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AlexJS
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Hi,
just realize some weird behavior of the 'List category posts' widget. It work perfectly fine when I do not filter (positive) the categories via the Membership Pro plugin. If I do I get back all of what the filter allows instead of only the category defined in the widget.
As 'List category posts' is a heavily used up-to-date plugin I would suggest we figure this out and fix it :)
I use this to let visitors only see the FAQ + public category of my blog, which makes a lot of sense. But when some random public post shows up in the FAQ, then it is kind a bummer as the whole user experience is all of a sudden negative instead of positive.
I use the widget to list the FAQ posts next to the contact form. Clever ha ;) but only when it lists the actual FAQ posts.
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Hey Alex!
Sorry you are having trouble with this, however it's hard for us to always account for 3rd party plugins. Have you tried any of ours to see if it will help?
I will install and see what I can find about your plugin though, as I know we don't have a suitable replacement for it :)
Just to clarify! Do you mean to say you cannot get the widget to filter per the membership level? As in you would like member A to only see FAQ posts and Member B to see none?
Hi Kimberly,
thanks a lot for the reply and that you look into it.
Just to clarify! Do you mean to say you cannot get the widget to filter per the membership level? As in you would like member A to only see FAQ posts and Member B to see none?
No, I am saying that the plugin is not able to identify the correct posts of a category when Membership Pro > Access Levels > Main rules/Categories is part of the ruleset defining what the user looking at the site can access.
When I tell the 'List category posts' widget to show posts of the category FAQ (only FAQ) and tell Mem.Pro. that a visitor can access posts of the categories 'faq' and 'test' ...
... then the 'List category posts' widget will show post of both categries ('faq' AND 'test') to a visitor but will work correctly for members (as in that case the Mem.Pro. ruleset does not cover post categories.
For me this looks a bit like a Mem.Pro. bug as this is the plugin that seem to confuse the widget only when it checks if access is granted to certain categories.
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.. then the 'List category posts' widget will show post of both categries ('faq' AND 'test') to a visitor but will work correctly for members (as in that case the Mem.Pro. ruleset does not cover post categories.
This is where I lose you... Are you expecting the widget to show all the categories to members and only those selected in the Access levels to visitors?
This is a third party plugin, not meant to integrate with membership and the plugin will only filter contents via membership subscription level, it will not filter what is shown to members in other widgets.
For me this looks a bit like a Mem.Pro. bug
I'm sorry but I must disagree as a bug would imply there is something wrong with the plugin, and the plugin is simply not designed to do what you are expecting with this widget.
The Membership plugin is not supposed to do anything here BUT it does, it makes the 'List category posts' widget to misbehave. So it is the cause of the misbehavior.
For me it looks like the MemPro plugin seems to play the man in the middle between the widget asking for FAQ posts and the answer this widget is getting.
This makes sense as it controls access to the post BUT THEN IT SEEMS TO MANIPULATE THE ANSWER as the answer does not fit to the widget request. The widget gets all post the user can access instead of just the FAQ posts the widget asked for.
As mentioned the widget works perfectly fine when the MemPro Plugin is not involved - meaning MemPro is installed and active but the user can access all posts and categories, so it will not check the widgets post request. For me this is proof enough to search the problem on the MemPro plugin side.
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I will see if the developer can comment on what is happening here :)
Barry: when the member activates Membership, it causes his category list posts widget to misbehave. Instead of displaying as per the widget settings it displays as per the Access level for the member viewing it.
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Can you pop up some screenshots showing what you are seeing? I've read through but i'm not understanding completely what you mean on some of the posts.
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Hey Alex!
Due to heavy workloads and differing timezones, support from developers is not always as quick as it is from the support staff here.
We greatly appreciate your patience here and I can assure you that Barry is looking into your issue. He likes to present a solution when he sees an issue, so it may take a bit longer if he is working on a fix or investigating the cause.
Hey Kimberly,
I am still patient but looking at the effort I invested to describe the problem I am not sure if this will go for much longer. What is our status here?
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Hello Alex, I am sorry for the delay here. It's been brought to my attention that Barry is not available at the moment, I believe he was called away on something urgent.
I am still patient but looking at the effort I invested to describe the problem I am not sure if this will go for much longer. What is our status here?
I appreciate your patience and effort put into explaining the issue. However, the fact remains that you are asking us to support an issue with a widget that is not WPMU DEV native nor is it WordPress native. You are asking for third party support and I am, against our normal practices, asking for help from the developer on it.
I will see if we can get someone else in that can help us in Barry's absence.
its not worth the time nor the effort to keept this going. Let me tell you that the attitude here is really disappointing. You are basically telling me that WPMUdev does not care if its plugins cause problems on any other third party plugin. This would mean I can only use WPMUdev plugins with plain wordpress stuff or I am most likely doomed at one point.
So you try to create a closed system to lock the user in and that is even more disappointing.
The case would be different if someone could it explain to me why the problem most likely is on the side of the other plugin. But that seems not be the case.
NEXT time do not waste my time asking for a lot of details when you do not feel committed to fix the problem!
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Alex I think you are misunderstanding my intention of that statement. It was not to imply that we do not care about you or your problem.
I was unaware that the developer had been called away for an urgent personal matter until today.
I was only hoping to insinuate that it would take a bit longer than a normal ticket as of the nature of the issue. We do not have nor did we develop the code to the widget in question so that would be requiring a wait on the developer to download inspect and fix (if he could) the issue. I was under the impression that was reason for the wait. But it appears I was wrong.
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Hi Alex, I've reviewed this whole issue, and yes it appears to be a conflict with a third-party plugin. It is super hard to support other peoples plugins, and don't make a practice of it.
In this case I've looked over the code of that plugin, and it appears that the plugin calls it's own custom get_posts() loop. The membership plugin has filters in it to filter WPs WP_query method, thats how it applied the rules to filter out posts and pages from members who are not supposed to have it.
In this case though, it appears to be filtering that plugins query (as it should), but is somehow altering or dropping the 'tax_query' argument that your plugin creates. So not being hugely familiar with the Membership plugin code, it may be possible to alter that code to preserve the 'tax_query', we'll have to see. It's possible that Membership does this because of limitations in WP_Query and that's the only way to protect posts.
Either way you hopefully can realize how complex this is. I'm going to leave it with Barry our main developer for Membership to look at. He should be back next week. Thank you for your patience!
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Greetings Alex,
It appears this particular topic is now resolved/closed, if you need any further assistance please let us know.
If it wasn't resolved, or you have any more questions related to this thread, please feel free to post them below including any new symptoms or errors and tick the 'Mark as Not Resolved (re-open)' box below the post area (or else we'll miss it!)
Responses (23)
Member (joined July 2012) Likes (0)
I use this to let visitors only see the FAQ + public category of my blog, which makes a lot of sense. But when some random public post shows up in the FAQ, then it is kind a bummer as the whole user experience is all of a sudden negative instead of positive.
I use the widget to list the FAQ posts next to the contact form. Clever ha ;) but only when it lists the actual FAQ posts.
People Person (joined February 2012) Likes (0)
Hey Alex!
Sorry you are having trouble with this, however it's hard for us to always account for 3rd party plugins. Have you tried any of ours to see if it will help?
If your FAQ is a custom post type:
http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/recent-custom-posts-type-widget/
or if you'd like to try a tag feed:
http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/tag-feed/
I will install and see what I can find about your plugin though, as I know we don't have a suitable replacement for it :)
Just to clarify! Do you mean to say you cannot get the widget to filter per the membership level? As in you would like member A to only see FAQ posts and Member B to see none?
Best,
Kimberly
Member (joined July 2012) Likes (0)
Hi Kimberly,
thanks a lot for the reply and that you look into it.
No, I am saying that the plugin is not able to identify the correct posts of a category when Membership Pro > Access Levels > Main rules/Categories is part of the ruleset defining what the user looking at the site can access.
When I tell the 'List category posts' widget to show posts of the category FAQ (only FAQ) and tell Mem.Pro. that a visitor can access posts of the categories 'faq' and 'test' ...
... then the 'List category posts' widget will show post of both categries ('faq' AND 'test') to a visitor but will work correctly for members (as in that case the Mem.Pro. ruleset does not cover post categories.
For me this looks a bit like a Mem.Pro. bug as this is the plugin that seem to confuse the widget only when it checks if access is granted to certain categories.
People Person (joined February 2012) Likes (0)
This is where I lose you... Are you expecting the widget to show all the categories to members and only those selected in the Access levels to visitors?
This is a third party plugin, not meant to integrate with membership and the plugin will only filter contents via membership subscription level, it will not filter what is shown to members in other widgets.
I'm sorry but I must disagree as a bug would imply there is something wrong with the plugin, and the plugin is simply not designed to do what you are expecting with this widget.Member (joined July 2012) Likes (0)
Member (joined July 2012) Likes (0)
The Membership plugin is not supposed to do anything here BUT it does, it makes the 'List category posts' widget to misbehave. So it is the cause of the misbehavior.
Member (joined July 2012) Likes (0)
For me it looks like the MemPro plugin seems to play the man in the middle between the widget asking for FAQ posts and the answer this widget is getting.
This makes sense as it controls access to the post BUT THEN IT SEEMS TO MANIPULATE THE ANSWER as the answer does not fit to the widget request. The widget gets all post the user can access instead of just the FAQ posts the widget asked for.
Hope we are now on the same page. Cheers, Alex
Member (joined July 2012) Likes (0)
As mentioned the widget works perfectly fine when the MemPro Plugin is not involved - meaning MemPro is installed and active but the user can access all posts and categories, so it will not check the widgets post request. For me this is proof enough to search the problem on the MemPro plugin side.
Member (joined July 2012) Likes (0)
Ok, I posted this problem also on the other plugins support forum on wordpress.org
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-list-category-posts-widge-problem-category-filter-does-not-work-sometimes?replies=1#post-3050987
People Person (joined February 2012) Likes (0)
I will see if the developer can comment on what is happening here :)
Barry: when the member activates Membership, it causes his category list posts widget to misbehave. Instead of displaying as per the widget settings it displays as per the Access level for the member viewing it.
Developer (joined June 2008) Likes (0)
Can you pop up some screenshots showing what you are seeing? I've read through but i'm not understanding completely what you mean on some of the posts.
Member (joined July 2012) Likes (0)
Please, at least tell me that you now understand the problem ...
Cheers, Alex
Member (joined July 2012) Likes (0)
Hi, are you guys still working on this?
People Person (joined February 2012) Likes (0)
Hey Alex!
Due to heavy workloads and differing timezones, support from developers is not always as quick as it is from the support staff here.
We greatly appreciate your patience here and I can assure you that Barry is looking into your issue. He likes to present a solution when he sees an issue, so it may take a bit longer if he is working on a fix or investigating the cause.
Thank You!
Kibmerly
Member (joined July 2012) Likes (0)
Hey Kimberly,
I am still patient but looking at the effort I invested to describe the problem I am not sure if this will go for much longer. What is our status here?
Cheers, Alex
Member (joined July 2012) Likes (0)
Halo??
People Person (joined February 2012) Likes (0)
Hello Alex, I am sorry for the delay here. It's been brought to my attention that Barry is not available at the moment, I believe he was called away on something urgent.
I appreciate your patience and effort put into explaining the issue. However, the fact remains that you are asking us to support an issue with a widget that is not WPMU DEV native nor is it WordPress native. You are asking for third party support and I am, against our normal practices, asking for help from the developer on it.
I will see if we can get someone else in that can help us in Barry's absence.
Kimberly
Member (joined July 2012) Likes (0)
Hi Kimberly,
its not worth the time nor the effort to keept this going. Let me tell you that the attitude here is really disappointing. You are basically telling me that WPMUdev does not care if its plugins cause problems on any other third party plugin. This would mean I can only use WPMUdev plugins with plain wordpress stuff or I am most likely doomed at one point.
So you try to create a closed system to lock the user in and that is even more disappointing.
The case would be different if someone could it explain to me why the problem most likely is on the side of the other plugin. But that seems not be the case.
NEXT time do not waste my time asking for a lot of details when you do not feel committed to fix the problem!
People Person (joined February 2012) Likes (0)
Alex I think you are misunderstanding my intention of that statement. It was not to imply that we do not care about you or your problem.
I was unaware that the developer had been called away for an urgent personal matter until today.
I was only hoping to insinuate that it would take a bit longer than a normal ticket as of the nature of the issue. We do not have nor did we develop the code to the widget in question so that would be requiring a wait on the developer to download inspect and fix (if he could) the issue. I was under the impression that was reason for the wait. But it appears I was wrong.
Lead Developer (joined May 2009) Likes (2)Liked by: 
Hi Alex, I've reviewed this whole issue, and yes it appears to be a conflict with a third-party plugin. It is super hard to support other peoples plugins, and don't make a practice of it.
In this case I've looked over the code of that plugin, and it appears that the plugin calls it's own custom get_posts() loop. The membership plugin has filters in it to filter WPs WP_query method, thats how it applied the rules to filter out posts and pages from members who are not supposed to have it.
In this case though, it appears to be filtering that plugins query (as it should), but is somehow altering or dropping the 'tax_query' argument that your plugin creates. So not being hugely familiar with the Membership plugin code, it may be possible to alter that code to preserve the 'tax_query', we'll have to see. It's possible that Membership does this because of limitations in WP_Query and that's the only way to protect posts.
Another possible fix might be to use http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/is_main_query to not filter custom queries at all, but i'm not sure what the ramifications of that would be.
Either way you hopefully can realize how complex this is. I'm going to leave it with Barry our main developer for Membership to look at. He should be back next week. Thank you for your patience!
Lead Developer (joined May 2009) Likes (0)
Oh, and here is the relevant plugin code for Barry: http://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/list-category-posts/trunk/include/CatList.php
Member (joined July 2012) Likes (0)
Hi Aaron,
thanks for looking into this.
Cheers, Alex
Support Kangaroo (joined March 2011) Likes (0)
Greetings Alex,
It appears this particular topic is now resolved/closed, if you need any further assistance please let us know.
If it wasn't resolved, or you have any more questions related to this thread, please feel free to post them below including any new symptoms or errors and tick the 'Mark as Not Resolved (re-open)' box below the post area (or else we'll miss it!)
Thank you for being a WPMU Dev Community Member!
Cheers, Joe
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