Most Recent Post Feed in User Dashboard gone Missing

  • agreda

    (@agreda)


    12 years, 12 months ago

    After searching here and posting on other forums, I’m at my wits ends trying to figure out what happened to a feature that used to show the most recent post from a specified blog in all user dashboards across the network.

    Does this mock screenshot look familiar to anyone?

    In short, the most recent blog post from our main site used to appear in a notice at the top of all user dashboards along with a dismiss link.

    At one point in time I remember setting the feed from which to pull post titles, but for the life of me I cannot remember if this was done via a plugin or some native WP Admin option. After extensively reviewing all our plugins, however, I can’t help but think this was a WP feature that has been removed.

    Since updating to WP(MS) 3.1.2 the blog post notice no longer appears in any dashboards. We used to show these recent posts on multiple installs, and now none of them display the notice.

    The feeds from which these notices were showing posts all validate. I’ve reviewed the WP changelogs and don’t notice any related feature that has been removed. None of our plugins have been updated in the time frame that relates to the notice no longer appearing.

    Any feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 21 total)
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  • Pieter Bos

    (@senlin)

    12 years, 11 months ago

    Hi Agreda, Yeah I noticed the exact same thing too and I saw the thread you are referring to over at wpmudev.org.

    As there seems not an awful lot of feedback on this subject, I have decided not to wait for a solution and implemented my own feed. It works for multisite (obviously), but it can basically be installed on any WP install, single or multi.

    Please have a look at my solution over at http://wpti.ps/?p=99

    Thread Starter agreda

    (@agreda)

    12 years, 11 months ago

    Thanks! I’ll look into that. I am happy to know though that it’s not just me. Bit surprised, however, that nobody knew about this feed option, or cared to explain how/why it disappeared.

    Pieter Bos

    (@senlin)

    12 years, 11 months ago

    You’re welcome!

    I also was very surprised that there is close to none info available on this and was happy to see on wpmudev that you asked a question on this forum!

    If my solution works for you, perhaps you can be so kind to leave a response on the wpti.ps site about it?

    Thanks!

    Thread Starter agreda

    (@agreda)

    12 years, 11 months ago

    If my solution works for you, perhaps you can be so kind to leave a response

    Sure, if I ever get around to implementing it. I just hate hacking core files since that must be done again for WP every update. Thanks again.

    Pieter Bos

    (@senlin)

    12 years, 11 months ago

    Hi Agreda, It’s not core files I am hacking here.

    It is the functions.php file of your Child theme and an additional file that you have to make from scratch.
    Upload both files to your server (theme folder) and you’re good to go.

    Hacking core files is very bad practice and should never be published as a solution.

    Thread Starter agreda

    (@agreda)

    12 years, 11 months ago

    Right, hacking “core” theme files. 😉

    Problem is, this solution would only work on sites using the edited theme, not across our entire network with 100+ themes to choose from.

    Thanks again though!

    Pieter Bos

    (@senlin)

    12 years, 11 months ago

    I wouldn’t know how to “inject” a line of code into the functions file of each theme. But I am sure if it would be packaged as a plugin it could work very well. The only thing is that I don’t have any experience yet with making a plugin like that. Bit busy now also working on sites for clients, but will let you know if I come up with something in the future…

    Pieter Bos

    (@senlin)

    12 years, 11 months ago

    OK very basic plugin is ready, still need to work on an admin panel so user can add rss URL without having to hack the plugin files before uploading. You can download the plugin from http://wpti.ps/downloads/wtdashboardfeed.zip

    For now (due to the lack of an admin panel) all you need to do is to unzip the package and edit 2 files:
    – wtdbfeed.php line 44, the header of the box
    – wtrss.php, located in the php folder line 2, the actual feed

    Then upload the main plugin folder (wtdashboardfeed) to your plugins directory.

    Network activate and all your 100 blogs show the new dashboard widget with the feed of your choice!

    Pieter Bos

    (@senlin)

    12 years, 11 months ago

    Now properly released as plugin: Multisite Dashboard Feed Widget plugin. More information and download via http://wpti.ps/?p=103

    Thread Starter agreda

    (@agreda)

    12 years, 11 months ago

    That was quick, thanks! We’ll give it a world on our test site soon.

    Pieter Bos

    (@senlin)

    12 years, 11 months ago

    Please let me know in the comments on wptips how it is working for you! And perhaps you can let them know over at the wpmu forum as I don’t have access there…

    Thread Starter agreda

    (@agreda)

    12 years, 11 months ago

    FYI: In case you missed it, WMPU.org announced your new plugin at http://wpmu.org/daily-tip-new-multisite-dashboard-feed-widget-in-the-wordpress-plugin-repository/

    Pieter Bos

    (@senlin)

    12 years, 11 months ago

    Oh, that is very cool! Thanks for letting me know. I did see that you wrote something about it in the forums over there, but this one is new for me 🙂

    Thread Starter agreda

    (@agreda)

    12 years, 11 months ago

    Hi Piet, I’ve been testing the plugin on our dev install and am encountering some issues.

    First, the widget seems to work fine with a basic doamin.com/feed. Our goal however, is to only show posts from specific blogs via feeds generated by WPMU Dev plugins…

    FEED 1: Validates with recommendations, and breaks dashboard widget:
    http://tripawds.com/wp-content/recent-featured-posts-feed.php
    ^ This feed pulls posts only from specific sites on the network. Ideally, we want to use this feed, but the widget includes no content at all when it is used.

    FEED 2: Validates with recommendations and works in widget:
    http://tripawds.net/wp-content/recent-global-posts-feed.php
    ^ This feed pulls posts from all blogs on the network

    FEED 3: Validates w/o exception and works in widget:
    http://tripawds.com/wp-content/recent-global-posts-feed.php
    ^ This feed pulls posts from all blogs on the network

    The other issue I’m noticing, using the last feed above which seems to work fine is that the widget is not updating the same on different sites across the network. It seems once the widget displays, it does not update when other posts are published to the feed. Does the widget only update according to some schedule?

    To clarify, I confirmed the widget was displaying posts from the validated feed. I published a new post to the feed, then visited another dashboard and it showed in the list of posts. But upon visiting the previous dashboard, the new post was not in the widget. Hope this makes sense! Thanks again for all your efforts.

    Pieter Bos

    (@senlin)

    12 years, 11 months ago

    Hi agreda, thanks for your feedback.

    To start with the last problem first, that is something WordPress related: by default feeds are refreshed every 12 hours. And that is exactly why on a Dashboard where you already have installed the widget on, the new post doesn’t show up for another 12 hours. On a fresh install the new post indeed shows immediately.
    To change this, you would need to change the default feed-refreshing time, which you can actually do by adding the following 2 lines to your functions.php file:

    add_filter( 'wp_feed_cache_transient_lifetime',
             create_function('$a', 'return 600;') );

    When I get to make the options for the plugin, I will probably also address this refresh time.

    Are you sure that your first problem is not related to the refreshing time? And what exactly do you mean with “Validates with recommendations”?

    Thanks,
    Piet

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