[yak_get_remote...] is a new tag which can be used in a product post. This allows you to set up a store on one blog, then use the products (posts) on another. The basic idea is that you can have a central store with all your products, then separate (smaller) sites which pull in specific relevant products. When you click the buy button on the smaller site you are, of course, redirected to the central store.

There are 2 fundamental limitations:

1. it currently only works with libcurl (thus your PHP install must have curl enabled)
2. there is no way (at the moment) to redirect back to the original site. For example, the central store might be setup on site A, and 2 or 3 specific products linked on site B. A customer clicks the buy button on a product in site B, and is redirected to the shopping cart on A. At which point the cart should present a link to return the customer to the calling page.

Usage of the new function will be as follows:

1. On the Yak->Settings, under the Advanced tab, set a remote server and path. For example:

http://myserver.com
/myblog

2. In a post, use the tag: [yak_get_remote_n] where n is the id of the post in the remote store. For example:

[yak_get_remote_9]

Which will embed the content of post #9.

The new functionality does point toward a necessity for affiliate functionality (as briefly mentioned here) — but that’s a much larger effort that may need to wait. The new tag is currently in the repository, and will appear in the next release of YAK.

• Affiliates program - setup affiliates in YAK settings (select from registered users), then affiliates would be able to login to your WP admin panel and view their progress, perhaps setup keywords to manage a campaign? Not sure here. I favour a simple approach as much as possible, but it very much depends on whether a simple approach provides any value. This is probably one of those features that might have to wait until someone wants to fund the development, because it’s only a real user who’s going to come up with something that actually might be useful in the real world.
• Better address configuration — which fields should be included, how they should be labelled (over and above the i18n labelling). Which leads onto…
• Better WP integration — a registered user could enter their address, and this would be used when ordering. Which, as a by-product, should mean that a user could login and see their order details (i.e. order tracking).
• Multiple shipping options — at the very least provide for a configurable number of shipping options. Better yet, provide hooks for alternative shipping engines.
• Tax Calculation — calculating the Infernal Revenue Services’ cut of your sales isn’t something YAK does at all, at the moment, which has been a problem for some. At the very least, a simple tax calculation engine would allow you to specify a tax percentage for a country (have to add states, for the United States and Australia), but would this be enough? Feedback sort on this particular possibility.
• Workflow — at the moment we have “Send Stock”, “Cancel Order” and “Reset”. Are those enough? I started an email discussion with a user about a year ago about workflow, but they never replied after an initial couple of messages.
• Order filtering — the ability to specify date ranges, display today’s orders by default, etc (suggestions?)
• Product filtering — at the very least, a pick list of the alphabet for filtering at the top
• Export — csv(?) export of your orders, your customers, and perhaps your product list. The latter may not be necessary, if I come up with something reasonable in terms of an xml feed for products.
• Wordpress MU compatibility — only if I find a step-by-step installation guide that’s any good…
• Cart widget — display the current basket contents (summary) on the page.
• More download options — one request has been to allow for a configurable email to be sent out (rather than a download link). I was also thinking about tokens for support activities (i.e. buy a support token), which lead me onto the idea of creating a semi-secure sub-page of the download product (in this case a “support product”) where customer and technician can discuss the job. Useful for me, and at least one other user I’ve talked to, but it’s a fairly limited domain, so not sure about adding it as a core feature.
• Checkout navigation breadcrumbs (suggested by Chris). Fairly easy to add, so this will go up the priority list.
• Related products — “other products you may be interested in” (again suggested by Chris). Displayed when a customer adds to their basket.
• Additional gateways — one of authorise.net or PayPal Payments Pro integration. And fix Google Checkout so that we have end-to-end integration.
• SKU — I added product code quite a while ago, intending to use it for SKU, but it doesn’t make sense in light of multiple product types (one product with multiple types will have multiple SKUs). Adding SKU support also means adding the facility to search by SKU with a suitably nice URL (obviously time to brush up those mod rewrite skillz).
• Rewrite! Tidy up the codebase. Or start again with lessons learned from the past couple of years, and spend more time in the WP codebase to make sure YAK is consistent. This will happen once I win the lottery (considering I buy a lottery ticket about once every 1-3 years, calculate the probability for yourself )

And some additional stuff (not specifically related to development):

• Add discussion forums and move all the comments into the forums. I tried to do this before, but probably could’ve done it better, so might be worth trying again. Having 450 comments in General discussion is getting rather unwieldy.
• Site redesign — easier if WP properly supported multiple themes

I think that’s pretty much it. If there’s something I’ve missed that you think should be in this list, please leave a comment here. If anyone wants to fund development on one or more of these items, send me an email to discuss, otherwise you’ll have to wait until they trickle in over time.

Also included in this release is the facility to add promotions (i.e. discount codes that run for a specific period) — a custom piece of development paid for by a YAK user (thanks Chris!) — Czech translation provided by Frank, and Spanish translation provided by Josep (thanks guys).

The full changelog can be found here: http://www.briggs.net.nz/hg/yak/raw-file/tip/release_notes_1.1.2.txt.

As usual YAK can be downloaded from the WordPress Extend site.

Download it here.

This release includes the following changes:

• “Hard-code” the PayPal IPN page. This means you don’t need to create it manually. Instead just specify: http://yourdomain.com/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/yak-for-wordpress/yak-paypal-ipn.php
• Add Italian translation, provided by Roberto Mogliotti.
• Change the download message to use the tag [downloads] rather than a code.
• Change the email confirmation message to use tags rather than codes.
• Fix a nasty problem zeroing price and alternate title when commenting on a product.
• Fix a problem with the random order number.

I’ve also removed support for the old tags (the html comment form such as <!−−yak_buy−−>), so you’ll need to change your posts to use square brackets if you upgrade (e.g.

As usual, this release has only been fully tested by… well, me… so there may be some bugs I’ve missed — if you find something, please post on the Bugs page or email me directly.

Google Checkout integration requires https, but when testing I’m currently getting the dreaded error:

Protocol https not supported or disabled in libcurl

This despite the fact that curl -V gives:

curl 7.18.2 (i386-apple-darwin9.4.0) libcurl/7.18.2 OpenSSL/0.9.8h zlib/1.2.3
Protocols: tftp ftp telnet dict http file https ftps
Features: Largefile NTLM SSL libz

And port installed gives the following output (excerpted):

curl @7.18.2_0+ssl (active)
curl-ca-bundle @7.18.2_0 (active)
lighttpd @1.4.19_0 (active)
mysql5 @5.0.51a_0+server (active)
php5 @5.2.6_1+fastcgi+macosx+mysql5 (active)

I’m obviously missing something, but no idea what. Hoping that any Mac gurus who happen to come across this might have a suggestion or two…?

If you’re using 1.0.3d, I recommend you upgrade immediately.

The experimental release (1.1.0-exp) is still unpatched, and will be replaced by version 1.1.1 in a few days.

It’s fixed in trunk (in source control), and I’ll be releasing an updated 1.1.1 version shortly which includes the fix. I’ll also be releasing a patched version of 1.0.3d just in case people don’t want to upgrade to the latest and greatest.

In the meantime, if you’re running either of those versions, I recommend you disable comments on those products for the moment.

1.1.0-exp includes features from the not (publically) released 1.0.4:

1. Add new non-unique order id
2. Move javascript on cart off page and into separate script. split javascript into generic and admin specific files — to stop problems with (missing) jquery on the wp pages.
3. Add warning message for people with session.auto_start turned on.
4. Integrate YAK back into the WordPress menu structure. The top-level menu was a nice idea, but it’s inconsistent with all other plugins (plus isn’t recommended, according to the WP devs). You can now get to YAK’s options through Settings->Yak, and to Orders/Products/Sales Reports from the Manage menu.
5. Fix PHP4 problem with the view products screen

Along with a few additional features:

1. Add https support
2. Add first cut of Google Checkout integration.
3. Tidy up setting payment types (drop downs now rather than input boxes). Add setting of a credit card landing page.
4. Add support for tags with square brackets [ ]. The html-comment version of tags will be removed in an upcoming release

Google support is minimal so far. It’s one-way integration at the moment (allowing customers to submit an order through Google Checkout) — with no automated return path for handling purchase. That will come with a later release.

These updates hopefully make configuration a lot more user-friendly — particularly the changes to the Payment Types. Note that if you decide to upgrade, please make sure you backup your installation, and you double-check all your configuration options after upgrading.

YAK version 1.1.0-experimental can be downloaded from the WordPress Extend site.

Please backup your existing installation before upgrading. Deactivate, remove the current yak-for-wordpress directory, then copy the new version into the plugins dir and re-activate. You’ll need to double-check the configuration settings, because many input boxes have changed to drop-down selects (for category and page selection for example… see below). This upgrade will also require you to go through your products and set the price in the “YAK Product Details” tab (see point 5 in the changes below) — the custom fields are no longer required.

This release includes the following bug fixes:

1. Problem with table creation.
2. Country options not saving properly.
3. Fix an odd problem with globals.
4. The return URL appears to be broken with PayPal IPN. PDT works fine, but IPN seems to wind up back at the home page of the blog. Added a fix to cleanup the order from the shopping cart when this happens.

And the following changes:

1. Frank Malina’s new look-and-feel.
2. French translation (provided by Charles Dixon-Spain).
3. Change money format and currency format to be simpler drop down boxes.
4. Change the download url from the settings screen so it is now an override (i.e. optional).
5. Add new data input on the post/page edit screen for yak price and title (replacing the old method of using custom fields).
6. Remove the “Auto Set Price” option (doesn’t make a huge amount of sense now).
7. Fix the Auto Set Quantity so it works with selected categories.
8. Tidy up the stylesheet.
9. Add a hidden link to the checkout and to the buy button form — vain hope that this might drive more search engine traffic to the YAK plugin page — if you don’t want the link included, it can be switched off on the Basic settings page.
10. Change the product category (settings page) from an input box to a dropdown.
11. Change the redirect on buy (setting page) from an input box to a dropdown.
12. Change the return and cancel urls on the PayPal settings page to a dropdown so you can select a page rather than having to type a url.

First problem: The return URL doesn’t appear to work (cancel return URL works fine). PayPal keeps sending me back to the index page of my test site.

Second problem: When trying to save the Website Payment Preferences (in PayPal Profile) I get a “Page Not Found” error. So there’s no way to change between IPN and PDT. This has been broken now for at least 5 days.

If anyone is using YAK and PayPal and is willing (and able) to test both IPN and PDT integration, please let me know. Worst case scenario, I’ll release this version as unstable, and wait for PayPal to fix their problems…

UPDATE: Problem solved. PayPal have updated their site, but this has somehow corrupted old test accounts. Deleting the old account and creating a new one fixes the problem.

Or, possibly, there are dozens. There’s no way to tell since LinkedIn’s Group directory isn’t open and also isn’t searchable. Unless you’re lucky enough to find the relevant group on someone’s profile, you’re stuck with creating your own.

So that’s what I’ve done. If anyone is interested in joining, the invitation link is in the groups section of my profile.

And let’s hope LinkedIn develops a really good ratification process for merging millions of one-member groups…

YAK has always represented a reasonably significant investment in time. I don’t put a huge amount of effort into development now that it’s hit the 1.0 release, but popularity brings an inevitable increase in the number of calls for support.
Family commitments mean that I have less time available — or at the very least, it’s harder to justify spending the time. The obvious answer, suggested by a couple of people, is to commercialise (at least in part) the plugin.

There are plenty of open source projects which have at least a small commercial component. And plenty more which are mainly commercial, but release unsupported open source versions. An example of the former are projects which have paid-for documentation. An example of the latter would be something like JBoss or MySQL, which release community and enterprise versions of their apps — the enterprise version, rather obviously, providing commercial support.

So this brings me to a question: where to, with a semi-commercial version of YAK?

There are a few options on the table:

1. Reduce the detail of the online documentation and release a paid-for installation manual.
2. Release a supported, commercial version of the plugin with the latest features, and the open source version (with those features) would follow a few months later (only the commercial version would be supported).
3. Per-request charge for support, perhaps based upon the time taken.

What do you think? Any better ideas?

Apart from the new UI, there are no major feature improvements in this release, however there are a couple of “big ticket items” I’m thinking about adding in version 1.0.4.

Apologies to anyone who had problems, and hopefully this release will work better.

This version is a slightly more involved upgrade than previous editions. Because WordPress’s automated build system creates a distribution from the subversion repository, the directory in the filename isn’t just “yak” — it’s “yak-for-wordpress”. This appears to cause problems when I’ve named my main plugin file: “yak.php”. As a consequence, the new name is “yak-for-wordpress.php”.

Thus, before upgrading, you should backup your wordpress installation, then deactivate and remove the old yak directory. Extract the contents of the new distribution and re-activate.

Changes in this release are included in the release notes here, but to summarise:

1. order status is automatically set to STOCK SENT when all funds have been received for a PayPal order, if the order contains only downloadable items
2. the ‘default’ category has been removed from the products drop down. This means you can still turn the drop-down on by default for products with more than one option, and the products that are tagged as ‘default’, won’t include the dropdown.
3. fixed a problem with apostrophes in yak title, download and confirmation email
4. fixed a problem with PayPal shipping with multiple items
5. fixed a problem with PayPal verification (item names need to be properly encoded)
6. tidied up the confirmation email and code

Any problems with this release, please let me know.

As well as WP2.3 compatibility, 1.0.1 adds paging to the “products” page, adds a facility to select the countries you support (see the options page), and adds a new quantity tag () to display product availability to your customers.

Anyway, as seen here, you can set it back… although I’m not sure his her instructions were clear enough. Either that or there’s a slight difference between the release candidate and the final release.

So for those who don’t have php coding skills, but still want the return of their Technorati links, download this zip file, unzip index-extra.php inside and copy to the wp-admin directory of your WP install. Probably best to take a copy of the current one, just in case. I’ve only tested with the just-released WP2.3, so use at your own risk, etc, etc, etc.

There are structural database changes required for WP2.3, and while I don’t necessarily need to change the YAK tables as a consequence, I do need to change a few (relatively complicated) SQL statements. So if anyone has a test environment and would like to help, it would be great if someone (other than me) can check whether or not the changes have been completely successful.
I can package up the current tip of the repository and email out to those interested.

Please note that I’ve made the decision not to support older versions of WP (i.e. versions less than 2.3) from this point on, as supporting different versions of a database makes development inordinately complicated. That said, if you won’t (or can’t) upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress, and have some essential feature that you want in YAK, feel free to cross my palms with (quantities of) silver and I’d be happy to help.

The only other change that goes into this release is the support for paging in the YAK products page. This is the product list page (using the tag <!–yak_product_page–> tag) where your users can see all your current products (in order of newest to oldest). I’m only aware of one person actually using this feature, so for most, the only thing of interest in this coming release is the 2.3 support. More to come when I have the time.

Thanks to Christoph Dorn for the contribution of a package that works on Mac OS X. Check the phpspread page here for a link to the zip file.