(This post is intended for people who are using and integrating the PetPress plugin, and it is unabashedly geeky in parts.)
Although version 1.2 is not much more than a week old, it seemed important in light of increased adoption of this plugin to iron out some of the multi-site caching challenges inherent in the design. Initially, there was some denormalization of the PetPoint data done in hopes of speeding up the display of multi-site organizations, but as the plugin matured it became apparent that complete normalization of the data was going to allow for the most stable platform, and given the many different combinations of host platforms, versions of WordPress, themes and theme builders, stability of the platform is of paramount importance. Version 1.3 has full normalization of the data, and in testing seems to perform very well in both single site and multi-site cases. In short, the PetPress data structure looks like the PetPoint data structure now, and that should mean more reliability and fewer changes needed in the future.
Beyond the under-the-hood changes, the following front-end changes are coming in this release. Check the documentation for notes on how to use new features.
- Added Rabbits and Horses as species that can be listed. Springtime is coming and there are already additional rabbits to be found in the shelters near me. In prior versions, only dogs, cats, and “other” were supported, but with the new version rabbits and horses can be selected explicitly.
- Added option to randomize the photos used on the list page. For animals that have more than one photo, a random selection will be made for the list page. The idea behind this is that some people may be re-visiting your website, and perhaps an animal that did not catch the eye could be given a second (or even third) chance.
- Page titles on detail pages list name, species and breed. This was done mostly to improve analytics. Check the documentation for more information on this.
- Removed the auto-generated list headings. The original auto-generated list headings (eg: “Dogs at Rescues-R-Us”) were very problematic for multi-site organizations. Additionally, since the person building the webpage already knows what site(s) is/are going to be represented, it seemed simpler to offer the “heading” shortcode for this purpose.
- The shortcode returns nothing while in the DIVI front-end editor or in admin pages. WordPress tends to want to render the shortcodes any time it finds the, and that can interfere with page editors. My preference would be to have the shortcode interpreted only on display pages. While different page builders work differently (so it’s more a game of whack-a-mole to get them all) I believe I have made some progress by turning off the rendering of the shortcodes for the WordPress admin pages as well as the popular Divi front-end builder.
- Additional CSS fixes. I have gone back and fixed a few inconsistencies in presentation. While things like the selection of breakpoints can be somewhat arbitrary, I have standardized on the iPhone for a mobile device. When viewing lists, one will now see one column of tiles when the iPhone is in portrait mode, and two columns in landscape. As the screen sizes get bigger, the number of columns can increase now to a maximum of five (up from four in version 1.2.1).