Home of WP-Members, The Original WordPress Membership Plugin
Current Release Candidate: RC 4
WP-Members 2.8.2 is both a feature release and a fix release. Continue Reading →
An improvement to the dropdown capability for the custom field manager in WP-Members 2.8.1 actually has an incompatibility for users with php less than 5.3. While I will patch this for the 2.8.2 release, you can apply the patch for 2.8.1 with these instructions. 
Note: if you are using PHP 5.3 or greater, this patch is unnecessary. If you are having issues with the dropdown, it is not likely related to this.
$arr[7] = str_getcsv( $str, ',', '"' );
$arr[7] = explode( ',', $str );
Note: you will not be able to use commas in your values
I am always nervous about releasing updates to the plugin because in the back of my mind I am wondering what element slipped through the cracks. The 2.8.1 release was no exception.
WP-Members 2.8.1 made it out the door with a small error related to the new “user-profile” shortcode.
The problem was with the logic in line 208 of wp-members-core.php:
$page = ( 'user-profile' ) ? 'members-area' : $page;
This would actually always return true, which would mean that all shortcodes using the “page” parameter would be members-area pages. So register and login pages, while still being able to provide their core function, wouldn’t be working quite the way they should since they would have both the login and registration forms in the logged out state and wouldn’t have the correct links in the logged in state.
The fix (which has been implemented in the download already) is to change line 208 of wp-members-core.php to:
$page = ( $page == 'user-profile' ) ? 'members-area' : $page;
The WP-Members 2.8.1 release is an important security update for the plugin. It is highly recommended that you upgrade as previous versions of the plugin have a possible exploit that may be vulnerable. As soon as I became aware of this, I put all other items on the project list on hold.
While 2.8.1 is primarily a security fix, there are some additional features, as well as a few improvements as well. These are items that were already in the works when the security issue was made apparent.
Here is a list of what is included in the 2.8.1 release:
In previous versions, the front side page that was used to handle user functions such as reset a forgotten password, update registration info, change your password, and (in the PayPal addon) renew a subscription, was called with the shortcode [[wp-members page=”members-area”]].
It has been called that since the beginning of this plugin. Unfortunately, it has been a confusing issue because it has turned out that this is not intuitive. For users that do not necessarily read the plugin documentation and installation instructions (or do not read them thoroughly), the term Members Area gets interpreted as “area of my site that is restricted content” and not “area of my site for members to update their info”.
So beginning in 2.8.1, this is being changed to User Profile. The shortcode will be [[wp-members page=”user-profile”]] but the old shortcode will still work. As you can see in 2.8.0, the name was already changed in the options panel. If you continue to use the old shortcode, that is ok. Future releases will support it (for now). However, all references to the Members Area will be changed to User Profile in the plugin documentation and instructions as the use of the term is deprecated.
There was a small bug in the initial WP-Members 2.8 release that causes the main option screen for the plugin to be blank. This would be a blank options screen with a php error message “Call to undefined function wpmem_a_rss_box()”.
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