17Aug/1138
Dashboard Site Notes
Plugin status: Released. Get "Dashboard Site Notes"
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- Creating a note
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- Notes appearing on the dashboard
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- Notes appearing in a custom location
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- Instruction Manual page
Important note for anyone who installed version 1.3.0: Please read my two posts in this thread to fix the problem with the plugin causing your site to run slow and then update to the latest version. Sorry for any inconvenience!
Nearly every WordPress site I've built has something that falls outside the standard WordPress instruction manual. I wrote this plugin as a way to easily add little notes in places where they're needed to keep clients from feeling lost when trying to do one of those custom operations.
August 23rd, 2011 - 03:43
I’ve emailed you a few times. I’m getting an fatal error message after uploading the new update of Admin Dashboard Notes. It was working fine right before the update yesterday. Now I’m getting an error message on Line 242 and it causes every page and post to not work, instead all I see is the error message. I’ve deactivated it for now and everything works as normal. I like using your plugin but it doesn’t work anymore. I’m using the most up to date version of WordPress btw. Any suggestions would be helpful.
August 23rd, 2011 - 14:08
I’m really sorry about that, I must’ve pushed the wrong files. I’m adding a new version later today that will fix that and add the remaining planned features.
September 2nd, 2011 - 14:36
Is it possible to enable the standard custom fields part in the dashboard in your plugin? Then I can turn off the tweetmeme buttons (tweetmeme – false), which appear in every custom post I make as site notes.
Kind Regards,
Peter Luit
September 2nd, 2011 - 16:08
You can edit line 524 in dashboard-site-notes.php which looks like:
‘supports’ => array(‘title’, ‘editor’, ‘excerpt’, ‘page-attributes’ ),
and change it to:
‘supports’ => array(‘title’, ‘editor’, ‘excerpt’, ‘page-attributes’, ‘custom-fields’ ),
And then make sure that it’s also enabled in “Screen Options” on the edit/add page.
I’ll keep that option in mind for the next version.
September 5th, 2011 - 18:33
Hi Ben,
I experienced two things. First of all, I updated some plugins yesterday in my WP site (don’t know which anymore….), but after that no full texts were shown in the posts. Only about 3 lines of text….. Adn that has nothing to do with excerpts, because they were empty anyhow.
Second I tried the things you mentioned above and indeed I could insert custom files to switch off the tweetmeme button, but they remained in their places, no matter wich post I tried to edit.
Could you please comment on both issues?
Thanks very much in advance,
Peter
September 6th, 2011 - 07:44
How do you determine what order the site notes appear on the dashboard? I only have two notes, and I can’t figure out how to make the one I want appear at the top. I’ve tried changing post dates and order, and neither of those seem to make any difference. Surely it’s not just alphabetical, is it?
September 6th, 2011 - 14:39
Expect an update in the next day or two that will let you use “order” to control it. I’m also adding controls for which roles can create notes and for setting your own title for the dashboard widget and instruction manual.
September 6th, 2011 - 14:50
Thanks! Changing the order and being able to rename the title of the dashboard widget are two of the things I was hoping to be able to do. :)
BTW, thank you very much for the creation of this plugin! It’s going to make it a lot easier to train volunteers at our community radio station (where I’m also a volunteer) how to do what needs to be done on the website!
September 6th, 2011 - 13:17
@Rich: same question here. There is a plug in ‘re-order posts’, but it doen’t seem to connect with site notes, although it connects with other custom post types.
October 14th, 2011 - 00:20
Hi, I love you plugin!! I was looking for something as this long time! Just dont know why dont work in new Posts, Ecants or Pages… Problem is just in NEW.
Thank you!
November 8th, 2011 - 22:48
Hi I am also using your plugin and I like it too. But I’m having the same issue with my Site Note not showing in the Add “New” Post screen. I’ve set it for both “Edit” and “New”. Everything else works.
Thanks
November 25th, 2011 - 07:53
it’s a cool plugin, we are just looking for something like this , then we found yours.
btw, i am wondering if this plugin could be more fit for WordPress Multisite?
at present, it seems not enough.
i hope, when multisite enabled, network super admin could create and edit some announcement post by this plugin just at one place on main site,
then all the subsites,no matter by subdomain or subdiretory,will see the announcement news automatically on their admin dashboard…..that will be very convenient for super admin to broadcast something important with just one action,to all subsite users at the same time.
December 16th, 2011 - 17:41
Thanks for the comments! Network-wide notes are a good idea, I’ll put that on my TODO list. I’ve had a new version close to being finished for ages now, but real life keeps getting in the way of releasing it…
December 18th, 2011 - 22:20
I currently am using it for my site. It seems to work quite well the only thing that is strange is that the http://www.krapuul.nl/wp-admin screen doesn’t work if you’re not logged in. I get this:
Warning: array_combine() [function.array-combine]: Both parameters should have at least 1 element in /home/p6681/domains/krapuul.nl/public_html/wp-content/plugins/capsman/includes/manager.php on line 500
Warning: asort() expects parameter 1 to be array, boolean given in /home/p6681/domains/krapuul.nl/public_html/wp-content/plugins/capsman/includes/manager.php on line 509
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/p6681/domains/krapuul.nl/public_html/wp-content/plugins/capsman/includes/manager.php:500) in /home/p6681/domains/krapuul.nl/public_html/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 866
And when I switch the plugin off again wp-admin works fine.
I use about 26 other plugins so that may or not may have something to do with it. But maybe you can check with your wp-admin.
December 18th, 2011 - 22:21
And of course capability manager plugin has something to do with it as well.
January 17th, 2012 - 09:08
Hi Ben,
Is it possible to display notes in the dash board in the Rich Text format not just clean text?
I think it would be awesome to have a check box on each note to be able to set it display in Rich Formatting :)
Anyway – Awesome plugin!
PS. Tested in WP 3.3.1
March 12th, 2012 - 19:26
Hi Ben,
Before I found your site, I put a few suggestions on the WP forum for the plugin. The plugin is fantastic!
Please don’t take my many suggestions negatively. On the contrary, I think that this plugin is the best out there for admin notices and contextual help. A few more features, and it would be unstoppable… :)
Keep up the great work and thanks!
Links to the suggestions on WP forum:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-dashboard-site-notes-feature-request-site-note-of-frontend-of-site-option?replies=1
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-dashboard-site-notes-feature-request-add-option-to-close-notemessage?replies=1
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-dashboard-site-notes-feature-request-instruction-manual-page?replies=1
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-dashboard-site-notes-feature-change-display-options?replies=1
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-dashboard-site-notes-feature-request-exportimport-of-data-and-structure?replies=1
March 14th, 2012 - 22:22
Hello,
we find your plugin incredible, and are using it on one of our sites. Since a recent update we found out that the site becomes very slow (mostly in the admin) and that our database server gets into high utilization whenever we request a admin page.
Tracking that down we found out that the following 2 queries of your extension create that load, both of them take 12secs to complete on our server which has a loot of juice. When these run our mysql server gets into 100% utilization, despite having way larger databases on it than the one for the wordpress site.
See here, that is the server log of the slow queries:
# Query_time: 12.529047 Lock_time: 0.000125 Rows_sent: 1 Rows_examined: 2737491
SET timestamp=1331759407;
SELECT wppm.*,
wpp.*,
wppm_admin_notice.meta_value admin_notice,
wppm_contextual_help.meta_value contextual_help
FROM wp_postmeta wppm
LEFT JOIN wp_posts wpp ON wpp.id = wppm.post_id
LEFT JOIN wp_postmeta wppm_admin_notice ON wppm_admin_notice.post_id = wppm.post_id AND wppm_admin_notice.meta_key = ‘_dsn_admin_notice’
LEFT JOIN wp_postmeta wppm_contextual_help ON wppm_contextual_help.post_id = wppm.post_id AND wppm_contextual_help.meta_key = ‘_dsn_contextual_help’
WHERE
wpp.post_status = ‘publish’
AND wpp.post_type = ‘dsn_note’
AND wppm.meta_key = ‘_dsn_dashboard_widget’ AND wppm.meta_value = ’1′
AND wpp.id IN ( SELECT post_id FROM wp_postmeta wppm_roles WHERE (meta_key = ‘_dsn_role_administrator’ AND meta_value = ’1′) OR (meta_key = ‘_dsn_role_gform_full_access’ AND meta_value = ’1′) OR (meta_key = ‘_dsn_role_translate’ AND meta_value = ’1′) )
GROUP BY wpp.id
ORDER BY wpp.menu_order ASC, wpp.post_title ASC;
# Time: 120314 22:10:20
# Query_time: 12.460805 Lock_time: 0.000151 Rows_sent: 1 Rows_examined: 2737515
SET timestamp=1331759420;
SELECT wppm.*,
wpp.*,
wppm_admin_notice.meta_value admin_notice,
wppm_contextual_help.meta_value contextual_help
FROM wp_postmeta wppm
LEFT JOIN wp_posts wpp ON wpp.id = wppm.post_id
LEFT JOIN wp_postmeta wppm_admin_notice ON wppm_admin_notice.post_id = wppm.post_id AND wppm_admin_notice.meta_key = ‘_dsn_admin_notice’
LEFT JOIN wp_postmeta wppm_contextual_help ON wppm_contextual_help.post_id = wppm.post_id AND wppm_contextual_help.meta_key = ‘_dsn_contextual_help’
WHERE
wpp.post_status = ‘publish’
AND wpp.post_type = ‘dsn_note’
AND wppm.meta_key = ‘_dsn_instruction_manual’ AND wppm.meta_value = ’1′
AND wpp.id IN ( SELECT post_id FROM wp_postmeta wppm_roles WHERE (meta_key = ‘_dsn_role_administrator’ AND meta_value = ’1′) OR (meta_key = ‘_dsn_role_gform_full_access’ AND meta_value = ’1′) OR (meta_key = ‘_dsn_role_translate’ AND meta_value = ’1′) )
GROUP BY wpp.id
ORDER BY wpp.menu_order ASC, wpp.post_title ASC;
To get our site going again with full speed, we had to deactivate your extension. And the effect went away, the load on the database server is again normal.
Please consider revising these 2 queries, as they take a lot of query power and that may create trouble especially for wordpress users on a shared hosting plan.
So that we all of the extensions users may get back to continue using it.
Thanks!
March 15th, 2012 - 15:13
I can confirm this without a doubt.
March 15th, 2012 - 19:57
I did it that way to get it all done in one query instead of multiple queries, but it looks like multiple queries is a better option if some of you are having that problem.
I haven’t seen it take more than a second myself, but I definitely believe you, since it is a pretty intense query.
You can expect this to be changed in the next week or two.
March 15th, 2012 - 20:26
Actually, I just realized why you’re having that problem, and it’s probably not the query itself. If you had version 1.3 installed for long, it probably created loads of duplicate meta keys, which made that query take longer and longer each time someone accessed the admin.
If you need to get the plugin working again ASAP and don’t want to wait for a fix (which will unfortunately take me a week or two to get around to), you can run these two queries:
DELETE FROM wp_postmeta WHERE meta_key = “_dsn_contextual_help” ;
DELETE FROM wp_postmeta WHERE meta_key = “_dsn_admin_notice”;
(replacing wp_postmeta with your post meta table name) and then just go back through your each site note and set those two values again.
Or, ideally, just write a query that deletes all duplicate meta keys with identical post_id, meta_key, and meta_value fields where meta_key is one of those two fields. If someone can post that here, that would be great, since I’m already two hours late in making dinner for my incredibly patient and starving family :)
March 15th, 2012 - 21:31
Please see my replies in the following thread to solve the problem:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-dashboard-site-notes-slowed-my-site-to-a-crawl?replies=11#post-2690214
Unfortunately it will be a while before I can work the fix into an actual plugin update, but for anyone who would like to make the plugin usable again without waiting for that, the solution is there.
March 15th, 2012 - 04:50
Hi Ben, Love your plugin! just have one problem that i’m experiencing.. I’ve found that when plugin is enabled, users with subscriber privilleges experience long loading times, when i was made aware of the situation, I tried to login with subscriber privilleges and moving around the admin pages.. experiencing loading times of over five minutes! when plugin is disabled, there is none of those problems. Has anyone else experienced this?
March 15th, 2012 - 14:49
Yes, we did experience that as well. Read my post above on the 2 SQL Queries that take a lot of DB power, due to their design with subqueries and table linking. Runtime of 1 query is 12secs on our server, which flips out the site as it would be nothing once we deactivated the plugin.
March 15th, 2012 - 19:51
This problem is fixed in the latest version, sorry about that.
March 15th, 2012 - 20:34
Also, see my reply to Frank’s earlier post about speed problems if you’re still having issues.
March 15th, 2012 - 21:31
Please see my replies in the following thread to solve the problem:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-dashboard-site-notes-slowed-my-site-to-a-crawl?replies=11#post-2690214
April 22nd, 2012 - 02:00
I looked for a plugin I remembered from a while back that allowed html formatting and stumbled across yours. What a find ! Just what I wanted.
This is pushing the envelope (along with the gift horse idea), but is there a way to categorize the notes like “future changes”, “from Missy”, “ideas”, etc.? If not, I’ll live, but that would be one more step to the “perfect” plugin, which this is close too, anyway.
Thanks
May 1st, 2012 - 21:27
Honestly, probably not. I’m nearing the point of this plugin doing everything I feel it reasonably should, and with the next major version (which should be out in a month or two) it will almost be there. After that, the only development will probably just be keeping it functional with new versions of WP.
However, the good news is that one of the things I felt it reasonably should do was to have hooks and filters so anyone who wants to can build on it to do something like you requested with just a bit of extra code in your functions.php or wherever.
May 2nd, 2012 - 00:57
Good enough. Perfectly happy with it. Thanks for writing the plugin in the first place.
April 25th, 2012 - 21:29
Hello!
Spanish translation available (es_ES.po and es_ES.mo):
Download address: http://www.gigasize.com/get/vq0zwmcmzkf
Thanks for plugin!
May 1st, 2012 - 21:20
Thanks! I’ll work that into one of the next versions, which I’ve been planning to release any day now for over a month now…
May 16th, 2012 - 08:36
Ben, I know I am being a little pedantic, but would it be possible to have an “edit” button on the Dashboard widget so that edits can be made without going through the normal menu process. Can you also advise if it is possible to set default Note Option so that each note has those defaults. This is by far the best admin notes plugin that I’ve used to date. Thanks for the great work.
August 29th, 2012 - 19:29
Hello Gary
I use Adminimize plugin to hide features so that the non techies can use the back-end.
I moved away from WP Help by Mark Jaquith due to the fact that I couldn’t hide the edit button from users. So if Ben goes that way lets hope its done in a way that Adminimize allows me to exclude.
Ray
p.s. good plugin Ben, very similar to Mr Jaquith’s plugin. But I like yours.
August 12th, 2012 - 18:04
Hello,
I am trying Dashboard Site Notes and I noticed that when I activate the Advanced Access Manager plugin the Site Notes are gone from the main menu and I can’t access them as a admin or any other user.
Can you please look in to it, I would really like to use Site Notes.
Thank you.
October 12th, 2012 - 02:24
I tried to use DSN along with Advanced Access Manager (to hide some links from another users with same access level). But after activating AAM, DSN link gone!. Can you help me solving this kind of problem?
February 24th, 2013 - 04:02
Hi my friend! I want to say that this article is amazing, nice written and include almost all vital infos. I would like to see extra posts like this .
May 13th, 2013 - 02:23
Can you please advice.
For some unknown reason Site Note’s editing menu item mysteriously disappeared from the dashboard menu structure. Everything else is working just fine, the notes already created display on dashboard home. Site notes setting is working also. However, I am unable to edit or add any notes, because of the “missing” editing menu item.
I already deactivated and re-activated Site Notes. No difference. I am cautious to delete and re-install Site Notes, because I might loose all created notes.
I am an eductionist, with some above-average knowledge of WordPress, and unfortunately I am not quite sure what to do next.
It will be much appreciated if you could advice me, because I do find Site Notes an indispensable application. Thanks for a very handy function added to the dashboard.