Today we released the Pods Framework 2.8.9 Maintenance Update on WordPress.org.

This update includes 20 bug fixes and 4 enhancements, here are a few of them:

• Added: There’s a new tool at Pods Admin > Settings > Tools that will let you “Recreate missing tables”. This will run the logic used to create those tables needed by Pods. This is currently just for wp_podsrel but will eventually include all other table-based Pods too. #5795 (@sc0ttkclark)
• Added: Are you interested in seeing how much data your Pods are storing? You can now add &pods_include_row_counts=1 to the Pods Admin > Edit Pods URL and see how many Data Rows, Meta Rows, and Relationship Rows are associated to each pod. This is a hidden feature and will be added in the future as a link directly within the Edit Pods screen. (@sc0ttkclark)
• Added: Support for alignment and custom classes on Pods Blocks. Disabled support for Anchors until they are officially resolved for dynamic blocks in core. (@sc0ttkclark)
• Fixed: Abstracted the meta saving into PodsMeta::save_meta() so that it can be used to remove duplicate logic in other methods and implemented it for meta fallback for simple relationship compatibility saving in integrations like Paid Membership Pro. (@sc0ttkclark)
• Fixed: Additional work on preventing unnecessary queries from other plugins with our Meta API integration. #6379 (@sc0ttkclark)
• Fixed: Resolved issues with 00:00 times when HTML5 inputs are enabled for Date/Time fields. #6256 #6382 (@zrothauser, @sc0ttkclark)
• Fixed: Some times after updating to 2.8, a Pod may have orphaned fields that exist outside of groups. This normally gets handled during the first time you edit a pod but now we have an additional count check to see if the field counts match as expected when editing a pod so it can trigger that process even after the first edit in 2.8. #6384 #6302 (@sc0ttkclark)
• Fixed: Cleaned up and abstracted the logic to build the field name used in DB queries for a field. #6270 #6411 (@sc0ttkclark, @jamesgol)
• Fixed: Resolved Date/Time field issues on certain browsers/OS combinations. #6318 #6300 (@sc0ttkclark, @zrothauser)
• Fixed: Better prevent recursive loops when saving meta from third parties. #6391 (@sc0ttkclark, @mircobabini)

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

Side note: You may have noticed that blog posts aren’t happening for every single maintenance release. This is because I’ve been personally busy and I normally handle the release posts so if I don’t do it then it won’t appear here. I’m looking into how I can automate the posts to automatically publish from GitHub releases when I post them there, but for now it’ll just have to continue being manual.