plugins where upon upgrade or abandonment, all posts were lost.
Thank you Rhonda!
There will be no change concerning data between version 2 and version 3, so you’re safe in using v2 and upgrading; I’d recommend waiting for v3 though, especially if you have some specific customizations done as v3 will change a lot of things on the options matter as mentioned in the post.
Grids use JavaScript and the WordPress REST API to load content; at the moment there’s no cache or lazy-load-like feature, but that’s definitely planned. There is no plan however to integrate v3 features to regular posts, especially now that the plugin relies on the REST API; different post types for different purposes. That said, the plugin won’t delete your content unless you expressly ask it to, and there’s no premium or paying version planned*, so there shouldn’t be any problem 🙂
*: there’s plan for premium add-ons and support, but nothing that’ll impact the main plugin, which will always remain free.
Good work!!
Thanks Carlos!
hi
i download the last plug in but i cant’ show the actor picture
i try many time
also i can’t found the arabic language in subtitles
thanks
Hi ehab,
The actor’s pictures import is not supported yet, that’s part of alpha3 which is in development at the moment. That said, you should be able to manually upload your own pictures since alpha2.
As for Arabic subtitles, they are indeed missing, thanks for reporting! I’ll fix this for alpha3.
thanks Charlie
great work
best plugin I used
many thanks
I Am wait for the last work
yesterday i was ask a questions
and today you delete it
many thanks
Nothing was deleted, comments simply need to be approved; yours just did, and got its answer too 🙂
MANY THANKS
SORRY FOR MISUNDERSTAND
THANKS AGAIN
Salut,
Je viens de passer une copie d’un site avec près de 6000 films avec cette version du plugin. J’avoue être un peu perdu et ne pas bien m’y retrouver mais ça a vraiment l’air prometteur.
Dès que tu as besoin de tests et de retours, n’hésites pas à faire signe.
Merci
Hello Charlie 🙂
C’est de l’excellent travail, j’ai hâte de l’utiliser ! En plus j’ai trouvé, à priori, un codeur prêt à me réaliser le codage nécessaire pour l’adapter au thème graphique que je suis en train de réaliser. D’ailleurs, tu penses qu’il sera possible en option de mettre un background unique pour chaque film? C’est prévu dans ta to-do list?
En tout cas bravo et bonne continuation 🙂
P.S. : cet article va tomber dans les oubliettes du blog vu qu’il n’est pas catégorisé. On y accède seulement en cliquant sur les commentaires.
Bonjour Mister3ZE,
Merci pour la remarque sur les catégories manquantes, c’est corrigé !
Merci aussi pour les compliments 🙂 Globalement la version 3.0 va se désengager au maximum de tout ce qui concerne la personnalisation des éléments « visuels » du plugin. Je prévois d’utiliser le Customizer plus tard pour donner plus de possibilités à ce niveau, mais sur le principe, c’est à la fois compliqué et un peu hérétique pour un plugin de trop s’occuper du visuel ; au final, c’est le thème qui a le dernier mot, et les meilleurs efforts d’intégration au niveau plugin peuvent être complètement torpillés par un thème mal conçu ou un peu récalcitrant…
Dans l’immédiat je prends aussi les petits boulots d’intégration visuelle, et à terme je réfléchis à un site de support « premium » − même si je n’aime pas le terme − pour formaliser un peu ce genre de presta et construire une doc dédiée petit à petit 🙂
Je suis vraiment idiot des fois : qui de mieux placé pour personnaliser un plugin que son auteur? Et ça m’intéresse carrément pour le printemps de l’année prochaine ! Après je suppose que tu dois avoir besoin de voir le fichier .PSD histoire de donner une fourchette de prix non? Si tu veux on peut en discuter en MP pour que tu me dises ce que tu as besoin exactement pour que je puisse obtenir un tarif. J’ai aussi des demandes particulières niveau fonctionnalité : background personnalisé, bouton “déjà vu”, bouton “à voir” (avec possibilité d’exporter la liste), bouton “Dossier de presse”, bouton “choisir un film au hasard”, etc.
Bonjour Charlie, j’aimerais savoir si vous avez envisagé de séparer les collections des réalisateurs. Je dis cela parce que mon idée serait d’utiliser les collections pour associer des films de la même saga, c’est-à-dire des suites, des remakes, etc.
Je vous remercie d’avance. Un bon travail
C’est déjà le cas : vous pouvez désactiver cela dans les réglages du plugin, dans la section Taxonomies » Collections » Ajouter automatiquement les collections 😉
Any updates on progress
Actually, yes! Development has been going on on a private repo over GitLab since October 2017 and should be ready to merge with the official repo on GitHub in a few weeks. A lot of things have been done, I’ll try to find some time to blog about it.