Some customers of of the drip marketing suite Arigato PRO can’t run cron jobs on their servers for one or another reason. But this is not reason to worry:

Arigato Pro does not require cron jobs to send scheduled emails. We just recommend setting up cron jobs because this method is more reliable and less resource intensive. If for some reason you can’t set up cron jobs, there are alternatives:

a) Use the option “I will rely on my blog visitors to initiate the email sending”. You’ll find it on the Arigato Pro Settings page:

b) Use some of the many web based cron job services. For example this one is free, and there are many more free or very reasonably priced ones. Do a search for “web cron jobs” and choose a service you like.

Saying all this, please have in mind that cron jobs are not some kind of luxury or high-tech service. They are provided even by the cheapest web hosts. If your hosting service cannot provide such basic feature you should probably consider changing it.

Version 2.7 of the WordPress drip marketing suite Arigato PRO has been released. Highlights between versions 2.6 and 2.7:

• Added report by email domain for newsletter and autoresponder message reports.
• Added option to manually move subscribers from one mailing list to another.
• Added server-side email validation for cases when the JS validation is skipped.
• Added filter by signup date on the Manage Subscribers page.
• Now you can pause autoresponder messages. Pausing is like deleting them: they will not be sent accordingly to the schedule. But instead of deleting you just pause and can re-activate them at any time.
• Blacklist management is available: you can specify email addresses and IP addresses that will not be allowed to sign up for the mailing lists. You can also use wildcards to mark one or more characters.
• You can now configure the content of the new member signup notification email sent to admin.
• Implemented version 2 of Google’s reCaptcha (“No captcha reCaptcha”). You can use either version but we strongly recommend version 2.
• Added variable {{list-name}} for newsletters and autoresponder messages. Will be replaced with the name of the user’s mailing list.
• The “placeholder” attribute can be added to shortcodes of text fields and simple textareas to generate a HTML placeholder. Example: [bftpro-field-static name placeholder=”Your name”].
• You can now specify different email address to receive your test messages (in “Send test” feature for newsletters and autoresponder emails).
• Further improvements done to prevent sending duplicate emails (such issue has happened to a small number of users).
• Fixed bugs with presets and sending test emails with them.
• Fixed bugs with custom fields (checkboxes) when used in Filter / search subscribers.

As usual, the latest version is sent by newsletter to eligible subscribers. If you have not received it, feel free to send us email. If your free upgrades subscription has expired, you can renew with 60% discount.

WatuPRO version 5.2 is out with a new set of improvements and bug fixes:

• New option lets you not display questions already answered (or only correctly answered) by the user in previous quiz attempts. More info here: https://blog.calendarscripts.info/watupro-dont-display-already-answered-questions-to-logged-in-user/
• New button “Save & Reuse as New” on Add / Edit Question page lets you reuse the question as a template for the next one. This can save you a lot of time if you are creating similar questions.
• A simple snapshot on the admin dashboard (the homepage of your blog admin) will show you the number of quizzes taken today, last 7 days, this month and the percentage up / down accordingly to the previous period + some more stats. The snapshot disappears if you switch WatuPRO to low memory mode.
• The optional progress bar on paginated quizzes can now also show the percentage of completeness
• The basic bar chart now accepts “overview” argument which allows you to show previous attempts for the same user. See the blog post for more details: https://blog.calendarscripts.info/watupro-basic-bar-chart/
• Information about the achieved points & grade per question category will now show in the “View results” page. Note that these stats will be recorded from now on, so you won’t see them for quiz takings completed before applying the new version.
• New option lets you use default points for incorrect / correct answers across the whole system. The setting can be overridden at quiz level. The option does this: when initially loading the form with an answer to a question, the “points” field is prefilled with the default incorrect points. If you click on the “correct” checkbox/radio it auto-fills the default correct number of points, and vice-versus when you uncheck the box. Of course the box content then can be edited and this number can be changed. This can save a lot of time when creating many questions.
• When the “My Quizzes” page is shown with the watupro-myexams shortcode, the “view details” link goes to regular page instead of popup to keep the layout mobile-friendly
• Single-choice and multiple-choice questions now can have their answers arranged in 1, 2, 3, or 4 columns. This is suitable when choices are short or contain only images.
• In the shortcode watupro-myexams you can pass a named argument “reorder_by_latest_taking” to reorder the completed quizzes by latest completed on top. This works together with the sorting argument because the quizzes to complete will remain sorted by it.
• A bridge between WatuPRO and EDD is available: https://blog.calendarscripts.info/watupro-bridge-for-easy-digital-downloads/
• [Intelligence module] New attributes “rank” and “personality” let you limit the expand-personality-result shortcode to only a given result. This lets you manually craft the output if you wish.
• [Intelligence module] Added question category in Edit and Manually Grade Test Results page.
• [Intelligence module] In Manually edit quiz taking -> Configure email section you can use the user info shortcodes with argument user_id=”quiz-taker”
• [Reporting Module] When the tests page is shown with shortcode, the “view details” link goes to regular page instead of popup to keep the layout mobile-friendly
• [Reporting module] The Skills chart can now be sorted by proficiency or alphabetic, and be displayed horizontally or vertically
• [Reporting module]. The shortcode watupror-user-cat-chart now accepts two more options for the “from” parameter: “points” (will show the number of points earned per category), and “percent_max_points” (displays the % points achieved from the maximum points in each category). You can also decide to include survey questions in the chart by passing “include_survey_questions=1”. By default they are not included.
• [Reporting module] The Tests page is optimized, paginated, and made sure to include even tests composed entirely of survey questions.
• Integration with Namaste! LMS now allows filtering students by WatuPRO user group
• Minor improvements to the colors of the buttons in the built-in design themes
• Fixed bug: when “Save and reuse” was used on Match/Matrix questions the old answers were not saved in the new question.
• Fixed bug: when contact details were requested at the end of the quiz the page did not automatically scroll up to reveal the contact fields (the problem occurred only on some installations and on long quiz pages)
• Fixed bug: Survey questions should also return maximum possible points for all the reports that use them
• Fixed bug: when importing questions with tags extra | were added around tags even if those already existed

As always, the updated version is sent out via newsletter to eligible customers. If you did not receive your newsletter, feel free to contact us.

If your free upgrades subscription has expired, you are eligible for renewal with 60% discount. The discount code is sent by newsletter but you can also request it by email.