Frontend Submissions is one of our premier extensions that allows you to transform your Easy Digital Downloads store into a full-fledged marketplace, similar to ThemeForest, Etsy, Creative Market and other online marketplaces. Today we are thrilled to announce the long-awaited release of Frontend Submissions version 2.3. This release has been in development for more than a year and includes a huge number of significant improvements.
The 2.3 release has too many improvements to cover them all in detail here, so here are the highlights.
New vendors interface
The interface for managing vendors has been completely rebuilt and now closely mimics the interface and design of the Customers screens in Easy Digital Downloads. Each vendor now has a details “card” that shows every piece of relevant information for their account.
There are several other highlights for vendor management:
Vendors can now be easily searched by name, email, user ID, and even custom meta data
Easily convert any user account into a vendor with a single click
Improved vendor earnings and sales stats, including graphs and exports
Improved form editor
The form editor screens have been significantly improved and now include better field organization and all fields handle default values significantly better.
Extensive new developer’s API for fields and forms
The backbone of Frontend Submissions is the set of powerful form builders that allow site admins to construct the perfect registration, product submission, and profile forms for their site. In Frontend Submissions 2.3, a robust developer’s API has been built to allow extension developers to easily register their own custom forms and field types. This means that extensions can now easily integrate with FES, providing stronger and more seamless feature compatibility between popular Easy Digital Downloads extensions and Frontend Submissions. Several of our extensions have already been updated to make use of the new fields API, including Simple Shipping, Audio Player, and Commissions. In the near future, tighter integrations with FES and other popular extensions will be released. If you have an extension you’d like to see supported by FES, leave a comment below or get in touch with the support team.
reCaptcha version 2.0
Google reCaptcha 2.0 is a re-envisioned and re-engineered anti-spam system that protects your site from harmful bot and spam registrations yet is still easy for humans to complete. Frontend Submissions 2.3 includes complete support for the latest reCaptcha to help you keep your site safe and your vendors happy.
Other enhancements and bug fixes
Included in the Frontend Submissions 2.3 release are 75 distinct improvements, 24 important bug fixes, and 74 additional modifications. All together, these changes help make Frontend Submissions more powerful, more reliable, and more enjoyable to use. More than 1.5 years of development time was invested into this release to ensure the update process goes smoothly. Frontend Submissions 2.3 is 100% backwards compatible with previous versions, letting you rest assured that the update is safe to install. As with all updates, however, we do strongly advocate the use of a staging site to test the update before installing it on your live marketplace.
View complete changelog for FES 2.3
New: Introduced Fields API that all FES fields now run on
New: Introduced Forms API that all FES forms now run on
New: Introduced _fes_deprecated_function()
New: Introduced Honeypot field
New: ReCAPTCHA field now uses ReCAPTCHA 2.0
New: Introduce fes_is_key() function
New: Formbuilder now divides fields into extension, custom, and specific metaboxes
New: Introduced Vendors DB class
New: Introduced Vendor class
New: Introduced new vendors table in the admin
New: Introduced reports for vendors
New: Introduced notes for vendors
New: Introduced CSV export of customers for vendor product(s) in the admin
New: Increment/decrement vendor earnings/sales count based on payments and refunds
New: Raised minimum EDD requirement to 2.3
New: Raised minimum WP requirement to 4.2
New: Introduced optional opt-in tracking of data
New: Introduced Tools class
New: Introduced Welcome class
New: Introduced public radio toggle for submission form items
New: Introduced setting to let submission form items be automatically outputted on the product page
New: Introduce set_option (for redux settings)
New: Introduce redux global variable for use in set_option
New: Vendors can now be searched for by commission email, user_id, custom vendor meta and username
New: Introduced DOING_FES_FORM_SUBMISSION
New: Resetting a form now uses statically declared FES fields, not a psuedo imported json file
New: Introduced get_form_id_by_name function
New: Introduced get_form_class_by_name function
New: Introduced get_form_by_name function
New: Introduced get_form_by_id function
New: Introduced get_form_name_by_class function
New: FES Emails can now use any field in the emails
New: Added error if the vendor dashboard isn’t set
New: Custom receipt view for vendors for the orders
New: If a user has an FES role, the FES role will always show in the role column on the user table
New: Adds FES actions to the user table
New: Added JS loading overlays to the submission of forms on the frontend
New: Added JS success/fail alerts to the submission of forms on the frontend
New: Added index.php in the language folder
New: reCAPTCHA now shows a warning on the formbuilder field to ensure users set the reCAPTCHA settings
New: Introduced a highly robust and filterable field sanitization and validation system
New: Introduced a highly robust and filterable success/error message and redirect system for submission of forms
New: Introduced fes_dash_to_lower function
New: Introduced fes_is_frontend() function
New: Introduced fes_is_admin function
New: Introduced fes_is_api_request function
New: Redux has been upgraded 40+ versions
New: All FES emails now have defaults
New: Completely rethought system for triggering the EDD file protection for uploaded files
New: Scripts and Styles are now minified triggered using an new, better system
New: Introduced is_fes_form function
New: All FES fields now contain more explicit titles, subtitles, descriptions and sample content
New: Introduced Name field
New: New FES logo
New: Add reset all forms and reset form meta options on tools
New: Introduced a Custom Taxonomy field
New: FES now integrates with social login in terms of using Social Login’s grabbed social network profile picture as the vendor avatar
New: FES will now look for FES templates in the EDD folder
New: Introduced fes_get_theme_template_paths function and a more robust template loading system
New: Added a metabox to change the FES status of a vendor, and see the current status of a vendor on the edit user screen
New: Vendors can now be sorted by every column in the vendor table
New: Fatal errors in FES are now handled as a JS alert (no more spinning wheels of death, despair, and life contemplation)
New: And those fatal errors have a complete stacktrace dumped in the console for devs
New: Taxonomy fields now provide live suggestions for text fields
New: Added shortcodes to render the output of FES forms
New: Every single FES file has been formatted to standard
New: The vendor dropdown on the edit download page now uses Chosen to make finding a specific vendor easier
New: The FES Tools page now uses a combined metabox for import, export, and reset with a chosen dropdown to select the form to apply the action to
New: Introduced a Post Format field
New: There is now a prompt before any action can be taken to change the status of a vendor (safety measure)
New: There is now a link to the vendor’s store page from admin edit vendor page
New: A password field is no longer required on the FES registration form (if not present, FES will automatically issue the user a password)
New: Completely redesigned About/Welcome to FES page
New: Composer.json to help those who manage their WordPress sites using Composer
Field and Form names are now completely translateable
Fix: Bug in Multiple Pricing and Files field that caused the wrong columns to sometimes get unset
Fix: Hover on post date in the vendor dashboard was off
Fix: Menu fix for r34177 in WordPress core, scheduled for release with WordPress 4.4.
Fix: Don’t show announcements section if annoucncement isn’t set
Fix: FES now correctly attempts to use vendor contact email in profile before vendor user email
Fix: ReCAPTCHA field now echos the insert settings before using this field warning on the formbuilder field
Fix: Correct isues with the file (and file type) fields saving
Fix: FES settings global variable was on the wrong variable in certain situations
Fix: Resetting a form now ensures the form is correctly saved to the FES settings panel
Fix: Pagination links now work when using default permalink structure on the dashboard
Fix: Use FES specific css for the menu icon
Fix: ReCAPTCHA now works on ssl sites
Fix: JShint errors for comma on last item in an array have been remediated
Fix: Import/Export fields now redirects with the correct tab open
Fix: FES will now save image files with a dimension post-fix on the filename
Fix: Remediated PHP notices on plugin activation caused by the install routine attempting to find forms that didn’t exist yet
Fix: Logout no longer fails if Vendor Dashboard page is incorrect
Fix: FES now automatically saves new name indexes on new fields added on the formbuilder (like it was supposed to do)
Fix: Solves issues when EDD is deactivated and FES is left active
Fix: Profile information now displays in backend dashboard
Fix: Email auto-populates now for the vendor contact form
Fix: upload_dir is now properly (not) filtered in admin on non-download post types
Fix: Corrected usage of wp_new_user_notification() post WordPress 4.3
Tweak: Removed all FES shortcodes deprecated in FES 2.2
Tweak: Suspended vendors products are now set to draft instead of trash
Tweak: Better warnings about what revoking a vendor entails
Tweak: is_meta is now a characteristic of the field instead of being stored in the database
Tweak: When visiting a vendor page that doesn’t exist, a more generic title is presented
Tweak: Removing the only line from a file upload now clears that line instead of the JS error
Tweak: Removed deprecated & unused vendor_not_enough_permissions function
Tweak: Removed Formbuilder Template functions used solely by FES internal fields
Tweak: All functions referencing P/product(s) and/or D/download(s) and/or V/vendor(s) now use the vendor and product constants
Tweak: Upload buttons on file fields are now buttons instead of links
Tweak: X buttons on file fields are now the x symbol
Tweak: Removed get_input_fields function
Tweak: Removed prepare_meta_fields function
Tweak: Removed get_buffered function
Tweak: Removed remove_button function
Tweak: Removed all field functions from the Forms class
Tweak: Removed deprecated EDD_FES()->vendors->use_author_archives()
Tweak: Better admin and frontend script and style loading
Tweak: Removed signal_error function
Tweak: User Website URL field is now User URL field
Tweak: Rewrote the install class
Tweak: Rewrote the upgrade class
Tweak: FES now loads post types from it’s own file (prevents alot of the install bugs we were seeing)
Tweak: FES now loads the default fields and meta from a schema.php file (greatly reduces code redundancy)
Tweak: Prevent cloning of global FES object
Tweak: Prevent wakeup of global FES object
Tweak: Greatly improved the legend field used on fields output
Tweak: Corrected some string textdomains to edd_fes from edd
Tweak: Completely rewrote the FES_Menu class
Tweak: All menu item titles are now translatable
Tweak: All mentions of “application” are changed to the new “registration” if possible (context wise)
Tweak: Formbuilder fields now use css classes unique to the formbuilder
Tweak: FES system info is now included in the EDD system info, reducing chance of confusion
Tweak: Removed commented out console.logs in javascript
Tweak: Better action hook field description
Tweak: Completely rewrote readme.markdown
Tweak: Removed backup json files
Tweak: Removed login as vendor/customer option
Tweak: Use FES specific css for the menu icon
Tweak: Assume we want to refresh the page if vendor dashboard page isn’t set on an FES ajax call
Tweak: Copyright dates fixed
Tweak: Check to see if settings for reCAPTCHA are set before rendering the field
Tweak: Removed reCAPTCHA 1.0 JS, PHP and CSS
Tweak: Completely removed JS based field validation
Tweak: Access Denied error messages now give a reason in each instance
Tweak: All fields are now translatable
Tweak: Localization options for js files are now filterable
Tweak: Hide Redux garbage (newsletters, tracking option, submenu pages, admin notices, etc)
Tweak: Product and Vendor constants are now 1 setting each not 4 settings each
Tweak: Main tab FES settings now show in the order of usage
Tweak: Profile form no longer redirects on submission
Tweak: First Name and Last Name field on the Vendor Contact form has been replaced with a Name field
Tweak: Removed the subject field on the Vendor Contact form
Tweak: Vendor Contact now includes more sane titles and message on the email sent to vendors
Tweak: The registration form will no longer try to login users on submission
Tweak: Added a check before trying to find fields if the form doesn’t have the meta we added in the 2.3 upgrade on the reset form
Tweak: If FES forms are missing, then during upgrade FES will add them
Tweak: The FES walkers for taxonomys got reworked
Tweak: The install and tools classes uses get_posts to help alleviate issues with other plugins hooking into query
Tweak: Added more strict hiding of the Add New button on FES Forms on multisite installs
Tweak: Removed the ability to set a user to an FES role on the edit user screen (since that no longer makes that user a vendor)
Tweak: Vendors can now be sorted by every column in the vendor table
Tweak: Vendor and Download Status columns have been increased in size to make them easier to read/spot
Tweak: The name columns of the vendor and download tables have been combined with the action columns
Tweak: Removed all old FES js validation spans
Tweak: Removed old WordPress checks for versions FES no longer supports
Tweak: Removed fallback for emails if EDD_Emails doesn’t exist (because FES only supports EDD versions now with it)
Tweak: A better JS and CSS minify was employed to result in better than previous filesize minification
Tweak: More specific CSS for the status columns on the download and vendor tables
Tweak: The Post Title can no longer be removed from the submission form
Tweak: The forms settings are now hidden in the FES settings panel by default
Tweak: The settings panel has seen settings shuffled around to be more intuitive
Tweak: Replaced global $edd_options with edd_get_option() calls
Tweak: Links to “FES Profile” have been renamed to a more correct “View Vendor Profile”
Tweak: The default minimum length on the password field has been bumped up to 12 characters