Category Archives: CalendarScripts

BroadFast for WordPress 2.4 and Intelligence Module 1.0

The latest version of our drip marketing plugin for WordPress is online. Here are the new and improved features from version 2.3:

  • Added free WooCommerce bridge which lets you sell access to mailing lists or just automatically subscribe users who buy other products from you.
  • Added raw email log showing you every sent email along with error or success status
  • Option to automatically cleanup the raw email log and the cron job log after number of days
  • Option to send test email from autoresponder messages and newsletters
  • Sending “global” newsletter allows you to send a news blast to all your mailing lists at once. Such newsletter will avoid duplicate sending to the same email address even if it is subscribed in several of your mailing lists
  • Added built-in JetPack contact form integration
  • New shortcode bftpro-other-lists list_id=X lets you display checkboxes for subscribing to other lists along with a selected mailing list subscribe form. The difference between this and the generic form code bftpro is that you can collect custom fields data for your primary list and satisfy its redirection settings.
  • Improvement on the autoresponder campaign reports now let you see which emails were been sent and read in a given period of time.
  • Added file upload custom field type
  • Ignore duplicates when importing subscribers
  • Option to never send this newsletter to use who already received it (even if this happened in another mailing list)
  • Added bftpro-unsubscribe shortcode that lets you publish the unsubscribe form in a chosen by you post or page. The system will automatically recognize it and redirect unsubsribers to the page.
  • It is now configurable whether you want unsubscribed user data to be kept in the mailing lists or removed
  • Added option to change the default Contact Form 7 field names in the Contact Form 7 integration
  • [Intelligence module] Detailed report shows who clicked on trackable links
  • [Intelligence module] Option to automatically convert URLs inside any message into trackable links
  • [Intelligence module] Added option to receive preview email with a digest when saving it
  • Doing e-learning? Check our bridge for Namaste! LMS.
  • Fixed various problems with email headers

Customers who are eligible for free upgrade are already receiving the newsletter.

WatuPRO 4.7 – Likert Scale Maker, Progress Bar, Design Themes, and More

The latest version of our WordPress quiz maker WatuPRO is now online:

  1. Added quiz design themes. More information here.
  2. New free addon: Likert Scale Survey Maker. Information and free download at this page.
  3. Added option to delete all quiz results of a selected user
  4. Added option to automatically delete user quiz data when the user account is deleted from admin
  5. Added option to keep each certificate from multiple quiz attempts from the same user on the same quiz
  6. Added %%CONTACT%% variable to display the extra contact fields (company and phone) in the “Final page” and the email sent to user. Available are also variables for the individual contact fields that can be used there and in the certificates.
  7. Added progress bar option for all paginated quizzes.
  8. User’s feedback on questions can now be seen in structured way. Just follow the link “Feedback on questions” from the “View results” page on the quiz.
  9. Improved question category management screen + rich text editor for category descriptions
  10. Improved the indentation of multiple-line numbered questions
  11. Improved handling of multiple-line contents and HTML tags when exporting questions
  12. The social sharing options are now embedded in the plugin and you no longer need the social sharing addon. Added options to share by email, Google +, and LinkedIn.
  13. You can switch off the rich text editor from certificate editing to avoid your HTML being messed by it
  14. Question export CSVs now can be configured to use comma or tab. Default is comma.
  15. Added variable %%BETTER-THAN%% to show the user what % of users performed worse than them on the quiz.
  16. Low memory mode – learn more here.
  17. Survey questions no longer ignore the points assigned to their answers.
  18. [Intelligence module] A new advanced setting lets you configure “single choice” questions to automaitcally proceed or show the answer.
  19. [Intelligence module] Paypal payments now support sandbox mode and open CURL connection when such is available.
  20. [Reporting module] Fixed problem with the poll shortcode and multiple-answer questions
  21. Fixed problems with question hints on quizzes that reuse questions from other quizzes
  22. The shortcodes that list quizzes will also include quizzes published with the User Choice addon

The upgrade is sent by a newsletter to eligible subscribers. If your subscription has expired you can renew with 60% discount. We are sending the promo code by a newsletter too, but in case you didn’t get it, please email us.

Low Memory Mode in WatuPRO

Plugin version required: 4.6.8.1 or newer.

This feature is built to help users who have too many quizzes and questions to still be able to use the quiz plugin WatuPRO on affordable shared hosts. You can’t expect wonders from shared hosting services and if you have many huge quizzes you may need to move to a VPS. But before this you can enable the “low memory mode” feature to reduce the resource usage at the cost of sacrificing a couple of small features.

How To Enable It

Go to WatuPRO Settings page and check the checbox saying “Enable low memory mode to reduce the server resources usage”.

What Does it Do

For the moment this mode reduces the server load on your Manage Quizzes and Manage Questions pages:

  • On Manage Quizzes page it hides the column “No. questions” and the number of users who took the quiz.
  • On Manage Questions page it hides the number of answers to a question.
  • Switches off the dashboard stats widget (the one in your main admin page that shows number of quizzes taken today, most popular quiz, and so on). The stats widget can be switched off individually from another option (without entering low memory mode)

For the moment these are the only changes applied by the low memory mode. As soon as we see pain points for users with high number of quizzes and questions we will add more optimizations.

The low memory mode can of course be used even if you already have a VPS or dedicated server to reduce the server resources usage.

What Else to Do

  • Avoid using the feature “Automatically store user progress as they go from page to page” on paginated quizzes. It causes server requests on each page change.
  • Avoid using the “show answer” button or the option that lets clicking on a single-choice immediately reveal the answer.
  • When a quiz is submitted an update query runs on student answers table. So if you have hundreds of thousands records in that table submitting a quiz may start taking more time. You may want to look at reducing your database data.

We have customers running this plugin on very heavy traffic sites with a lot of concurrent users. The plugin is as optimized as possible to the best of our knowledge. If you believe there is a problem on your server you need to provide us with information which specific query is slowing it down so we can take action. Usually it’s not WatuPRO but a different plugin that overloads the processor.