Hi WPDers. We are moving the WPD plumbing to a new server provider. This move does not affect your sites, but it does affect how fast our service (the management interface you use) responds every time you do something. You will also notice much faster site installation times. We have always used dedicated servers for fastest response, but noticed that our previous server provider's response times were slowing down dramatically and inconveniencing you - our users. So we have taken fast action to fix it! You should notice the speedup immediately.

As you may know we were experiencing a bad bug in TrafficTrappers, which has now been resolved. You can now log back into your Traffic Trappers account and generate new articles.

This month we released a new version of our Shopping Poster! This version replaced the discontinued Yahoo! Shopping API with the Amazon API. If you are already using the Shopping Poster, no additional installations are required. Simply replenish your post inventory if you are using the Supervised Posts option. If you have any questions about this new version, please submit a ticket at www.wpdirect.com/support.

WPdirect.com was down for a little under an hour this afternoon, around 3:00-4:00 PM Eastern Standard Time due to a problem our host was experiencing. Please note that if you responded to any tickets by email during this period, we may not have received your reply. This outage did not affect your WPD managed websites in any way, and it did not affect automated posting schedules. If you have any questions about this outage, please submit a ticket to support@wpdirect.com from the email account you use as your login ID, or at www.wpdirect.com/support. Regards, The WPD Team

As some of you may have noticed, a portion of our WPD users were unable to log in for a few hours overnight and this morning (Boston time). I'd like to thank the customers who notified us of the issue immediately, and also our excellent support and development staff that was able to resolve the problem so quickly. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. You may have also noticed a new look on parts of our public-facing site. We are in the process of redesigning it to make it more friendly to visitors and new customers and hope you enjoy the new look! Regards, Peter Nowicki Customer Support Manager WPDirect.com

The support desk, including Platinum Chat, will be closed on the following days: Nov 25: US Thanksgiving (Thursday) Dec 24: Christmas Eve (Friday) Dec 25: Christmas Day (Saturday) Jan 1, 2011: New Year's Day (Saturday) Happy Holidays from the WPD Support Team!

A number of WPD accounts are on a server that is being repaired for the next few hours. We apologize for the inconvenience! (posted 11.18.10 @ 3:45pm EDT)

We just rolled out two new features/fixes! - 3.0 automatic upgrade is now available on Website Settings - Manage Plugins page in WPD is now completely updated (the "Activate" button will now upload/install/activate the plugin even if it doesn't exist already) Thanks, The WPD Team

We are happy to announce a host of functionality and bug fixes to WordPressDirect that are now live for all customers! Please see below. - The WordPressDirect Team NEW FEATURES & BUG FIXES TO WORDPRESSDIRECT AS OF 7/30/2010 * Google Analytics functionality has been added to the WordPressDirect dashboard, accessible via the dashboard's sidebar * Stats page is now able to show data imported from Analytics * Wordpress 3.0 is supported and used as default version on all new installations * All WPD plugins have been successfully tested on WP3.0 * Buoyant plugin bug fix * PrettyLink bug fix * W3 Total Cache has been set to clear the cache with Analytics and with Website Settings updates * W3 Total Cache error messages have been removed by automatically editing .htaccess * FancyBox Gallery has been removed from the plugin mix * RSS Poster bug fixes * WPD is now displaying dots in the "FTP Password" field instead of showing a blank field (support staff still sees the passwords). * Bug fix to allow user accounts to use autoposter licenses * Error Handling for the MyFiles area when the FTP information has been corrected

The WPD Support Desk will be closed on July 5th for the Independence Day Holiday in the US. However, we will be open on July 3rd and 4th. To all our US customers, Happy Independence Day! Thanks, The WPD Team

Our support desk will be closed from June 22-24 (Tuesday - Thursday) so that our staff can focus on system improvements for our next release. We apologize for the inconvenience! If your matter is urgent, please submit your ticket before 7am EST on Tuesday, June 22. Otherwise you can expect a reply by June 25 (Friday). Thanks for understanding, and we hope you will like the great new features we are working on for the next release! Regards, Peter Nowicki Customer Support Manager WPDirect.com

We are pleased to announce the Maintenance Release 2.1.1 of WordPressDirect!  This release includes bug fixes and new functionality.

What's new in this release:

1.  Login Session & Timeout
    Timeout issue is resolved. Users can expect a longer session to avoid losing work or being forced to log in again.

2.  New version of Ads Plugins with better support for OfferTrappers
    Ads plugin now better handles import of sales offers through Offer Trappers.  Repaired bug that leaves offer blank in rare circumstances.

3.  New version of AIM content
    Update to shopping poster to account for array overflow issue.  Modification to Veoh poster to ensure conformity to Veoh posting access policy.

4.  Editing Niches or Website Category types for Sub-Users
    Enabled ability for non-root account users (set up through multi-user access system in platinum accounts) to change website categories and niche categories.

5.  Sub-User access changes
    Default access reset to equivalent of root access less multi-user creation.
    Removed 'staff' level access to not include managing saved logons. 
    Sub-User access to ticket submission enabled.

6.  Chat for Platinum members
    New feature. Includes provide-support chat functionality and button.
       
7.  Support for Wordpress 2.9.1
    Tested standard WPD plugins to ensure compatibility with Wordpress 2.9.1.

8.  Fix for the Browse Account error being caused by FTP protocol
    Enabled ability to browse the entire contents of a domain to select the correct folder for site installation.

9.  New internal licensing system for the autoposters
    Replaced 3rd party licensing with proprietary licensing software.

To All Our Valued Customers:

Please make sure that all of your WPD blogs are running Wordpress version 2.8.4. It's important to upgrade to this version if you haven't already, as this will repair certain security holes in earlier versions of Wordpress.

This can be done automatically on the Website Settings page in your WPD account, under the Advanced Settings section (see this screenshot: http://grab.by/1mYW).

PLEASE NOTE: Currently, we do not support versions newer than 2.8.4. If you upgrade to a later version by performing the upgrade through Wordpress directly (at www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin), your blog may not work correctly with WPD. Please be sure to only upgrade your Wordpress version via our website (wpdirect.com).

Happy Holidays!
The WPD Team

The WPD Support Desk will be closed Thursday, December 24, through Friday, Dec 25, for Christmas, and then again on Thursday, Dec 31, through Friday, Jan 1 (2010) for the New Years holidays.

Please note that the Support Desk will be closed for a 48 hour period starting at midnight (Eastern Standard Time) on both of the above occasions.

Happy Holidays!
The WPD Team

The WPD Support Desk will be closed on Thursday, November 26, for the Thanksgiving Holiday (US).  Please not that the Support Desk will be closed for 24 hours starting at midnight (Eastern Standard Time).

Due to a recent worm that has been attacking older versions of Wordpress, we recommend that you upgrade your blogs as soon as possible (we now support Wordpress 2.8.4!).

Please upgrade all your WPD blogs as soon as you can to minimize your risk of falling victim to a worm attack.  Instructions on how to do this with the click of the button can be found in the following Q&A: Can I upgrade to the latest version of WordPress?

Thanks!
The WPDirect.com Team

Please note that this upcoming weekend, support hours will be reduced for the Labor Day holiday in the US.  Our hours on Saturday and Sunday will be reduced, and on Monday (Sept 7) no support will be available.  Please allow for a delay when submitting tickets until Tuesday, September 8.

Regards,
The WPD Team

We are pleased to announce that as of this week we fully support Wordpress up to the latest version, 2.8.2!   This will now be the standard version for new installs, and you can upgrade your existing blog to 2.8.2 by following the simple instructions on this page: http://ask.wpdirect.com/question/179

We have tagged the above question with the "New Features" label.  Going forward you can check up on our latest features via the Q&A board at this URL:
http://ask.wpdirect.com/questions/tag/new+features

Please bookmark it, and stay tuned for further updates!

Regards,

Peter Nowicki
Customer Service Manager
WPDirect.com

We are excited to announce the launch of the WordPressDirect Forum. Come and share! You can register and enjoy at http://forum.wordpressdirect.com/

For the last few weeks, we were getting a lot of tickets from users getting incorrect locations due to browsing.  People getting it wrong was the number 1 issue we were seeing in tickets. 

As a result, we've implemented a change to the account location function to determine the location without having to browse.  The system uses 4 different cases to determine it and if all 4 fail, it will then display the browse button as shown in the videos.

We had a small bug in this about 6 hours ago which is now fixed and it appears to be working properly in all cases.  Overall, we can now see that the total number of installation tickets has fallen drastically due to this change.

Awesome!

So, to be clear, at Step 2, fill the form with your details and see if it can determine where on your host the site should be placed. Otherwise it will ask you to browse to the folder.  

Our tutorial videos will be updated soon to reflect this change.

The new version of PLR Poster software has been released for intallation on your sites.  It corrects a signifiant usability issue we discovered with the previous version. The tutorial video is now posted in the How-It-Works section and applies to this newly released version. 

PLEASE don't reply to email announcements you get from Tickets you have filed.  If you do, it creates NEW TICKETS and that keeps us from getting to the real ones you want answered.

FOR INSTALLATION TROUBLE: Many questions can be avoided by watching Tutorial #2 (addon domain) in the How-It-Works section.  This applies ONLY if you have more than one domain in your hosting account.  If you only have ONE domain in your hosting account, Tutorial #5 and Ed Dale's Day 6 video show you the same process.  Please watch it FULL SCREEN using the menu. (open this to get link to video)

Please specify whether we are hosting your site or whether you are.  If you are, please tell us 1.) Do you have more than one domain on your hosting account. and 2.) Did you use WHM to setup this domain at all?  Then paste the installation folder you used (from the field in site settings) into the ticket.