Blog - WP Ultimo

The WooCommerce Integration Add-on is finally here!

Now you can extend your WP Ultimo payment options to allow your subscribers to use all of the many available methods on your WooCommerce install!

How it Works

The WooCommerce Integration works in a very similar way to the way our Manual Gateway works. it offers a ton of flexibility to your users, allowing them to chose any of the payment forms available on your WooCommerce install. The downside is that every payment must be paid manually at the end of the billing period. Here is how the flow works.

1. The user chooses this payment option on his panel. The default label used for this payment option is “Dynamic Payments” (you can change it on the WooCommerce Integration Settings page).

2. Once the user billing period ends, the user subscription is put on hold. At the same time, an order will be created on the WooCommerce install of the main site of the network. That order can be easily accessed from the Subscription Management screen.

3. The user then receives an invoice in his email, with a link to perform the payment (the link also appears on his or her billing history). That link will redirect him to the WooCommerce payment screen, where he or her will be able to select one of the available WooCommerce gateways.

4. Once the payment is received, the subscription is renewed, the payment is logged on WP Ultimo and the order is set to complete.

Recapping…

The user chooses this payment option on his panel. The default label used for this payment option is “Dynamic Payments” (you can change it on the WooCommerce Integration Settings page).
Once the user billing period ends, the user subscription is put on hold. At the same time, an order will be created on the WooCommerce install of the main site of the network. That order can be easily accessed from the Subscription Management screen.
The user then receives an invoice in his email, with a link to perform the payment. That link will redirect him to the WooCommerce payment screen, where he or she will be able to select one of the available WooCommerce gateways.
Once the payment is received, the subscription is renewed, the payment is logged on WP Ultimo and the order is set to complete.

Important Notes

WP Ultimo: WooCommerce Integration requires WP Ultimo version 1.4.3 to work.
Default functionality of WP Ultimo still works with this integration form. For example, issuing refunds from the Subscription Management Screen will communicate with WooCommerce to issue the refund using the selected payment form.
WP Ultimo: WooCommerce Integration relies on WP Cron to work. This works very well most times, but if the site has low traffic then the cron is not prompted to check for scheduled events and the event is missed, which can cause execution delays.
While this plugin was tested repeatedly under various circumstances, this is a beta release. Please contact us if you run into any issues by sending us a note at support@wpultimo.com.

Release Notes – WP Ultimo 1.4.0: A step towards building the Ultimate Subscription-based Network Solution

Hi, everyone!

Version 1.4.0 is here and it represents a major step towards making WP Ultimo the all-in-one solution for building premium networks.

This version is all about the Sign-up Process.

It implements template overrides, a new API for adding steps and fields on the sign-up flow, a complete redesign of how the sign-up flow processes account creation, with two very handy functions, custom signup URL, and much more!

Sign-up Flow

Templates overrides

We realize the importance of making WP Ultimo as customizable as we can. Each and every one of our customers wants to provide a customized experience to their users. That being said, having dozens of premium services with the exact same sign-up page design (the WP Ultimo sign-up page) does little to offer that WOW feeling we all want to give potential clients.

In order to address this “lack of customization” problem, we implemented template overrides in WP Ultimo.

How does that work? It is simple. WP Ultimo now uses WordPress template hierarchy to selectively load view templates for its pages. It will first check your theme’s directory for template files and only if it does not find anything it will load the default templates shipped with it.

Don’t like that way the pricing tables look? Just copy the pricing-table.php from wp-ultimo/views/signup/pricing-table/pricing-table.php to your_active_theme_folder/wp-ultimo/signup/pricing-table, make some changes and voilá: WP Ultimo will load that file instead of the original one.

WP Ultimo using the default Pricing Table layout

We copied the views/signup directory inside the wp-ultimo plugin folder to a new directory inside our active theme (in this example, twentyseventeen) called wp-ultimo

Let’s edit the template just a little bit

Now WP Ultimo loads the template on the theme’s directory rather than loading the default one

WP Ultimo supports template overriding for all the templates inside wp-ultimo/views/signup and wp-ultimo/views/emails, so you can have total control over the sign-up process and how your emails look. Overriding of widgets inside the dashboard should be added soon!

Customized Sign-up page URL

You can also change the URL of the sign-up page to anything you want, from now on, replacing the old wp-signup.php.

Hide plan selection step for single-plan sites

Many premium networks offer a single pricing option. For those networks, it does not really make sense to have a plan selection step during checkout. Networks admins now have an option to skip the plan selection step altogether if they only have one plan in the platform.

Steps/Fields API and Customizer Form Builder

In order to provide even more flexibility, we completely redesigned the way WP Ultimo generates and displays its steps during sign-up. The API for custom fields was simplified and we now have two functions to handle sign-up extensibility: wu_add_signup_step() and wu_add_signup_field(). No more hooking into 3 different hooks as it used to be.

As a quick example, adding a new signup step to gather the client’s first and last name is as simple as the code snippet shown below:

/**
 * We need to hook as soon as we can, to make sure we 
 * modify the steps before they get used
 */
add_action('init', function() {

    /**
     * First, we add a new step. The ID of this step is customer-info
     * We also pass a order value of 33, that means that our custom step will sit between
     * the third (order 30) and forth (order 40) steps.
     */
	wu_add_signup_step('customer-info', 33, array(
		'name' => 'User Information',
	));

    /**
     * Now we add the fields
     * The first argument tells the API the step we want to add fields to, in our case, customer-info
     * The type argument tells which type of field we should render, we currently support
     * text, number, password, email, url, html, submit
     */
	wu_add_signup_field('customer-info', 'first_name', 10, array(
		'name'    => 'First Name',
		'tooltip' => "Tooltip text to give the user tips about the field (optional)",
		'type'    => 'text',
	));

	wu_add_signup_field('customer-info', 'last_name', 20, array(
		'name'    => 'Last Name',
		'tooltip' => "Tooltip text to give the user tips about the field (optional)",
		'type'    => 'text',
	));

    /**
     * Lastly, we add a submit button for that step
     */
	wu_add_signup_field('customer-info', 'submit', 100, array(
		'name'    => 'Go to next step',
		'type'    => 'submit',
	));

});

/**

* We need to hook as soon as we can, to make sure we

* modify the steps before they get used

add_action('init', function() {

/**

* First, we add a new step. The ID of this step is customer-info

* We also pass a order value of 33, that means that our custom step will sit between

* the third (order 30) and forth (order 40) steps.

wu_add_signup_step('customer-info', 33, array(

'name' => 'User Information',

));

/**

* Now we add the fields

* The first argument tells the API the step we want to add fields to, in our case, customer-info

* The type argument tells which type of field we should render, we currently support

* text, number, password, email, url, html, submit

wu_add_signup_field('customer-info', 'first_name', 10, array(

'name' => 'First Name',

'tooltip' => "Tooltip text to give the user tips about the field (optional)",

'type' => 'text',

));

wu_add_signup_field('customer-info', 'last_name', 20, array(

'name' => 'Last Name',

'tooltip' => "Tooltip text to give the user tips about the field (optional)",

'type' => 'text',

));

/**

* Lastly, we add a submit button for that step

wu_add_signup_field('customer-info', 'submit', 100, array(

'name' => 'Go to next step',

'type' => 'submit',

));

});

Saving and Retrieving Data

All the extra fields added to the sign-up flow get saved as default WordPress user meta data. That means that you don’t have to do anything else in order to save the contents of the extra fields you’ve added to the signup. It just works. This data can then be retrieved using standard WordPress functions like get_user_meta.

We also added a handy shortcode to display that information on the front-end: [wu_user_meta]. It takes a user_id argument (which you can leave blank as it defaults to the current site’s owner id) and meta_name, which describes the name of the meta info you want to retrieve. To get the user’s last name, for example, you would simply add a [wu_user_meta meta_name=”last_name”].

Another advantage of this approach is that WordPress already uses meta data to store major information about the user. If you create fields that match the specific keys used by WordPress, that information will get automatically updated. That means that in order to update the First and Last Name fields on the user profile’s page, you can just create two fields with the ids of first_name and last_name, like in the example above.

Customizer Support

Having a neat way of adding steps and fields with simple functions is helpful, but we would like to take this one step further. WordPress comes equipped with a powerful customization tool – the Customizer – and WP Ultimo should be able to take advantage of it by allowing network admins to add, rename and reorder steps and fields directly on the customizer with live preview support.

Version 1.4.0 starts to implement those functionalities with Step Renaming and Reordering. Everything else is in place and we should be able to release adding new steps and fields directly from the customizer in the next couple of versions, a few days from now. As you can see in the demo below, the Customizer picks up custom steps added via the functions described earlier.

Customizer Integration: Reordering and Renaming

Also, starting on version 1.4.0, all the styling options are mirrored on the customizer, meaning that you can now have instant feedback as you change colors and other elements.

This first version of our Customizer Support can be accessed via the button present on WP Ultimo Settings -> Styling.

Coupon Codes

Part of the coupon code handling was refactored in version 1.4.0. Network admins can now select between 3 different Coupon Code behaviors: disabled, coupon codes via URLs only (?coupon=CODE on the sign-up link) – where no field will be displayed on the sign-up form -, and allow coupon codes both via URL and via the sign-up field.ç

Copying the share link for the coupon code is much easier now and it can be done directly from the list table or on the Coupon edit’s page.

Clicking copies the link to the clipboard

Copying the Shareable Link directly from the edit page.

Important: There is a backwards-compatibility break in the coupon handling: URLs containing coupon codes are now yoursite.com/…/?coupon=CODEHERE and not yoursite.com/…/?coupon_code=CODEHERE, as it was in previous versions. If you have links with coupon codes somewhere you should update the URL.

Plain Emails

WP Ultimo now allows you to send emails on a plain email template. This is useful if you plan to use any third-party plugin for email template customization. And just to remember you, these email templates can be swapped using the new template overrides functionality we discussed above.

General Fixes

A number of small fixes were solved in version 1.4.0, including broken URL and paragraphs handlers on the Broadcast Emails. WP Ultimo now only displays broadcasts published after a user on the target group registered, preventing new users from being bombarded by all the previously published Broadcasts.

Under-the-hood improvements

We’ve compartmentalized the process of creating new accounts on WP Ultimo into two different stages: user creation and site creation. That change will allow us to add the option of letting clients create only users (with no associated sites, like WP Multisite normally allows them to) in the future. Logs on the system info page can also be deleted and downloaded now. Despite PHP inability to handle async processes, we managed to use a new technique to allow our screenshot scraper to work without taking your site down up to 80 templates at a time.

What’s next?

The priorities on our list are finishing up the customizer integration with full form-builder capabilities.

We run into some considerably large issues trying to implement single payments to our current gateway structure. That difficulty made it almost impossible to implement Extension Sales and Tax Settings (long waited features).

Our goal with the versions between 1.4.0 and 1.5.0 is to gradually rewrite those parts of the code (to ensure backwards compatibility), taking these new features into account.

That being said, we realize that we are well-beyond the promised date for the release of the Extension Sales feature on the Plugin and Theme Manager Add-on.

Due to that reason, if you bought the add-on solely because of that feature, in the hopes that it would arrive soon, just contact us via email and we will refund you on that add-on purchase even if more than 30 days have passed.

Complete Changelog – Version 1.4.0 – 08/08/2017

– Added: Option to copy Coupon’s shareable links on the All Plans and Edit Plan pages;
– Added: Templates overrriding for sign-up and emails;
– Added: Helper function to create users with subscriptions: wu_create_user();
– Added: Helper function to create a new WP Ultimo network site: wu_create_site();
– Added: Fields and Steps API to the Sign-up flow;
– Added: Helper function to add new sign-up steps: wu_add_signup_step();
– Added: Helper function to add new sign-up fields: wu_add_signup_field();
– Added: Deleting users and sites now removes the mappings associated with those sites;
– Added: Option on the Email Settings to allow plain emails to be sent;
– Added: Logs are now downloadable and delectable;
– Added: Option to hide the Plan Selection step if there is just one plan available on the platform;
– Added: Three different behaviors added to Coupon Code: disabled entirely, only via URL code or via URL code and Sign-up field;
– Added: New shortcode wu_user_meta to retrieve user meta information on the front-end. Useful for retrieving information collected during sign-up using custom fields;
– Improved: Shortcode wu_plan_link updated to work with the new Sign-up codebase;
– Improved: WP Ultimo now checks for empty user role options to rebuild them if needed;
– Improved: WP Ultimo now only displays broadcasts published after a user on the target group registered. This prevents new users from being bombarded by all the previously published Broadcasts;
– Improved: Better template selection field;
– Improved: Refactorization of the Screenshot Scraper: it now can handle up to ~80 without crashing;
– Fixed: WU_Colors being added more than once;
– Fixed: Coupon validation functions was not checking for post type, only for post titles;
– Fixed: Fixed some broken elements on the Coupon Codes list table;
– Fixed: Links breaking on Broadcasted emails;
– Fixed: Missing variable declarations inside template_list and pricing_table shortcodes;
– Fixed: Broadcast emails now supports multiple lines;

New Add-on: MailChimp Integration!

Now you can Integrate your WP Ultimo network to your MailChimp Account with simple. You can link certain plans to MailChimp Lists and automatically add subscribers to those lists on signup, plan change and user removal.

You can get WP Ultimo: MailChimp Integration with 15% OFF (only for the first 15 buyers).

Release Notes – WP Ultimo 1.3.0

Hi, everyone! Version 1.3.0 is finally ready! It brings general improvements all over the UI as well as under-the-hood performance boosts. It implements needed changes to upcoming add-ons (like the Plugin and Theme Manager), a new template list shortcode and full Multi-Network Support!

Changes in the Versioning number use

As you may have noticed, this version is being released under version number 1.3.0. We are doing that to address one major issue that popped up during this development cycle and that was the major factor why it took so long for us to release it. From now on, we will reserve minor version numbers (e.g 1.x.0) for any release containing new features and keep patch version numbers (1.1.x) for – as the name suggests – patches. Only minor releases will get a Release Note post. Patches will be released as bugs are reported and fixed. That will allow us to quickly deploy important patches to all users without stopping the development of new features.

With that in mind, is time to dig in the new features and improvements.

Template List Shortcode

You can now use the shortcode [wu_templates_list] to display the templates on the front-end of your site. It can take the show_filters (with 1 for true or 0 for false).

Multi-Network Support

WP Ultimo now offers full compatibility with Multi-network support, the next level of multi-site abstraction. Each network will have separate tables for subscriptions, transactions, and site relationships despite sharing a single users table. We recommend that you use https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-multi-network/ plugin to enable multi-network on your install.

Rich Text Content Editor on Text Fields

Some WP Ultimo settings that used to be available as simple text area fields now support a full-fledged rich-text editor. Some examples include the email content editor fields, the Pricing Table extra lines editor on the plan pages. Issues some users were having saving the data on those fields were also resolved, so no slashes are being added to the content after saving and links are working.

Add-ons, Multiple Accounts (beta) and extensibility hooks

This version also supports the direct install of free add-ons. We released our Multiple Accounts (beta) add-on, and it can be installed now directly from the add-ons page now with version 1.3.0. Multiple Accounts bypass the WordPress email address check on certain plugins’ registration forms (we only support WooCommerce in this beta version) to allow users on the network to create a new account on a subsite store or vice-versa (an user that created an account on a WooCommerce subsite store would be able to signup on your Ultimo network without getting an “email already taken error message”). We’ll add more plugins to the supported list as we move on.

New Add-on on the Add-ons Page. It is free!

Multiple Accounts Column shows the number of accounts using that email Address. They are all individual, separate accounts. The system picks the right one depending on the site it was registered.

Plugin and Theme Manager: Extension Sales

We had (and are still having =/) some technical issues implementing the extension sales functionality for the Plugin and Theme Manager add-on. We are making progress, tough, and plan to release it in the next days (we are implementing the final transactions integration and testing). Keep an eye on the Add-ons Page of WP Ultimo (we’ll probably send an email out as well =D).

Complete Changelog – Version 1.3.0 – 03/07/2017

– Fixed: Small issues with the template selection screen;
– Fixed: Email content editor saving URLs in a weird way, adding slashes;
– Fixed: Site Template description not being saved on the “Edit Template Info” screen;
– Fixed: Variable Dump including sensitive information;
– Fixed: Plan re-ordering not working on different languages;
– Fixed: WP Ultimo icon on multi-network;
– Fixed: Terms of Service field adding extra “\” after quotes;
– Fixed: Error on creating new sites from the admin panel with a plan and template;
– Improved: Uploads Quota can now be set as hidden on the plan pricing tables;
– Improved: Prefixed SweetAlert to avoid conflicts with other plugins;
– Improved: Replaced the content field for email templates with WP Editor;
– Improved: Added an ID to each plan HTML markup on the pricing tables;
– Improved: Added an extra check to the domain mapping (now called System) step on the Setup Wizard, to check if the right version of sunrise.php was loaded;
– Improved: Added an extra check to the System step on the Setup Wizard to make sure the logs directory exists and is writable;
– Improved: The features list field now uses a WP Editor widget, to allow the addition of bold text, italic, and links without editing HTML code, the same applies to the Broadcast message field;
– Improved: Add-ons page now handles installs for free add-ons;
– Improved: Duplicator now copies extra tables as well;
– Improved: Added hooks for adding extra elements to the Advanced Options on the edit plan and coupon pages;
– Added: wu_templates_list Shortcode added to display all the available templates on the front-end;
– Added: Warning message on the System Info tab if the logs directory is not properly configured to be writable;
– Added: Filters to change the labels and tooltip texts on the signup fields;
– Added: Option to enable or disable copying media files from the template sites;
– Added: Support to Multi-Network Environment (beta);
– Added: Readded the SSO script for single sign-on login;
– Added: Widget for Forum Discussions on the Network Admin;

Release Notes – WP Ultimo 1.2.1

Hi, everyone. Here are the release notes for version 1.2.1. It addresses some flaws on our previous release and implements some cool new features. Let’s see what’s new:

Subscription Filtering

We hope that your network grows and grows and as that happen, the number of subscribers on your service will reach large numbers, making it extremely difficult to find a specific subscription on the current version. Version 1.2.1 addresses that by adding a simple but elegant search input on the Subscriptions page. All the searching is done via ajax, so no page redirects needed!

General Improvements

We revised the whole domain mapping functionality, caching relevant things in order to improve performance. The permissions system was revised to prevent one user that has a subscription from being able to access the Account page of another site he or she was invited to. The site template thumbnail scraper was optimized and is now 50% faster than the previous versions. The bug on the “display on the pricing tables” option in the plan edit page was also fixed.

Improvements and changes to the Signup Flow

Template Filtering

The template selection filter now fully supports responsive design, turning into a select box on resolutions under 780px.

Payment Step

After the release of the last version, we discovered that WordPress has some consistency issues with session handling across different environments. That made impossible for us to keep the payment step as a feature since WP Ultimo would try to charge a unlogged user, and there was no way of knowing if the session would be kept and therefore if the gateway redirect would be successful or not.

The “Payment Integration Needed” screen, however, was redesigned to have a look and feel similar to the rest of the signup flow, so that transition now seems much more natural. This new design is being applied to all error screens of WordPress as well.

Terms of Use

The Terms of Use of your site also makes use of this new design, offering a much better reading experience to your user compared to the white screen with zero formatting used before. You can also edit your Terms using a full-fledged WordPress text editor.

Rollbacks

Other than the removal of the payment step, as mentioned before, we also had to remove SSO from this version due to unsolved issues. SSO is the part of Domain Mapping that handles cross-domain logins, meaning it is responsible for keeping you logged if you go from networkdomain.com to a mappeddomain.org, on your network. We are still working on a solution for this, but as of now, version 1.2.1 does not contain SSO, so if you go from the network domain to a mapped domain, you might be asked to log in again.

Next Steps

As we discussed on the previous release, we are now going to focus on developing new gateway integrations, add-ons and etc. Our top priority is delivering on Plugin and Theme sales on our WP Ultimo: Plugin and Theme Manager, but we will also start to work on other time-consuming integrations such as a Pro Sites Migrator and a WooCommerce integration.

We also changed the design of our documentation site and created a forum for the growing community that is being built around WP Ultimo. Visit our “Say Hello” post and tell us a bit about yourself!

Complete Changelog – Version 1.2.1 – 26/05/2017

– Fixed: Template categories sometimes appearing two times;
– Fixed: Not being able to remove items from pricing tables for plans;
– Fixed: Pagination on Subscriptions page take status into consideration now;
– Fixed: Weird redirects when enabling domain mapping;
– Fixed: Mercator error message being displayed even when the enable domain mapping option was deactivated;
– Fixed: WordPress Overwrite options on WP Ultimo Settings – Network not saving properly;
– Fixed: Prefixed the bootstrap classes we use;
– Fixed: Problem with template selection with resolutions under 780px and console messages;
– Fixed: Removed the payment step due to login inconsistency across different environment;
– Improved: Added a new style to the WP Error page to make it more consistent with the rest of the plugin, including the “Payment Required Needed”;
– Improved: Switched screenshot scraper from file_get_contents to cURL for a 50% performance improvement;
– Improved: Added a more robust capabilities system to limit access to the Account page;
– Improved: Custom domain meta box now gives an error if the user tries to input a domain already being used in the network;
– Added: Shortcode wu_plan_link added to be used in custom pricing tables, use with plan_id and plan_freq;
– Added: Template selector turns into a select-box on resolutions under 780px;
– Added: Admins can search subscriptions on the subscriptions List Table – with ajax;
– Added: Terms of Service now can be set using a full-fledged editor, with prettier exhibition on the front-end;
– Issues: Removed SSO temporarily in order to prevent bugs from redirect loops until we can find a solution to the issues we are having with it.

Release Notes – WP Ultimo 1.2.0 – Domain Mapping Fixes, Manual Gateway, Template Filtering and more!

TD;DR Version: We are releasing WP Ultimo 1.2.0. This is a huge release, and it contains a Gateway to handle Manual Payments (beta), PDF invoicing, fixes and added consistency to Domain Mapping handling, the ability to add Subscriptions from the panel, support to Multiple Sites per user, Template Categorization and Filtering on the Signup Flow, Payment Integration as a Signup Step, and more! The full changelog can be found on the bottom of the post.

Hi, everyone. Due to the size and enormous technical challenges we faced with 1.2.0, it took a bit longer than expected to release this version, but here it is. It solves issues some of you were having with Domain Mapping and implements a list of long-requested features. Without further ado, let’s see what 1.2.0 has to offer.

Domain Mapping and SSL (HTTPS)

As we promise in our last release, we focused this last batch of improvements on getting Domain Mapping to consistently work across different configurations and setups. It solves CORS issues users were experiencing among others. That involved woking on our own redirector and adding a few options to our Settings panel. Here’s a complete overview of the options new and old:

Enable Domain Mapping & Enable Custom Domains:

We decoupled the domain mapping from custom domains. Now the admin can enable domain mapping but disable custom domain from their clients if he or she want to map domains manually on the Network Admin Panel.

Force Admin Redirect

This option gives the admin 3 options for handling redirects to the admin panel when a site has a mapped domain active. It can behave normally, allowing the panel to be accessed both via the mapped domain or the network domain; it can be set to force access through the mapped domain (which can cause issues if a custom domain has a misconfigured DNS and should be used with caution), and it can be set to force access through the network domain instead, redirecting calls to mapped-domain.com/wp-admin to your-network/your-clients-site/wp-admin (or the equivalent if you have a subdomain network.

Force HTTPs for the Admin Panel

This option sets the FORCE_ADMIN_SSL constant to true, which is used by WordPress to force access using https. We choose to keep WP Ultimo’s footprint in SSL handling as small as possible, to give network admins the ability to use third-party plugins they already know and love. In our tests, we used Really Simple SSL on the main site, combined with this option enabled and the network behaved as expected, redirecting access to the admin with https, keeping subsites on http.

Allow Page Unmapping & Force HTTPs on Unmapped Pages

This option was also a feature requested by many users. It allows your clients to unmap certain pages, so they can use the original network URL for those pages. This is particularly useful if a subsite has a store or a generic checkout page that requires SSL. If that user unmaps that page, and the option Force HTTPs on Unmapped Pages is also enabled, that page will be redirected to the network domain version (ignoring the mapping), using the SSL certificate for the network (useful on subdirectory installs where the network certificate covers the whole network, or with subdomain installs with wildcard certificates).

PS.: By default, only posts and pages have the unmap meta-box, but that can be changed using the filter wu_post_types_unmap.

Site Options: Force HTTPs

If for some reason you have one particular site on your network that needs to be accessed using https, you can go to that site’s settings page and enable that option under the WP Ultimo Settings, as displayed on the image below.

PS.: We tried our best to test it in a vast majority of environments, including servers running Apache and Nginx. Please contact us if you run into any issue. Make sure your server engine does not have a wildcard 302 redirect to your main domain.

Invoices

WP Ultimo 1.2.0 also allows admins to send PDF invoices with payment receipt emails. The invoice is sent marked as paid when an automatic gateway sends a webhook telling the system a payment was received (like Stripe and PayPal). This feature can be enabled and disabled on the Settings Panel.

Manual Payments Gateway (beta)

Our new version also implements the long waited Manual Payments gateway, building off the invoices system. The flow is fairly simple and requires minimal effort from the admin. Here’s how it works.

1. When a user that selected manual payments reach the end of its subscription time, his subscription will be marked as ‘On Hold’ for the period you select on the Manual Gateway options

2. A pending payment transaction will be added to his Billing History

3. An invoice will be sent to his email address, with instructions to pay.

4. Once you confirm the payment, you can mark the pending payment as paid and the subscription will be renewed automatically.

This is a beta feature and we would love to hear what you have to say about the flow. Feel free to send suggestions for improvements.

Templates Categories and Filtering

Some networks can have dozens of pre-built templates for their clients do choose. Navigating that ton of options can lead to a bad experience for the user during the signup flow. To address that issue, version 1.2.0 includes Template Categories and Filtering on the signup flow, with a super easy to use UI. Changing a template’s thumbnail is now much more intuitive as well, with all those options compacted in a single form.

Multiple Sites per Client

Our latest version also allows you to give your clients the ability to create new sites under the same account. The new site creation already lets them choose from templates if that option is enabled. You can limit the number of sites on each plan as well.

PS.: This does not support multiple accounts creation, neither does it allow for users registered on subsites (like someone that created an account on a subsite WooCommerce store, for example) to register sites on the network. We are working on a free add-on that addresses that issue, allowing multiple accounts to be created with a single email address. We believe this solution is more elegant since the client won’t even notice that that subsite was part of the network in the first place.

Hiding Plans from the Pricing Tables

Plans can now be hidden from the pricing tables. Useful if you want to create exclusive plans for a small subset of your clients.

Subscriptions: Add and Remove with ease!

Network admins now can add and remove subscriptions from the panel. This is useful for moving pre-existing users to WP Ultimo.

Signup Flow

Now, when no trial is available, the payment screen is added as a Signup step; Network Admins can also select a different role for the users created (the default continues to be administrator).

Next Steps: More Add-ons, Payment Gateways and building a Community

We’ve been centralizing our communications and reports on our roadmap board on Trello, but that’s not optimal. With that in mind, we are building a community forum to be released in the next weeks to allow users to interact, help each other, and report issues more efficiently. We are also aware that our Documentation site is very lacking, so that is getting rebuilt as well.

Complete Changelog – Version 1.2.0 – 12/05/2017

– Fixed: Small typos on the settings page and other places;
– Fixed: Some string were missing i18n on the subscription management screen;
– Improved: Add-ons page now supports filtering as well;
– Improved: Security on issuing refunds;
– Added: Support for zero decimal currencies in Stripe;
– Added: Site Template Categories with filtering on the Signup, and a more consistent UI for editing site templates on the backend;
– Added: Option to hide plans from the pricing tables;
– Added: 100% OFF coupon codes with unlimited cycles don’t ask for payment integration any longer;
– Added: Users can now add new sites from their panels, and admins can limit the number of sites on each plan.
– Added: Sites list added to the Subscription Management (admin) and My Account (user) Pages;
– Added: Custom capability ‘manage_wu_account’ created to control access to the Account page;
– Added: Network Admins can now set a different role for the users created via the signup process (defaults to admin);
– Added: Network Admins can now create subscriptions for users created outside of the signup flow (useful for migrating existing users);
– Added: Network Admins can now remove subscriptions from the Subscriptions list;
– Added: Payment is now a Signup Step when there is no trial;
– Added: Subscription is no longer deleted when a site is;
– Added: Option to send invoices when a payment is received from the gateways;
– Added: Manual Payments Gateway (beta);
– Removed: Old UI on site settings to add thumbnail;

Release Notes – WP Ultimo Version 1.1.5 – New Add-on: Plugin and Theme Manager

Hello, everyone! Here’s what’s new on version 1.1.5. This version addresses some of the issues reported by users and implements Broadcast Messages! We are also releasing a new Add-on: Plugin and Theme Manager!

Our next release (Version 1.1.6) will be devoted to giving consistency to domain mapping and SSL handling as well as allowing users to create multiple sites under their subscription (with a feature to limit the number of sites per plan).

General Improvements

We fixed a number of small issues in this release, including formatting values for Stripe, some errors while creating sites from the admin panel etc. Also, our settings API can handle the addition of new settings with defaults now. The signup flow now offers a back button if users want to go back to a previous step.

Admins now also have the option to disable monthly billing if they wish to do so. There is also a new option on the settings panel that allows admins to highlight different billing periods by default, so the pricing tables will be displayed with yearly as its default state, for example.

Broadcast Messages

The major feature contained in this release is the implementation of global admin messages. On the network panel, the WP Ultimo menu has a new submenu item called Broadcast. In that screen, you will be able to add custom admin notices to your clients’ admin panels, as well as send them emails, all with powerful targeting options.

A simple interface with powerful targeting

The users sees it right in their admin panel

Add-on Released: Plugin and Theme Manager

WP Ultimo: Plugin and Theme Manager is a powerful tool to give you full control over the way your network users see and interact with the plugin and theme options on your network.

This add-on serves three purposes:

It lets you completely change the metadata of both plugins and themes. That includes name, description, author name, and even thumbnails! It also has the added bonus of letting you categorize plugins and themes, to allow your users to easily sort them out.
It gives you the option to replace the old, boring plugins page with a new themes-like page with sorting by categories.
(To be implemented in the next releases) The ability to offer some plugins and themes as paid add-ons to your clients’ site.

A new option to Edit the plugin/theme information is added to the action links.

You can change all the information to something you like.

And displayed to the user on their plugins or themes page.

Global Plugin Settings on WP Ultimo -> Settings -> Add-ons tab

Just to keep with the tradition, the add-on can be purchased on Gumroad as well, and we are giving a 15% OFF discount to the first 15 buyers.

Buy it first and get 15% OFF

IMPORTANT: If you were an early adopter, you need not buy this add-on. It will be available for direct installation on your WP Ultimo -> Add-ons page, in your admin panel.

Complete Changelog

Version 1.1.5 – 24/04/2017
– Fixed: Remote calls for activation API returning non-numerical values;
– Fixed: Formatting errors on Subscription values Gateways;
– Fixed: Small issues with resetting passwords;
– Fixed: Network active plugins do not show up on the subsites plugins page anymore;
– Fixed: Some small issues when creating sites from the panel using a plan;
– Improved: Added the all_plugins filter to the Plans advanced settings;
– Improved: Settings API now let us pass default values to the get_setting function;
– Improved: Settings API now allows add-ons to save their defaults on plugin activation;
– Improved: Core settings of WP Ultimo are now displayed on the System Info page as well;
– Improved: Image fields in the Settings now supports the removal of a previously uploaded image;
– Improved: WP Ultimo now saves the defaults when new options are added to it;
– Added: Link to go back to previous steps added to sign up flow;
– Added: Admins can now disable monthly billing if they wish to do so;
– Added: Admins can highlight a different billing frequency by default (eg. You have monthly, quarterly and yearly billing enabled, but you want the yearly to be highlighted by default);
– Added: Broadcast system: admins can now post admin notices to sites network-wide, targeting by plan and user; they can also send emails using the same targeting system;

Release Notes – WP Ultimo Version 1.1.4

Hello, everyone! Here’s what’s new on version 1.1.4. This version is not a major one, containing small but necessary changes to allow us to keep moving forward, especially with releasing new add-ons.

We are also going to adopt a policy of constant – probably weekly – updates. This short feedback loop will allow us to expand the feature set of WP Ultimo while making sure that we minimize the chances of failure associated with big releases.

Add-ons page and activation system

In previous versions, part of the activation process was done in the plugin itself. That process is no longer a good approach since we are selling WP Ultimo in different sites now, so we need to be able to quickly change the way license codes get validated, and it is impractical to release a new plugin version everytime that happens. As a result, we moved the whole activation process to our update server. Every call you local copy makes uses your license key as a password. That way we can check if you have a valid license.

Our add-ons page now makes use of this, getting the list of available add-ons remotely.

Golden Tickets

During our pre-launch campaign, we promised our early supporters that they would get free access to all of our to-be-released add-ons. Now the add-ons page let those users remotely install add-ons directly from the admin panel.

First Add-on Released: AffiliateWP Integration

We are also releasing the first add-on: AffiliateWP Integration. It will compute referrals on your main site and add the correct value to the referrer commission. The payment is kept as pending until WP Ultimo receives the confirmation of the payment from the selected gateway.Future improvements will include removal of the commission value in case of refunds and a lot more.

The add-on can be purchased on Gumroad as well, and we are giving a 15% OFF discount to the first 15 buyers.

Buy it first and get 15% OFF

IMPORTANT: If you were an early adopter, you need not buy this add-on. It will be available for direct installation on your WP Ultimo -> Add-ons page, in your admin panel.

Complete Changelog

Version 1.1.4 – 07/04/2017
– Fixed: Subscriptions with price set to zero being locked anyways;
– Fixed: Small compatibility issue with Live Composer Page Builder;
– Improved: Activation now only checks the license code remotely, not locally;
– Improved: Pricing tables now display an error message for logged users before redirecting them back to the home page;
– Added: Partial Vietnamese Translation (Thanks to Richard Tuan);
– Added: Now users can overwrite the list of allowed themes by enabling themes for each site individually;
– Added: Settings and Documentation links added to the plugins table on the network admin;
– Added: Add-on page now let users buy add-ons, also let those with pre-launch licenses install all available add-ons directly from the admin;

Release Notes – WP Ultimo Version 1.1.3

Hi, everyone. Here’s the release notes for version 1.1.3. We did quite a lot of work on this version and we now have a solid base to start the release schedule of our add-ons. This version addresses some major issues users were having. The complete changelog can be found on the bottom of the page.

New Features

Let’s dive in what’s new in this version.

Shortcuts to add and remove time from a Subscription

Since version 1.1.0, change a subscription’s active until parameter is as easy as it could be. However, you would still need to add or remove a billing cycle by using the calendar selector on the field.

Now you’ll have two helper buttons that let you add or remove a billing cycle with just one click (it will add 1 month to monthly subscriptions, 3 months for quarterly subscriptions and 12 months for a yearly subscription), with no need to refresh the page or even to click the save button! Here’s a GIF demonstrating the feature:

Redirecting after Sign-up

WP Ultimo now offers a handy filter to allow you to change the redirect URL after your client completes the sing-up process. The default behavior is to send the newly created user to his admin panel dashboard, but you can change it now to any page you want. We’ve put together a simple tutorial demonstrating how to use that filter.

Removing Post Types from the Pricing Tables

Some WordPress sites have tons of Custom Post Types installed. WP Ultimo used to display all of them in the pricing tables, with their respective limits. Now it is possible to select which post types to display in each plan pricing table, in the Pricing Table Tab of the Plan Edit page.

System Info Page

In order to facilitate support requests, we added a simple system info page to WP Ultimo. It generates a text-area with all the relevant information about your server and WordPress install, allowing our support team to get a better view of what may be the causes of a particular issue. When you run into an issue, remember to send your system info page results together with your support email. It helps a lot!

Fixes

This version also contains a number of important bugfixes. Despite our latest release, we discovered that some users were still having issues creating new sites from the panel. That is now fixed; PHP notices throughout the plugin were fixed as well;

Delete links all over the WordPress admin were being blocked. That was also fixed in this version; WP Ultimo also validates input on the custom domain widget now.

Complete Changelog

Version 1.1.3
– Fixed: Adding sites from the admin panel not working;
– Fixed: JQuery UI Styles using HTTPS – Thanks, Richard;
– Fixed: Adding new users throwing a fatal because of a redirect in the PayPal gateway not being checked;
– Fixed: Ajax tables throwing order and orderby undefined indexes notice;
– Fixed: Delete links not clickable throughout the WordPress admin;
– Fixed: Validating URL that users enter as custom domain;
– Improved: Subscriptions now get deleted after the user is deleted;
– Improved: Removing unnecessary files;
– Improved: The template selection list now displays the site name, not its path (which did not work for subdomain installs);
– Added: Filter to change the redirect URL after login (tutorial: https://docs.wpultimo.com/docs/changing-the-redirect-url-after-sign-up/);
– Added: Admins now have the option to hide specific post types from the pricing tables;
– Added: The network IP setting now displays the apparent IP address of the network by default;
– Added: Option to remove invalid subscriptions (subscriptions without user);
– Added: System Info page, to allow for faster debug and troubleshooting with support requests;
– Added: Shortcut buttons to extend and remove time from a subscription, via ajax;

Release Notes – WP Ultimo Version 1.1.2

Hello, everyone. Today we are releasing version 1.1.2 of WP Ultimo, containing some cool new features and important patches. A complete changelog can be found at the bottom of the post. Here are some of the changes.

Crucial Fixes

Version 1.1.2 includes some crucial patches of issues reported by our users. If you deactivated WP Ultimo, for example, and tried to reactivated it, the plugin would try to recreate the custom database tables it needs to function, even though they existed already. We now check for the existence of the tables before trying to create them.

Another issue that was consistently reported by users was that the subscriptions were getting an extra active day after sign-up, preventing users from seeing the payment screen right after the last step of the registration form. That issue is now resolved.

Bugs occurring during site creation on the admin panel, as well as in the process of upgrading accounts were also fixed. Free subscriptions are no longer displayed as if they were inactive. Meta-box toggles on plugin pages are now working and being saved.

Improvements

Gateways now offer hooks when they receive notification of successful or failed payments and refunds. This was necessary to implement our integration with AffiliateWP, that is going to be release soon as an add-on. Minor under-the-hood improvements were also added to increase performance.

PayPal Subscription Button

WP Ultimo now offers a PayPal subscription button as an alternative to the use of their API. It only requires your PayPal email to work.

It is important to notice, however, that you should only use this option if you need support to dynamic IPNs. That is the case if you have multiple sites using the same PayPal account (which means that you would not be able to add our notification URL to your IPN settings). This option generates and sends the IPN as a part of the request.

There are some limitations, though. PayPal Subscription Button does not support coupon codes. If you want to use coupon codes, use the default PayPal gateway option. A message will be displayed to your users about this limitation, in their Accounts panel, if you use this option.

You can select which option to use by marking the option PayPal Subscription Button, right after the rest of the PayPal settings in the Payment Gateways tab on WP Ultimo Settings page.

Changelog

Version 1.1.2
– Fixed: Prevented the creation of tables on activation when they already exist;
– Added: Hooks on the gateway payment notifications to allow integrations;
– Fixed: Subscription creation adding an extra day to the active_until parameter of a subscription;
– Added: Manage Subscriptions link to the topbar WP Ultimo Menu;
– Fixed: Toggle of metaboxes in our admin pages now work properly;
– Fixed: Plan upgrade not working when upgrading from a free plan;
– Fixed: Language files not being loaded;
– Fixed: Free subscription being displayed as inactive in the subscription panel;
– Fixed: Small spelling errors;
– Added: Partial translation to Brazilian Portuguese (Signup Flow only);
– Improvement: Requirements engine in our Settings API now supports multiple requirements;
– Fixed: Some issues with the creation of sites from the admin panel;
– Added: PayPal Subscription button added as an option on the PayPal Gateway;