A new beta, a new version. This release starts the next version in development providing better support for users and clearer context. If you already read what’s coming to Auto Load Next Post v1.5.0 then you will already know that the theme customizer will now bring the plugin settings in view as you set up your theme.
This is just the first step in providing a better UI for users and is very useful for when you need to find the theme selectors for the theme you are setting up.
Limited validation has also been applied so far and will improve over time. What I would like to do further with the validation is for themes that have not defined support for Auto Load Next Post, to check if the theme selectors can be found and display a warning notice for that particular selector. That way the user will know if all are set.
Going back in my last post, I mentioned if you changed themes and that theme supports Auto Load Next Post, the theme selectors will be set automatically for you. For the customizer, I think it is a different process as you are only previewing the theme until you have pressed the published button so the theme selectors are not changing or the customizer does not reload to refresh the settings.
As this is a beta release you can report feedback on that.
It’s still early for the customizer in terms of the theme selectors but I think it’s a good start and a step in the right direction.
Notice that the section is not called General but Theme Selectors instead. It’s important that I make things clear for what the user is looking for so they spend less time setting up the plugin. I have also made the same change for the settings page under the WordPress dashboard.
I have also adjusted some additional context throughout the plugin to make it much clearer as to what the setting is or why this setting is required so the language POT file is also updated and ready for translation.
One minor improvement was also made to make sure once the theme selectors are set and you view a single post while still in the customizer that it still loaded the posts as it would publically.
When using the theme customizer, all links have a unique argument applied. This argument prevented the posts from loading using the repeater template and instead loaded the whole page for that post.
This has now been fixed as part of this release by removing the arguments before Auto Load Next Post gets the next post.
What developers need to know
If you had to create a custom repeater template of your own everything will remain working. The only thing you need to do is change the filename of the repeater template. For now, it would be best to just clone the file and rename it so it is ready to support version 1.5.0.
Previous filename used: content-partial.php
New filename: content-alnp.php
That is all for now.
How do I test?
To test Auto Load Next Post 1.5.0 beta 1, you can use my Auto Load Next Post Beta Tester plugin or you can download the beta release here (zip).
If you think you’ve found a bug? Please post in detail to Github.
The final version of 1.5.0 is set for release June 12th 2018.
Thanks for reading and happy testing!