Frontend Submissions version 2.3 released
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 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.
- 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
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Thanks guys for sharing all your hard work on this.
Not a problem!
I’d love to see EDD Bookings get FES support!