[Plugin: podPress] podPress 8.8.5 beta testing

Hi Tim – I assume you are on the development team for pod Press? In previous posts I read that this plug in was not being actively developed and/or supported. In your post above, it sounds like there are current changes, correct? thanks for verifying this for me (and others) who are hoping to use the tool.

Last year, I have written some patches for the most visible problems like the problem with not working media uploader on the editor pages of the last WP versions and have contacted Dan Kuykendall (Seek3r) the original author and owner of podPress and Andrew Ozz, who is like fiduciary for this plugin.
Dan answered my first email and told me that would try to put the patches into a new version he is(was) working on. But that was at the end of last October. Since this time I had no further contact with Dan. But Andrew Ozz has contacted me during Christmas days and added the patches.

Because I have built in unfortunately some own new bugs it was necessary to make some emergency releases in the first week of January. I’m deeply sorry for the confusion I have probably created!

With help of some diligent and thorough bug reporters have created some more patches which are partially included in the current development version (v8.8.5 beta 2). But most of them will be added in the next days. I can not tell when v8.8.5 beta 3 will be ready because I have no permission to add the patches myself to the repository and Andrew is sadly very ill.
When these patches are in the development version I will post a message here.

If podPress will become one of these “Canonical” or “Core” plugins is still undecided. Because at the moment I’m the only one who is maintaining this plugin and one part of the definition of this new group of plugins is that there should be more than one maintainer to assure continuous support in the future.
But whether podPress will become such a special plugin or not I would like to make and keep podPress working (at least this year). Beyond the maintenance work I have some ideas for further customization options.

podPress is a very complex plugin and there are a lot of source code lines which should be reviewed after more than one year without real development. Because of that and the fact that I’m only an enthusiastic podcast listener and no podcast producer help is appreciated!

In conclusion: Yes, there is maintenance for podPress.
But if there will be big development depends on the original plugin author or further helpers.

Since the original developer has indeed stopped supporting this plugin and also closed his support forum there is no place for the community to get help or offer fixes except here. I really appreciate Tim’s work in incorporating fixes so that I can keep using the oficial svn repository version of podpress in my sites.

One other thing that should probably be done is to update the player.swf to the latest and greatest (2.0). Although this will add a valuable feature (volume control), I feel like it is more of a maintenance request rather than a feature request. Since podpress simply wraps a third party flash player https://wpaudioplayer.com/standalone
for playback features it should continue to be able to use the latest version of that player for security as well as feature updates.

Do you think you could move to the 2.0 version of this player.swf in the next svn version?

Thanks and best regards,
Ray

Yes, that is good idea!
I have created a Ticket (Ticket #1061) concerning this matter and I’m confident that the latest player will be in the next podPress release.

Cool. thanks.

There other propositions for v8.8.5 which are not yet in the development version:

• Ticket #1089 – a new customizable XSPF player
• Ticket #1085 – enhancement for loading time of the podpress pages
• Ticket #1083 – a reworked player preview
• Ticket #1080 – fix for podPress_downloadlinks container
• Ticket #1079 – fix for the “Before <!- More -> tag:”-functionality
• Ticket #1074 – better handling of invalid input data in the feed generating functions
• Ticket #1073 – additional descriptions for the feed settings pages of podPress
• Ticket #1068 – patch for an error free stats counter (Thanks to avatarworf)
• Ticket #1066 – Podango message at the general settings page of podPress
• Ticket #1061 – update of the 1PixelOut player a.k.a Audio Player

One of the reasons my team built PowerPress and have updated it nearly ever month is because of all of the issues Podpress had and still has. We are glad to see someone help the podpress users as they were left out to dry for over a couple of years while wordpress moved on.

We have a full time developer who maintains powerpress so we will be here for the new media community regardless of the status of this plugin.

Good luck… Todd..

Tim,
Any idea when the 8.8.5 version will be added to svn. I am using the head and am willing to test but I’d like to check out of svn so I can rollback if necessary.

-Ray

Hello -Ray,

thank you for your willingness to test the beta version!

But I’m sorry that I’m not able to tell you when this beta 3 will be in the svn repository.
Nonetheless I’m on it and I have made some more changes. Until the this beta version is released I’m going to collect the changesets in one cumulative patch for the podPress-trunk-version. It is attached Ticket 1093.

This cumulative patch includes most of my previous patches but It includes corrections of some bugs which have been discussed in the last forum posts (with the tag podpress) and new features, too like a new adjustable XSPF player.
All the changes are listed in the Changelog section of the readme.txt file. I have made some additional remarks in the Installation and the Configuration section, too.

I’m confident that there will be a new podPress beta and maintenance release soon. But that depends on the WP team, too and I know that the WP team was busy in the last weeks e.g. with WordCamp in San Francisco and is still very busy with WP 3.0.

But if you like to test what probably will be next beta version then you could checkout the current trunk-version and apply the 1093_cumulative_patch_885b2_to_885b3_v6.patch patch. Furthermore there are 3 files which have to be applied too. Please, have a look to the attachments section of Ticket 1093.

I would like to hear about your experiences with the changes!

Regards,
Tim

Tim,
Sorry if this is my newbie mistake. Bu when I run
user@server% patch < 1093_cumulative_patch_885b2_to_885b3_v6.patch
I get the following:

(Stripping trailing CRs from patch.)
patching file skin.xml
(Stripping trailing CRs from patch.)
patching file variables.txt
(Stripping trailing CRs from patch.)
patching file skin.xml
(Stripping trailing CRs from patch.)
patching file variables.txt
(Stripping trailing CRs from patch.)
patching file license.txt
(Stripping trailing CRs from patch.)
patching file podpress.css
Reversed (or previously applied) patch detected!  Assume -R? [n] y
(Stripping trailing CRs from patch.)
patching file podpress.js
Hunk #1 FAILED at 33.
Hunk #2 FAILED at 143.
Hunk #3 FAILED at 181.
Hunk #4 FAILED at 189.
Hunk #5 FAILED at 207.
Hunk #6 FAILED at 235.
Hunk #7 FAILED at 243.
Hunk #8 FAILED at 262.
Hunk #9 FAILED at 274.
Hunk #10 FAILED at 306.
Hunk #11 FAILED at 341.
Hunk #12 FAILED at 358.
Hunk #13 FAILED at 374.
13 out of 13 hunks FAILED -- saving rejects to file podpress.js.rej
(Stripping trailing CRs from patch.)
patching file podpress.php
Hunk #1 FAILED at 1.
Hunk #2 FAILED at 37.
Hunk #3 FAILED at 91.
Hunk #4 FAILED at 154.
Hunk #5 FAILED at 205.
Hunk #6 FAILED at 217.
Hunk #7 FAILED at 271.
Hunk #8 FAILED at 420.
Hunk #9 FAILED at 546.
Hunk #10 FAILED at 731.
Hunk #11 FAILED at 765.
Hunk #12 FAILED at 781.
12 out of 12 hunks FAILED -- saving rejects to file podpress.php.rej
(Stripping trailing CRs from patch.)
patching file podpress_admin.js
(Stripping trailing CRs from patch.)
patching file podpress_admin_class.php
(Stripping trailing CRs from patch.)
patching file podpress_admin_feed_class.php
(Stripping trailing CRs from patch.)
patching file podpress_admin_functions.php
(Stripping trailing CRs from patch.)
patching file podpress_admin_general_class.php
(Stripping trailing CRs from patch.)
patching file podpress_admin_player_class.php
(Stripping trailing CRs from patch.)
patching file podpress_admin_stats_class.php
Hunk #1 FAILED at 76.
Hunk #2 FAILED at 183.
Hunk #3 FAILED at 216.
Hunk #4 FAILED at 234.
Hunk #5 FAILED at 259.
Hunk #6 FAILED at 266.
Hunk #7 FAILED at 282.
Hunk #8 FAILED at 291.
Hunk #9 FAILED at 323.
9 out of 9 hunks FAILED -- saving rejects to file podpress_admin_stats_class.php.rej
(Stripping trailing CRs from patch.)
patching file podpress_admin_wp27plus.css
(Stripping trailing CRs from patch.)
patching file podpress_class.php
(Stripping trailing CRs from patch.)
patching file podpress_feed_functions.php
(Stripping trailing CRs from patch.)
patching file podpress_functions.php
Hunk #1 FAILED at 82.
Hunk #2 FAILED at 112.
Hunk #3 FAILED at 150.
Hunk #4 FAILED at 296.
Hunk #5 FAILED at 329.
Hunk #6 FAILED at 347.
Hunk #7 FAILED at 388.
Hunk #8 FAILED at 441.
Hunk #9 FAILED at 474.
Hunk #10 FAILED at 980.
10 out of 10 hunks FAILED -- saving rejects to file podpress_functions.php.rej
(Stripping trailing CRs from patch.)
patching file podpress_theme.php
Hunk #1 FAILED at 23.
Hunk #2 FAILED at 36.
Hunk #3 FAILED at 119.
Hunk #4 FAILED at 162.
Hunk #5 FAILED at 183.
5 out of 5 hunks FAILED -- saving rejects to file podpress_theme.php.rej
(Stripping trailing CRs from patch.)
patching file podpress_xspfplaylist.php
(Stripping trailing CRs from patch.)
patching file readme.txt

Copying the three attachement files if fine but I am having trouble with the .patch file…

-Ray

That could have something to do with the fact that I create these patches on a Windows PC. But I don’t know it for sure. Andrew Ozz had problems, too applying my patch files.

But it is probably no big problem. I have tried to do what I have described above myself today: I created a new folder for a working copy, downloaded the podPress /trunk/ content via SVN and applied the … _v6.patch without any problems. But I have used the TortoiseSVN client for Windows.

I’m going to search later today a little bit more and report back.

Tim

Hi -Ray,

I have read in many forums that often the line endings are the cause for such error messages. Now, I have converted all line endings from CRLF to LF. Have you time to try it again with 1093_cumulative_patch_885b2_to_885b3_v6a.2.patch -> Ticket 1093 ?

I have tried apply my patch to a working copy on a Linux system with same error messages. But I will try to create this patch on this Linux system. Maybe that can solve the problem.

Regards,
Tim

I have made 1093_cumulative_patch_885b2_to_885b3_v6e.patch on a Linux system. Apply it with

patch -p0 -d {name of the working copy folder if you are not in this folder} < {patch file name and location}

The list of updated files should look like this:

patching file players/xspf_jukebox/dynamic/skin.xml
patching file players/xspf_jukebox/dynamic/variables.txt
patching file players/xspf_jukebox/dynamic_slim/skin.xml
patching file players/xspf_jukebox/dynamic_slim/variables.txt
patching file players/xspf_jukebox/license.txt
patching file podpress_admin_class.php
patching file podpress_admin_feed_class.php
patching file podpress_admin_functions.php
patching file podpress_admin_general_class.php
patching file podpress_admin.js
patching file podpress_admin_player_class.php
patching file podpress_admin_stats_class.php
patching file podpress_admin_wp27plus.css
patching file podpress_class.php
patching file podpress.css
patching file podpress_feed_functions.php
patching file podpress_functions.php
patching file podpress_gettext.bat
patching file podpress.js
patching file podpress.php
patching file podpress_theme.php
patching file podpress_xspfplaylist.php
patching file readme.txt

The /players sub folder should have a new sub folder: xspf_jukebox which should contain two own sub folder.

(With svn export you get a clean directory tree.)

((after the export) Don’t forget to copy the 3 other files to their locations:

• podpress_icon_r2_v2_16.png to /podpress/images/podpress_icon_r2_v2_16.png
• 1pixelout_player.swf to /podpress/players/1pixelout_player.swf
• xspf_jukebox.swf to /podpress/players/xspf_jukebox/xspf_jukebox.swf

)

Regards,
Tim

I like to remind every one that the patches in Ticket #1093 are leading to the next beta version! Do NOT use beta versions of this plugin in your regular blog!