I recently have been doing some contract work for Blair Williams, owner of Caseproof, LLC. You’ve probably seen his ads on my site for Affiliate Royale, MemberPress, and Pretty Link Pro. Yup, I do make a small commission on any sales, but that’s not why I promote his products.

After spending the last six months or so working with Blair on MemberPress, and a few other projects of his, I can truly say he has a vision of simplicity that few developers do. He’s been a part of internet marketing nearly as long as I’ve been alive, and he knows the web like the back of his hand! This knowledge and skill-set manifest themselves in his plugins. To put it bluntly they just rock! They are so easy to use, and he supports them well.

It’s really been a pleasure to work with him. You can thank him for the many things I’ve learned that I am using to make Mingle Forum a much better plugin going forward. Anyways, back to MemberPress — I’m not a huge fan of write-up reviews because I’d rather see it in action, and in case you’re like me here’s an introduction video to showcase how easy I think it is to get your WordPress site up and running with a knock-out membership system through MemberPress. Enjoy!

Visit MemberPress.com for more information.

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You can demo it here on our forum. A full changelog will be provided when it is completed. Most notably are the Style changes that DDArt has been working tirelessly on. If you like the new changes, please consider sending a donation his way (http://ddart-bg.com).

What Mingle Forum 1.1.x is:
First of all — it’s free, and will stay that way! The 1.0.x series of Mingle Forum is OK and is serving well for a lot of people. But it is lacking in some modern features and appearances. We aim to fix that with the new releases. Our main focus for vs 1.1.0 will be enhancing the user experience, fixing bugs, and cleaning up the code-base. This will allow us to much more effectively meet future needs.

IMPORTANT NOTE: – Mingle Forum 1.1.0 will change the wpf.class.php to a great extent. So if you’re currently using a Forum Skin that requires you to replace the wpf.class.php file. MAKE SURE that the Skin is compatible with 1.1.0+ before you upgrade. Otherwise you may cause yourself a lot of headache, and end up having to downgrade to 1.0.34 again. We’ll be doing more to make this transition smooth, but some Skin authors may be too busy to upgrade their skins immediately. If you find your Skin is not compatible with 1.1.0+, you may want to consider switching to one of the new default skins that will be provided.

What Mingle Forum 1.1.x is not:
It is not a dumping ground for every new feature you ever wanted to see – In order to keep the code-base clean we will have to avoid bloat. Over the life of the 1.1.x series we plan on implementing some great hooks for 3rd party developers to use. English please? Basically it means that we will provide other developers with opportunities to leverage Mingle Forum in their plugins and code. This means someone could write a Polls add-on, or a Karma add-on etc. We’re not there yet, but are hoping by around vs 1.1.3 that we’ll be able to spend some time on enhancing this API.

We have moved the Mingle Forum project to Github in an attempt to get more contributors involved in the project, keep issues organized, and help speed up the development process.

So, to sum it all up — Mingle Forum is gaining new life slowly but surely. However, don’t expect everything all at once, and please don’t bombard us with feature requests just yet . We’d like to get the styles working better on most themes first, get the code-base maintainable, and get as many bugs smashed as we can before we begin on feature development. It is a large project and will continue to take hours and hours of work, so if you can’t contribute with coding skills, please consider a donation to help the cause.

Current Contributors to 1.1.x: Cartpauj, ddart, Xefir, whyameye.

Feel free to share some feedback below!

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This time it’s a simple Captcha field that gets added to the default WordPress registration form. I saw quite a few that help prevent SPAM signups but I could not find a plugin that simply added a Captcha form and didn’t require a bachelors degree to use

If you’ve been getting a lot of SPAM BOT registrations on your blog then you should definitely check out this Plugin to add that extra layer of protection to the sign-up form.

This plugin just needs to be activated. There are NO settings pages to configure or anything like that. Just activate and it’s working.

For more info (such as how to replace that ugly default WordPress logo that shows up on the login/register page) read here:
http://cartpauj.icomnow.com/projects/cartpauj-register-captcha-plugin/

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I had a client who needed the ability to redirect users to another page after so many seconds. So I decided to turn my work into another great open-source (free) plugin for the WordPress community to use. The plugin is very simple and allows site owners to add a shortcode to their pages and/or posts. The shortcodes look like [redirect url='http://somesite.com' sec='3'] where URL is the link to send the users to and SEC is the number of seconds to wait before re-directing the user.

You can read more about the plugin here: Shortcode Redirect Plugin by Cartpauj

Enjoy! And as always if you enjoy it please consider donating.

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So, because I am behind schedule on the new forum, I have decided to take a break coding the new one and spend some time updating Mingle Forum. The next update (vs. 1.0.31) will include the ability to link WordPress posts with forum posts CHEERS!

It takes a great deal of time to continue developing these great, free plugins so if you’re feeling happy today please pass some of that sunshine on through a donation

Here’s the list of everything I’m hoping to get done in Mingle Forum 1.0.31. Be sure to check the changelog to see what actually makes it in.

Added Features:
– Ability to link WordPress posts with forum posts (complete)
– Use “Real” signatures instead of Bio’s (complete)
– Preview Post before submitting it

Bug Fixes
– “Quote” shows up in locked topics (fixed)
– Vanishing topic title if apostrophe is used in the title (fixed)
– If error occurs while creating, editing or replying to a post the entire post is lost
– Protected posts show up in the “new topics since last visit” feed (fixed)

EDIT (July 13 2011):
Security Enhancements
– Input fix to prevent XSS attacks (complete)
– Possible path disclosure in /fs-admin/ files (complete)

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When will the next release be available? Right now I’m waiting to hear back from a few beta testers to see how smoothly the SEO Friendly URLs run. We’re probably looking at about another week before it will be available to the public.

It has taken so much time & trial/error to implement this feature that I would just like to remind everyone (without sounding too desperate or needy ) that donations are always welcome. Thanks!

EDIT: Nov 27 2010 — Just pushed out the release (Mingle Forum 1.0.23) containing SEO Friendly URLs, Dynamic Forum Sitemap, and a handful of bug fixes.

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• Akismet

When I first setup my site and began releasing the WordPress plugins that I had written, I had no idea how popular the site would become and how quickly. Within the first few weeks I was getting around 2000 unique hits a day and the Spam comments starting piling up. After activating this plugin and entering my API key, only 2 SPAM comments have slipped through its grip.

• All In One SEO Pack

Some folks claim that there are now better SEO plugins available but I have used this plugin a lot in the past and am very comfortable with the way it works and the features it offers. I don’t have a lot of time to devote to good SEO practices so the little time that I do get is very well spent with this plugin. It makes implementing good SEO practices easy and I plan to continue using it for a long time.

• Announcements and vertical scroll news

I heard about this plugin through a friend. It took a little CSS customization to look good on this site but I’m very pleased with the results. It has made it very easy to advertise new plugins, articles, even forum posts on my site.

• Cartpauj PM (Private Messages)

Cartpauj PM was my very first attempt at writing a WordPress plugin from scratch. It hasn’t been downloaded as many times as I hoped but those who have used it have loved it and have sent some very kind emails and donations for it. I do have plans of writing Cartpauj PM 2.0 which will be much better now that I’ve got a little more practice.

• Cartpauj Post Hits

Cartpauj Post Hits is a small plugin I wrote for my site here because I wanted to know how many times my posts were being viewed. The nice thing about this plugin is that it does NOT count Bots, Crawlers, and Administrator views as hits.

• Comment Notifier

I have always wondered why more bloggers don’t implement something like this on their blogs. This plugin allows a user to subscribe to a comment stream for any blog post. It is very helpful for maintaining user retention and helps give that extra boost to keep people coming back.

• FAQ You

Because Cartpauj.icomnow.com is heavily geared towards support I installed this plugin to help alleviate some of the most frequent and repetitive requests/questions that I get. For the most part this plugin is pretty solid, but it would be nice to have an option to see how many times each question is getting viewed.

• Mingle

Mingle is written by a good friend who I have worked with many times. The Mingle plugin is an excellent solution for people looking to add facebook like user management and social networking to their WordPress site(s). It is still under development with plenty more features to come in the future.

• Mingle Donation Button

This plugin is a great way to add a PayPal Donate button to your Mingle users profile.

• Mingle Forum

This plugin was taken over from an old abandoned WordPress plugin. It has been the most popular plugin of mine and also the most demanding on my time. After taking over the abandoned plugin I spent many sleepless nights and long days getting it fixed up and ready for customers who want something simple, solid, and reliable. In around 4 months it has been downloaded over 22,000 times.

• Paypal Donations

Because this site is based almost solely on Free WordPress Plugins, it takes a LOT of my time to answer support requests and to continue to improve my plugins and add new features that are requested. It is very difficult to find the time and motivation to continue to do so — which is why I added this plugin. Every donation whether big or small helps tremendously to boost the spirits and remind me that there are lots of good people in the world. Big thanks to all those who have or who will donate!

• uCan Post

uCan Post allows users to put a form on the front of their site that will allow users or guests to submit blog content without having to access the dashboard. I don’t really use it for any reason on this site other than to demo it’s capabilities for those who are thinking about downloading it.

• WP-UserOnline

I installed this plugin so I could see what users are on when. It doesn’t have a lot of statistical features but the few that it does offer are nice. I would certainly like to see the authors add more statistical data or charts in future releases.

• XML Sitemaps

This plugin is just plain awesome! XML Sitemaps does its job quickly and hassle-free. It doesn’t ask any questions, no options to configure. Just activate and you’re done. There are a lot of other sitemap plugins that have more options and better features but for those of you who are strapped for time like me, this plugin is where it’s at. I recommend this plugin in a lot of client work that I do also.

That’s it! If you want to share some other plugins that you feel are good or maybe even better than some of the one’s I listed feel free to comment below.

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So what is it?: uCan Post is hands down the best and simplest plugin to use to allow your users and even guests to submit posts on your site without having to access the dashboard. Pretty Awesome eh?

Can I see the uCan Post WordPress Plugin in action?: Yes! Click Here to see a demo of the uCan Post plugin.

Tell me more: If you want to view more about my uCan Post WordPress Plugin Click Here.

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