How much does Pods cost?
Pods is free and will remain free, but check out how much effort it’s taken to get it to where it is today!
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sc0ttkclark
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sc0ttkclark
Pods 2.0 has arrived!
Background
The Pods Framework has been around since late 2008. Planning, design, development, and testing started in 2010 for Pods 2.0 leading to an Alpha release on January 2nd, 2012. Beta was released on August 12th, 2012. Now Pods 2.0 has finally arrived, as of September 21st, 2012!
After our soft launch, we’ve been working on bug fixes for the past few weeks to ensure maximum stability and backwards compatibility before going full force with our 2.0 announcement. That point has been reached and we’re ready for the flood of new users that awaits, including our awesome Pods 1.x users who are anxious to upgrade.
Have at it, and most of all — Enjoy the freedom of developing any type of content with any type of field that you can think of for WordPress!
Bug Reports / Feature Requests
Please report bugs and suggest features in our GitHub Issues area. We’ve got an awesome feature line up for Pods 2.1 that is already in progress, we’ll announce our 2.1 testing program in the next month. Pods 2.1 is scheduled to be released alongside WordPress 3.5 on December 5th, 2012.
Big Thanks to our Sponsors!
We have to really thank Automattic and Matt Mullenweg for all they’ve done to help us, we honestly could not have finished Pods 2.0 and taken it to the next level without their support.
RD2 provided some awesome UI design work for our new 2.0 upgrade screens.
MarkNet Group provided extra help when we needed it to keep the project going over the past two years, major kudos!
What’s new?
Below is a feature list that goes over what 2.0 offers, we hope you enjoy it as much as we have while we’ve used it on our own projects.
- Slick new interface, fully revamped to make managing your Pods easy and stress-free
- Large performance enhancements using transients and object caching (reducing queries per page load in both dashboard and site to the lowest possible number, sometimes that’s ZERO)
- New Upgrade wizard screens designed by RD2 will help you upgrade from previous versions and report any potential known issues beforeit actually upgrades your site
- We’ve partnered with Automattic to offer 1 free month of VaultPress service to users upgrading from Pods 1.x, you will see the offer in the upgrade screens.
- We’ve also partnered with iThemes to offer 25% off of a BackupBuddy license to users upgrading from Pods 1.x, you will see the offer in the upgrade screens.
- Add New Pod wizard guides you through creating or extending content types with custom fields
- Create New Content Types
- Custom Post Types
- Custom Taxonomies
- Advanced Content Types (each type lives in it’s own table, outside of the WP object architecture)
- Extend Existing Content Types
- Post Types (Posts, Pages, Existing Custom Post Types)
- Taxonomies (Categories, Tags, Existing Custom Taxonomies)
- Media
- Users
- Comments
- Create New Content Types
- Choose to store your data using meta-based storage (default) or custom table-based storage
- New Field Editor and Field Types
- New Field Type options built in (no more input helpers for most common input types!)
- Date / Time – Date, Time, or both
- Number – Plain Number or Currency
- Text – Plain Text, Website, Phone, E-mail, or Password
- Paragraph Text – Plain Paragraph, WYSIWYG (TinyMCE or CLEditor, or add your own), or Code (Syntax Highlighting)
- Color Picker – Choose colors, because colors are great (Using the default WP color picker, Farbtastic in 3.4)
- Yes / No – You can’t really go wrong with a checkbox, but we’ve added a few charms to make it stand out
- File / Image / Video – Upload new media or select from existing ones with our Media Library integration, or use a simple uploader, your choice
- Relationships – Relate any item, to any item of any WP object type or another Pod, now with improved Bidirectional relationship support
- New Field Type options built in (no more input helpers for most common input types!)
- New grouping fields API on the Add/Edit forms for Post Types, Taxonomies, Media, Users, and Comments (We’re adding a management UI for this coming in 2.1)
- New Shortcode popup integration with TinyMCE editor (now provide one-off templates within the shortcode itself)
- New Widgets (and provide one-off templates within the widget itself)
- New Form UI front and back
- New Attachments option available for File Uploads allows you to click “Attach” and select media items from the normal built-in WP Media Library pop-up
- New Componentsallow additional functionality to be enabled but not loaded if you don’t want/need them
- Pod Templates
- Pod Pages
- Pod Helpers
- Roles and Capabilities
- Add / Edit Roles (Administrator, Editor, etc..)
- Add / Edit Capabilities for each Role
- Markdown Syntax for Paragraph Text fields
- Migrate: Import from Custom Post Type UI
- Import Custom Post Types and Taxonomies created by the Custom Post Type UI plugin
- Import them all, or choose a few
- Optionally cleanup the Custom Post Type UI options when done, removing the imported objects from it’s control
- Basic WPML Integration and confirmed Polylang compatibility
- Fully Localized interface and error messages! All of our text strings in the plugin now run through the i18n functions. We don’t have any translations yet, but we’re looking at getting GlotPress setup for translators to start getting in.
- Requires at least WordPress 3.4 and is tested against WordPress 3.4 and 3.5 releases
Not sure about Pods 2.0 yet? Screenshot time!
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hsatterwhite
Holy Cow in a plugin Scott! I’ve been looking at it since Thursday afternoon and it’s absolutely wonderful. The UI is great, intuitive, and very forgiving when you’re making mistakes. Love seeing how far you’ve come with Pods as it is by far one of the most powerful plugins/frameworks/extendomatic-in-a-box things to to ever happen to WordPress.
I’m a big fan of how you re-vamped “Helpers”. Using it as a custom post type with the built-in WordPress revisions feature is spot on smart. This is honestly the first time I’ve ever looked at Pods 2.0 in any of its forms. The really cool thing to me is that you created “Helpers” in a way that provides flexibility and history. Using Code Mirror for syntax highlighting, storing it as a custom post type, and utilizing WordPress’ built-in revisions function takes “Helpers” light years beyond what it was in the 1.x.x releases. As a long time user of Pods I’m completely overjoyed with Pods 2.0!
Again, thanks for all that you’ve contributed to the WordPress community.
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sc0ttkclark
It’s messages like these that make what I do worth it. That’s exactly what I set out to do for Pods 2.0, so I’m very glad that was successful!
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sc0ttkclark
Pods Framework Gets Backed by …a Few Big Names
Code is poetry
Developing solutions
Now the game has changedWe’ve got some very big news.
We would first like to give a big thank you for the generosity and help from our Kickstarter backers, the donations from our users, and time from our contributors! Without you, the innovations in this plugin would not have been possible. Now, our new sponsors will also help to ensure we can continue making awesome features and fine tune everything we do for Pods 2.0 and beyond.
Keeping a free plugin of this magnitude alive is not for the faint of heart. We’ve managed to keep it going for the past few years on a shoestring budget and enormous contributor effort. It’s been an amazing road, despite the bumps, and I’m so proud that we’ve made it to where we are today.
Stick around below the jump for more, but without further ado, we’re excited to announce the first three official sponsors of the Pods Framework!
That’s right! Automattic, as our new Premiere Sponsor, has decided to back Pods
and provide us with the funding we needed to get to the next level!
MarkNet Group has continued to provide us with much needed funding
and has even donated their development time to help our continued growth.
RD2 has also generously joined our cause!
Look for very awesome stuff coming from RD2 in the future!
I can’t thank Automattic and Matt enough for backing Pods, it really hits home on a very personal level for me. MarkNet Group and RD2 are devoted to building awesome projects using WordPress, which is really important for us. Now our team can focus on developing the features you’ve been craving. Speaking of team.. check out the right sidebar of the dev blog to see a revamped list of our contributors!
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mbrinson
Wow, that’s big time!
That’s super awesome news Scott. I’m so glad your tenacity and perseverance has paid off for you and for the PODS community. You are one dedicated guy! -
davidangel
HECK YES. This is great news!
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Dan Farrow
Fantastic and well deserved news Scott!
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carlosfaria
Congratulations!!
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Perry
When you said the announcement would be big I wondered if it might be related to some sort of official support from WordPress, heaven knows you earned it, but thought that may be far fetched!
Excellent news and vindication for the grief you must have gone through while working towards Pods 2.0.
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sc0ttkclark
Thanks for support gang, can’t wait to see all of this good news put to good use as we can finally step our game up and get this done on a real schedule!
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chriscarvache
Why I Donate to the Pods Foundation
Ever since Pods has come out, I’ve been hooked. About 98% of the sites I create are powered by WordPress and almost all of those sites utilize the Pods Framework. It is one of the few plugins for the WordPress platform that truly expands on its functionality and pushes the envelope in many directions. It offers premium functionality and is 100% free (cost is free and I can freely use the code). Even better, it will always be free as the developers have pledged to keep it free by setting up the Pods Foundation. While Pods doesn’t accomplish anything I couldn’t and have already coded myself, it dramatically speeds up my development and standardizes the process. That being said, I am able to offer my clients competitive rates on services and offer them a stable, secure, and robust product. In the end everyone wins; I make a reasonable profit, and the client gets a reasonable price.
How we can all help
Since I gain a significant amount of work from using Pods, I have opted to donate a portion of my revenue towards the project. This not only shows support for the idea and the community but furthers the development of the project. While this concept is widely understood, it is rarely put into practice. A donation is always a smart idea; it decreases our annual (or however you choose to file) net income and overall gives us less taxes to pay. Either way, donating to the project pushes the features we wish to have to the forefront of development. This in turn helps us create and produce faster, ultimately increasing our hourly wages and our quality of work.
I cannot see this being anything other than a win-win. While we end up making a bit less per project by making donations, we gain so much more in the long run; more features, more power and faster developer turn around time. Not to mention that we help out a great project fueled by developers who have spent countless hours developing and supporting Pods for free – which we all benefit from.
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sc0ttkclark
Love having you around! Thanks for all your support and especially for helping bring some cool donation-funded features into Pods 1.12
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sc0ttkclark
Wow, @chriscarvache is doing some awesome things for Pods, he’s going to post about it soon – watch for it!
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sc0ttkclark
Pods Foundation
As some of you may have known from the dev blog last month, Pods now has a foundation behind it! Pods Foundation, Inc is a non-profit, charitable organization which was incorporated last month to further the mission of the Pods open source project.
What’s changing? Not really much, just all financial operations will go through the Pods Foundation for tax purposes. All funds that Pods Foundation raises will go towards:
- Maintaining and Improving the Pods CMS Framework plugin for WordPress and keeping it available for free to the public
- Maintaining and Improving the Pods project web presences
- Improving documentation about how to use and develop with Pods
- Technical Support for our userbase
- Comprehensive Video and Step-by-step Tutorials
- Presentations and/or Workshops at major WordCamps
The Core Dev Team will continue to run the plugin and related operations day-to-day, the foundation will just kick in when money is involved.
The foundation also has a new site setup at http://podsfoundation.org/ and is where we’ll be taking donations going forward. When we revamp the Pods main site, we’ll likely be pushing some of the design elements onto the foundation site as well as this dev blog, so things will be a bit more connected once that happens. Until then, we’re using the TwentyEleven theme for the foundation site (which is actually running WP 3.1.x).
Just wanted to officially share the good news
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bjornet
Nice to hear! Great initiative to make the project even more solid and longlasting.
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sc0ttkclark
Meeting Agenda – Thursday, October 28th, 2010 @ 8pm EST
Suggest Agenda Items for Thursday’s meetup – for starters we’re solely talking about Pods 2.0 unless there are any urgent bug fixes we need to patch in 1.9.x
Join the Chat at http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=podscms or via your IRC client on irc.freenode.net #podscms
Like WP Dev Chats, please keep them on-topic.
List of topics so far:
- Form API and it’s use across other classes
- Modules – Separating Pods into modules that can be disabled / enabled (like Members components)
- UI / IA of Pods 2.0 regarding menu and panels
- Including a Widget in Pods 2.0 [see: http://www.mikevanwinkle.com/wordpress/plugins/wordpress-podscms-widgets/ ]
- Status Reports from each Dev
UPDATE: Meeting occurred as scheduled and we covered the above topics. In addition to these topics, we covered the 2.0 functionality distinction between pre WP 3.1 and 3.1
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sc0ttkclark
We should talk about the new Form API and it’s use across the other classes – is it a good idea to use the Form API for all form fields (maybe not the form processing itself, or maybe so? or maybe only the form fields themselves). We can weigh the pro’s and con’s of the scenarios and figure out what makes sense as we adjust Pods for it’s next major iteration.
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Travis Ballard
I’d maybe keep the Form Generation API seperate from the Form Processing. Have the form processing be an extension of the generation API and allow ways to extend that in the event a new datatype needs added or whatever there’s an easy way to handle it in the submission. An idea nothing solid or anything but it’s how I’d look at it. Maybe even switch it and have the generation layer sit on top of the processing layer.
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Stefan
I’d like to suggest a new input field where the user can add more fields in sequence to build lists. This would be useful for building any kind of list with as many items as needed, while keeping the styling controlled by the site’s CSS. This could also come in really handy for building tables
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sc0ttkclark
Duplicating fields are already slated to be in the new Form API / UI
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Mike Van Winkle
Re: Form API … If you’re keeping the ajax submission, then we at least need the ability to pass the form response to a callback function. I also think you could add some traditional WordPress hooks to the form processing to allow for additional processing.
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Mike Van Winkle
Actually, it may be worth while to rethink the form API altogether. I rarely use it because I’m usually collecting data for more than one pod at the same time, and manually creating the forms makes more sense. A form API that was more “input” based might make more sense. I’m thinking outload here.
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sc0ttkclark
The Form API is already being ‘rethunk’
The purpose of the new Form API is to make it possible for more advanced implementations of forms when otherwise you would create hard coded forms by hand. Also, to be able to manage those forms through the backend using the new Form Manager.
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sc0ttkclark
Read about the API here: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AoY8IFUX301qdENpdi1vWGkwZ1kzUTcxbmx2Qm42TVE&hl=en&authkey=CLPZt7YF
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Mike Van Winkle
Ooops. Forgot to scan that before tossing my thoughts. Looks like most of my ideas are covered there.
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sc0ttkclark
Yep, the new Form API / UI is going to be very robust and should cover most use cases. I tried to be as inclusive as possible so that it’d be fundamentally set for 2.x
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sc0ttkclark
AJAX / Non-AJAX submission are already slated for the new Form API / UI.
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Sharath
If possible, we need to discuss CAPTCHA and some kind of configuration so that we can enable them for public forms.
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sc0ttkclark
True, we’ll take a look at that.
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sc0ttkclark
Themes / Plugins – Pods ‘Certification’
I believe that we should build trust when people try out Pods, and one of the ways to do that is to offer up links to some themes that come Pods-enabled or Pods-friendly out of the box. Part of that process is connecting with interested Theme authors to ensure they have the information on how to do this and then setup a process for us to internally test these themes to ‘certify’ it as officially working Pods.
On our site, we could have a directory (similar to the other directories) in which Theme / Plugin authors can submit their themes / plugins (providing a private url for us to download, or they can e-mail it, but either case we won’t offer them for download on our site) for us to review. They can also manage their theme / plugin thumbnail, description, and link to the page on their site (or wp.org) to download it from.
With plugins, it’s a bit different. As people experiment with creating Pods-based plugins, it’s important to develop a standard, and once that standard is fleshed out – to offer links to plugins that use the standard. Now, we can’t just offer free security consulting in case their plugin has coding flaws, but it’s Pods use could be checked pretty easily. If we thought a plugin may be insecure, or all other code is choppy, we don’t have to approve it to be listed.
We already do this for Packages (to an extent, and that too could be enhanced in a number of ways.
The point behind all of this is that we offer new users (and existing) with options to check out themes and plugins that use Pods in one place – vs having to go around looking on the web, or even worse – searching for “Pods” and having podcast related plugins / themes show up.
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chriscarvache
These points all sound like great ideas. Regarding themes, I think we’ll see less of them as opposed to plugins and whatnot. Most WordPress themes are generalized while as Pods will require heavy content specific themes. Hopefully 2.0 will change that and allow for more content to be put into place.
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chriscarvache
I mean more GENERALIZED content. That way themes can support anything.
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sc0ttkclark
To support Pods, all a theme has to do is use core WP integration for any page title modifications (on the theme side), and add a pods.php with pods_content(); in it – also adding pods_content(); on the related page templates to allow for Pod Pages to be applied to Pages and other types of content.
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chriscarvache
That’s true – for some reason I was really overthinking it!!
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sc0ttkclark
Be sure to tag your posts here with the related tags – specifically 2.0 and UI so that we can more easily keep track of those discussions through tag filtering. Thx!
bjornet is discussing. 
Sharath, and 3 others are discussing. 
bjornet 8:23 pm on September 5, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I really appreciate you for showing this, this example helps me as developer to set a decent pricetag on my work and of cause understand the tremendous amount of work you guys have put into Pods.