New Site Design + WP-Answers Version 3.0 Launched

By On In News, Updates

Welcome to our new-look website!

Im very pleased to finally announce the launch of WP-Answers 3.0 … It has taken us quite some time to get this new version ready, in fact we nearly launched it before but decided on a total re-write of all the plugin code and created a brand new theme from scratch. As you will see if you check out the demo, the new theme is nice and clean with a responsive design which means it will work on mobiles and tablets equally as well as on desktops – to see this, resize your browser while the theme is loaded up.

New Features

As I said, everything has been re-written from scratch and we now use custom post types for questions, instead of using normal posts – that means your sites can now have a regular blog along side the question and answer section. Another feature that was requested many times was the ability to use the plugin with any theme without relying on our default theme, we have added this so you can now add a Question and Answer section to any existing site.

Another big complaint was the plugin needed some spam protection built-in, as WP-Answers grew and became a well-known theme (it is used on tens of thousands of sites) the spammers began to target these sites specifically. To counter this, we have now built-in support for reCaptcha by Google which is one of the best captcha solutions available. You will need to signup for an API key to use this with your sites. It is enabled from the new admin panel and can be used at signup and on question submission – the two points we need to stop automated spam. Of course, it is still possible for someone to signup by hand and place their links manually so you will still have to monitor questions being asked, or moderate them first.

All old and new features are now contained in our brand new admin panel. It has a similar layout to the old one but everything is now contained within one panel (rather than 2) and is a lot cleaner and easier to use.

Support and Documentation

After you have downloaded the version 3.0, unzip it and you will see a readme file which has details of our new support system. It also includes a documentation folder with newly written instructions on how to use the new features. Please read through this before updating your installations.

 

Upgrade Information

Before upgrading to 3.0 please make sure you take a complete backup of your site including the database incase anything goes wrong.

Unfortunately, because the theme has been re-written from scratch – you will lose any customisations to your theme if you install the new version, so please bare that in mind.

To upgrade, delete the old plugin and theme and upload the new ones – and activate them both.

As I mentioned before, we have used a custom post type for questions now – rather than using normal posts so you can use it along side a regular blog so if you want to use this new version on an existing site, you will need to convert the posts over to the new post type which is called “Questions” you can use this free plugin called Post Type Switcher. You can use this to bulk edit your posts to convert them to Questions.

13 thoughts on “New Site Design + WP-Answers Version 3.0 Launched”

  2. It’s nice to see an upgrade. :). I haven’t tested it yet, but does it still make a / when you type in a ‘ ? Like “ain/t” instead of “ain’t”

    Also, an idea to the captcha. I’ve read that most captchas has been broken by bots, (and they’re a general pain in the butt), so I’m personally using PlayThru, by areyouahuman.com. It’s worth a look, and is actually quite fun to play :P

    1. Hi – It shouldn’t do – will test to make sure.

      reCaptcha is pretty good – I like the look of that areyouhuman.com though – will investigate it more.

      Thanks.

  3. Oli, this looks awesome! I can’t wait to fire it up. I was super-excited when I saw your E-junkie email. Thanks for all the hard work; keep it up! :D

    Peter M.

  4. I install this version and has some error when you try to post from yahoo anwsers and the default template has problems

    1. Hi,

      Can you please use the support form and provide details of any bugs as I cant monitor this blog post ?

      Thanks.

  5. I’ve just recently had the time to take it for a spin. I like the simple look of the theme, but I miss some edit options. Like an easy way to change the logo.

    Also I got a question to a feature. I haven’t checked to see if it’s there, but a new member level. Granting access to ask questions, but not access to write and publish regular posts. The reason is, that my website is giving people contributor level to write posts for review, while it would require author to post questions without having all the questions reviewed first. That would be a mess.

    Other than that, I really love the widget feature.

  6. Great neat look and spam protection, but the SEARCH function does not seem to be working properly. I search for “football” or “apparel” and it shows the same results which have no specified words in it.

  7. I’ve emailed about the cron not working for campaigns with no response.

    Also, for manually posting a campaign (“Post Now”) I receive the following error:

    ”
    Fatal error: Cannot redeclare class WP_Admin_Bar in /home/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-admin-bar.php on line 10
    ”

    Thank you,
    David

    1. I did the same mistake as David:

      Fatal error: Cannot redeclare class WP_Admin_Bar in /homepages/17/d443613794/htdocs/beste-Antwort/wp-includes/class-wp-admin-bar.php on line 10

      Thank you,
      sven

      1. Are your answers automatically posting as if it were a cron job? Mine aren’t, so I tried the “Post Now” function which doesn’t work. The only way I figured out how to pull content is to delete the campaign and recreate it. This is very time consuming. Please fix cron (or make it a stand alone script to make an actual cron job or post whenever).

        Much appreciated,
        David

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