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Pods 2.7.17 + Pods Gravity Forms 1.4.3 Maintenance Updates, Friends of Pods Progress Report, and Pods 2.8 Status

We have just released the Pods Framework 2.7.17 Maintenance Update onto the WordPress.org Plugin Repository. This update includes the following fixes and updates:

  • Added support for changes in WordPress 5.4
  • Fixes for some PHP 7.4 notices
  • Added User pod fields to the privacy export data (for WordPress 5.4)
  • Added a new callout for the Friends of Pods program to get more visibility into our need for additional support
  • Integrated Freemius to support our upcoming Friends exclusive add-ons
  • Added new ACF backwards compatibility functions so you can use the same theming functions like the_field() and have them map to Pods data even if you don’t have ACF activated
  • Lots of bug fixes and small enhancements!

You can read the full change log for this release on the Development tab of the WordPress.org Repository

Pods Gravity Forms 1.4.3

We also just released a few fixes for our Pods Gravity Forms plugin that include:

  • Fixed pre-population handling for relationship fields
  • Prevent errors when form doesn’t exist by the time it gets to our hook

Friends of Pods Progress Report

We have made progress over the past couple of months since our call for support at the start of the year. Of course, things don’t always go as planned and there are understandably plenty more things going on in the world to worry about for folks. We haven’t met our goal of 200 recurring donors for the year yet, but we’re now at 67/200 recurring donors which is almost double the amount we started with this year.

We have integrated a new Friends of Pods callout in the admin area of the Pods plugin itself to help bring attention to it as many people may be unaware that we are seeking donations and sponsorships. That should give us some additional traction over the next few months and we’ll post another update as soon as we hit another milestone. Become a Friend to help us reach our goal of continuing to grow Pods features >>

We have also built the first new Friends exclusive add-on. This add-on and others will be made available to our Friends based on their membership level or total donations over time. More on this when we release this first add-on officially!

How does all of this bode for Pods itself? We have enough in our monthly budget to keep at a reduced dev capacity but that means things like Pods 2.8 itself is taking longer than we had planned due to limited resources. We also have had to scale back on how much support we are able to offer in our Slack and WordPress.org plugin forums. We’re doing what we can and our community has been pitching in where they can which has been so helpful! Big shout out to Jim True who is the backbone of our Community Support and has donated so much of his own time outside his full-time job commitments that we’re still having people mistake our Slack support for Premium Support! Be sure to join us on Slack — Find out more about our Live Slack chat >>

Pods 2.8 Status

Progress on Pods 2.8 itself has continued forward, but we’ve hit some snags in the React admin interfaces we’ve been building that have caused considerable delays with development there.

The good news is that we now have a new REST API powered by some of the underlying code from The Events Calendar by Modern Tribe that can manage configurations for Pods, Groups, and Fields. This REST API is also directly translated into an easy to use WP-CLI interface with minimal code so that our future REST API work will automatically become available as WP-CLI commands. There’s a ton of really cool stuff we’ve worked on for Pods 2.8 and we’re excited to get it in your hands.