WordPress Post Expirator

One of the highly requested features is for the Post Expirator to use custom taxonomies – both on the “post” type and also on custom post types.  I am currently looking into this and wanted to get some feedback from the users on how to move forward.

I’m struggling with deciding if there should only be “1” taxonomy available per post type or whether it would show them all.  If there was only “1” available, I would see this working from another option for each post type on the “Defaults” screen where you could configure the taxonomy for the item.

If the solution would be to show “all” taxonomies for a post type, it would need to show the “category” box in the post widget for each taxonomy type.  While this is not necessarily a bad thing, it could result in a rather long meta box pending the number of taxonomies associated with the post.

If “all” taxonomies were shown, I could probably work in a way to selectively choose which ones show up, but that just adds another level of complexity.

So – I’m asking you, the users, for your feedback on what you think will be best.  Right now, I was leaning towards just adding the option to select which taxonomy is used for each post type.  However, I can see how that could be limiting so I wanted to open this open this up to get some feedback.  Thanks!

I’m happy to announce that the 2.0.0 version of Post Expirator is now available!  This is a major update to most of the underlying code, and a slight logic shift in how things are done to be more flexible for additional options to be added down the road.  I spent extensive time testing all of the various aspects, and migrations path.  So, you should have no issues upgrading!

All posts that were scheduled using a 1.x version of the plugin will be migrated to use the new scheduling format and should expire as planned.

Some of the key features in this version are:

• New: Revamped the expiration process – the plugin no longer runs on an minute, hourly, or other schedule. Each expiration event schedules a unique event to run, conserving system resources and making things more efficient
• New: Added the ability to expire to a “private” post
• New: Added the ability to expire by adding or removing categories. The old way of doing things is now known as replacing categories
• New: The type of expiration event can be selected for each post, directly from the post editing screen
• New: Ability to set defaults for each post type (including custom posts)
• New: Renamed expiration-date meta value to _expiration-date
• New: Revamped timezone handling to be more correct with WordPress standards and fix conflicts with other plugins
• Fix: Removed kses filter calls when then schedule task runs that was causing code entered as unfiltered_html to be removed

For a complete list, please see the changelog.

The plugin can be downloaded at the WordPress Plugins Page.  Enjoy!

Update: Version 2.0.1 has been released to finish removing the old scheduled event.

Changes in this version include:

• Tweaked error messages, removed clicks for reset cron event
• Switched cron schedule functions to use “current_time(‘timestamp’)”
• Cleaned up default values code
• Added option to allow user to select any cron schedule (minute, hourly, twicedaily, daily) – including other defined schedules
• Added option to set default expiration duration – options are none, custom, or publish time
• Code cleanup – php notice

The plugin can be downloaded at the WordPress Plugins Page.  Enjoy!

I would like to announce the immediate release of version 1.6 of the Post Expirator plugin.  This version has some exciting fixes and additions.

Changes in this version include:

• Fixed invalid html
• Fixed i18n issues with dates
• Fixed problem when using “Network Activate” – reworked plugin activation process
• Replaced “Upgrade” tab with new “Diagnostics” tab
• Reworked expire logic to limit the number of sql queries needed
• Added debugging
• Various code cleanup

The plugin can be downloaded at the WordPress Plugins Page.  Enjoy!

This is a minor bugfix release. There was an issue with the expiration sql query that was impacting some users.  Screenshots have also been added to the plugin page.

The plugin can be downloaded at the WordPress Plugins Page.

This is a minor bugfix release.  There was an issue with including the shortcode in the template that was displaying the expiration date in the incorrect time zone which has now been corrected.

The plugin can be downloaded at the WordPress Plugins Page.

A bug snuck into the 1.5 release that was causing custom post types to not show the expiration box. This has been corrected in 1.5.1. Sorry for the trouble!

The plugin can be downloaded at the WordPress Plugins Page.

This is a much overdue release, but does add support for one of the most requested features – category support!

In version 1.5, you can configure a certain selection of categories that will be applied to the post at expiration time.  If you select expiration categories, this will override the default action of either changing the post status to draft or deleting it.  If you leave all expiration categories unchecked, the default post action will be carried out as usual.  When expiration time comes up, all categories on the post will be replaced with the new category selection set under the Post Expirator meta box.

In addition, on the Post Expirator setting page you can also choose to disable the category option and also set default categories that will be populated when you create a new post.

As you can see from the image above, the Post Expirator meta box code has also been cleaned up and moved over to the sidebar where it is more suited.

The plugin can be downloaded at the WordPress Plugins Page.  Enjoy!

This is a quick release to fix a bug that was preventing 3.0 multisite detection from working correctly.  If you are using 3.0 in multisite mode, I would suggest re-activating the plugin on the affected blogs.

The plugin can be downloaded at the WordPress Plugins Page.