Plugin / Back End Instructions

As of version 2.0 – due to the numerous requests I’ve gotten, you can now show them on the front-end of the site if you so desire. Under “Settings > Back End Instructions”, you may now choose to display the instructions on the front end of the site, as well as choose to keep them private (i.e. open them up to the public, or make a user log in before viewing). See the “How to Use” section for further instructions. PLEASE NOTE This plugin was created to show these custom posts in the back end of the site, in the administrative area (thus the name of the plugin). The reason I did it this way is because when your client is logged in to the back end of the site, s/he can manage the site content and s/he will be in one single spot and can easily read their instructions without having to flip back and forth between an instructions page and what they are trying to do. The content pages of this plugin were not originally meant to be displayed on the front-end of the site. IMO, it negates the entire purpose of the plugin. If you are looking for a plugin that will create custom post types for you to use on your site, then you’re looking for a different plugin. But due to numerous requests, I have enabled this capability. I would imagine it’s because you want to be able to see your instruction to see how it’s formatted, etc., for editing purposes. (Or perhaps you just want your clients to stay out of the back end, for whatever reason.) But know that the instructions you view on the front end of your site WILL NOT look like the instructions seen on the back-end, because the ones seen on the front end will use your theme’s styling, which the back-end uses the admin styling. Again, I state: if you are simply looking for a plugin to set up a custom post type that you use on the front end of the site, this is NOT the plugin you want. It was not designed for that purpose, and frankly, it never will be.

I do not. Believe me, I’ve thought about it. But there’s two reasons that I haven’t done it yet… 1) it takes up a lot of time that I don’t have at the moment, and I’d really have to soleley dedicate a few days to creating all of those videos. I deliver this plugin for free (because I love you all), but I do have to put food on the table, so client work takes precedence. 2) WordPress is upgraded quite often, and many times, the administrative area changes, so the videos are quickly outdated. So along with reason #1, I’d have to take off time every time WordPress is upgraded. Which I wouldn’t mind doing if I could!

By all means, feel free to ask away. I’d also love input on features you’d like added or things you’d like to see to improve this plugin. See the “Credit” information on how to contact me.

This plugin uses custom post types to create the content for it. If you decide you no longer wish to use this plugin, you need to decide what you’d like to do with the content. If you want it completely removed from the database, then before you uninstall it, you need to go to “Instructions” and check the box to “Move to Trash”, and then “Apply.” Then you need to go the the trash and empty it to be sure the posts are completely removed from your database – THEN uninstall the plugin. If you want to keep the content as regular posts, then you will either manually have to edit your MySQL backup to change them from “instructions” to “post” (just open the database backup in a plain-text editor do a find/replace, save, and re-import), or use a plugin like Post Type Switcher to handle that for you before you uninstall. Otherwise, it’ll all just stay there and hang out, with no way to see it until you re-install the plugin again, or code your theme to pull the content out of the database to display it on the front end. If you’re in the mood to translate, please feel free to do so. I’ve created a base .pot file in the “back-end-instructions/bei-languages” folder. You can use POEdit to create the new file – just be sure to keep the proper WordPress language file naming conventions in mind. (in other words, if you create a Spanish translation, the file name should be “back-end-instructions-es-ES.mo”

Bug with swapping instructions that contain playing videos. So far, I can only get YouTube videos to stop on tab switch. .swf, Vimeo and other player versions are still buggy in this regard. If you change tabs, the video of the previously-opened tab will continue to play in the background. So you have to be sure to stop the video before you change tabs. If you’re a guru at jQuery, and feel like you might know the solution, have at it! In the meantime, I’ll still be plugging away, trying to sort this out.