Amr users plugin for user reporting launched

Hi,
I have just installed the User Lists Plugin and it fits perfectly into the site shri.co.uk which also uses subscribe2 and register plus. I have been searching for something like this for a few months now, since my friend (whose site this is) has the country field during registration and it doesn’t get shown in the user listing. There are a few things I noticed I would like to point out…
The register plus plugin reports that this plugin overrides the user notification function (I don’t see how, but it does). Also I get to see only registered users in the list. I would also like to see unconfirmed users. Is there a setting I need to change to achieve this?
Thanks for a very useful plugin.

Thanks Anna-marie for the quick update.
The most immediate feature idea I have is for this plugin to replace the “authors & users” list, since the A&U list as it is currently, is fairly inflexible and limited. I believe that will be a huge help to the WP community
Wish you all the best!
icubyx

Found out I was using an older release. Thanks for all the included fields! Now, it seems when I try to change the configuration, it defaults to the standard and I cannot customize any of the configured lists. There aren’t any instructions, so I’m sure it must be something I’m doing wrong but have no idea what it is. Thanks!

Hi Alan,

I’ll have a look at adding tables – may not be that easy as depends on their database structure (eg: wordpress users and user meta have different structures). Before that though the current version seemed to have broken since testing, so an update will be up shortly with some improved (i hope) admin interface.

At the moment include / exclude is literally just the value or if multiple values, then comma separated (with no spaces)
- Include is an “and” – ie only users who meet all criteria.

I have debated adding some dropdown selection, but some fields can potentially have many values, so difficult to offer with generic coding.

Thanks for a very useful plugin. One small problem – when I use the “export to CSV” function, it works fine, but puts a leading and trailing “\ around all cell contents in the XL file. Any suggestions as to how I might avoid this would be appreciated

Thanks for such a prompt reply Anna-marie. No, it loads into Excel just fine and picks up the extra fields that I put in with Register-Plus. What I’m trying to do is to end up with, for example, just John Doe as the user name in the Excel cell as in your screen shot example rather than the “\John Doe\” that I am getting now. Do I need to set the text delimiter in Excel or somewhere else ?

Sorry to ask what I’m sure is a very basic question.

anna-marie,

Thanks for the reply. Most of them have very similar table structure: main “user” file and secondary “user_meta” file for the details. Would be great to be able to access these too.

Thanks for a great plugin.

Just tried installing the plugin and got this:

Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_ARRAY, expecting ‘)’ in /homepages/8/d285670191/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/amr-users/ameta-includes.php on line 481

Is anyone else getting this fault

Hi Purple Rain – you got lost in my spam queue.

1) goto the settings page – find the field called “number of lists” – enter how ever many lists you want – hit update.
2) create a list that displays the fields that you want – see the existing lists as an example.
- scroll down to to the ym_status field – in the “include” column enter Inactive – click update
- view your list.

Plugin needs PHP version 5.2 at least – see http://au.php.net/filter_var. The function is used for validation.

Will update readme – requirement should have been stated there – sorry.

G What a GREAT plugin!
Just what I was looking for.
Is there a way to make the list show up on a page, a page that subscribers can see?

And pleeease tell me you’re planning on a “search that member”-option?

Hi Micke,

At moment, no only admin access available – in principle easy to add for public or “logged in access” but me being me, I need to think through how best an admin user can specify which lists an editor is allowed to add to a page and then of course code the necessary forms etc.
I have number of plugins on the go, but stay tuned, features will come.

Yes, search member would be good – I’ll include it on the wish list, but for now a “find” on the web page of a full listing may have to suffice! !

Kunal,
I have not tried it on either as I don’t use them yet. There is talk of Mu and wp merging and indeed the DB is same/similar, so it might work if the same/similar functions exist.

http://codex.wordpress.org/WPMU_Database_Description

As I understand it bbpress also uses same tables, http://bbpress.org/documentation/integration-with-wordpress/ so again it would depend on whether the same function calls are used.

Give it a try and let us know how you go.

Thanks for this plugin, it has filled a need I had for a client site. However, I’d like to request 2 important features and one “Wish List’ feature

1. I would like roles in addition to user levels to be included. I have several custom roles that all have the same user level but would like to break them out.

2. I’d like to be able to exclude users that have no value for a given item.

My wish list item would be the ability to sort and filter the reports based on the fields selected.

Hi!

Very nice plugin! Thank you!
Just a couple of things if I may.

Regarding “\ being appended to all entries, you can either use anna-marie’s suggestion of changing the delimiter, or if the file is already in columns when you open it with excel etc., you can simply use find/replace, leaving the replace string blank, to search for and replace all occurrences.

It would be nice if column titles were also exported in the csv file, the work-around is to copy them from your browser and paste them into the top row (after inserting a row), but it is just one more step.

Finally, I would also like to see roles included in the export.

HI Cam and others,
csv quotes
I don’t understand why people do not want the quotes ? Clearly unless you are absolutely sure that none of the data has any spaces etc in it, you will need the quotes. Any package that can load csv files should handle the quotes. Please educate me as to why this seems to be a problem for some people?

columns and roles
I have begun a wish list post for the next time I have some time to work on this. See http://webdesign.anmari.com/amr-user-lists-feature-requests-and-wishlist/

Hi Cam,

Yes I also only learnt more about csv when attempting to deal with various unusual cell contents, and it would appear that not all implementations do the same thing, which is why I looked into it further.

Due to the additional code required to deal with funny values in cells, I took the easy route of this advice from the wiki entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values:

Fields may always be enclosed within double-quote characters, whether necessary or not.

Clean Excel:

In Excel, in the text import wizard, you should see a text qualifier field see http://office.microsoft.com/training/Training.aspx?AssetID=RP011801211033&CTT=6&Origin=RC011801181033.

When that is set to double quotes, it should load the values as one expect – ie ending up with just the cell values as one expects – no search and replace required.

G’day kiwicam – thanks for the quick reply!

Whoops csv should still be there – looks like it got lost in allowing for front end not to have a csv export. Yup – I also like to have wordpress reconfigured – should have changed to use get_bloginfo(’siteurl’) not ‘url’ – wil post a fix soon.
Fix uploaded. If your install is not picking it up, but you can see it at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/amr-users/, then use my plugin amr-impatient http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/amr-impatient/

You can access older versions of any plugin via the wordpress download page http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/amr-users/download/

You’re right – I have dug deeper and I think it some misleading bits of code.

’siteurl’ is deprecated and is defaulting to ‘home’, so it appears wp_url (which calls ‘get_option(’siturl’) !!) must be used to accommodate those who have WP_SITEURL defined AND those who do not
WP_SITEURL does not get defined if not already defined in wp-config, unlike WP_HOME etc

So there you have it! Another update will be done this evening!

PS See http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/11159

I had that happen at one stage too when moving. When recreated, it looks it happens when no wp_siteurl defined in config.php and wordpress relocated, and using get_option….I have changed code to use get_bloginfo(wpurl) and is okay my side with what I think is your setup.

So…..
either define wp_siteurl in your wp-config file
or another upgrade should be available soon

Hi!

Problem fixed!

Thank you!!

The plugin offers an EXPORT to csv, not an import.

Hi Anna-Marie

Thanks for a great plugin. When I have it working properly I will be along to Paypal to buy you drink!

I have successfully customised the 3 default lists. However, I need to show 8 lists and although you have given us the box in which you set the number of lists, when I click on the configure link for list 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8 I get just the headings for the configuration table (e.g. field name, display order, include etc) but no rows / fields below it.

I have searched high and low through the documentation but cannot find anything obvious, and looking through the code is not much good as I am not really a developer (which is why I use Wordpress!!).

Hope you can help. I have tried about 5 other plugins to try and achieve a members list and all of them seem to require ‘code surgery’ and are not precise about how to do it, so I am kind of hoping there is just something simple I have missed here.

Cheers, Colin
Hastings, England

Anna-Marie

Thanks for such a quick response. That worked a treat. Wondered if you could comment on something else. I tried using the Nice Names for User Fields and every time I tried to save an amendment it would go back to the previous settings. Is this simply a matter of permissions or something else? Not crucial but I would like to be able to shorten some of the names so that the column headings don’t take up so much space.
Thanks again
Colin
Hastings, England

…well Anna-Marie, when you find a developer that’s so helpful and quick, you really don’t want to p*ss them off. You are a complete contrast to the last plugin developer I contacted for support, who picked holes in what I was trying to do on the assumption that everyone who uses Wordpress should be an experienced developer! Thanks again.
Colin
Hastings, England

HI Micke ….. I may work on something like that soon. I have had another request or 2 for something similar. See http://webdesign.anmari.com/search-for-members-or-users/ and comment with specifics of what you are thinking of.

Hi Cam,
I think it relates to this http://webdesign.anmari.com/wordpress-user-lists/#comment-3901. You probably do not have WP_SITEURL defined in config.php. (Not essential). My plugin checks for non definition and if not defined, then defines it from the options stored in the db to make it consistent with other constants and for speed, rather than doing a db call each time. I suppose one could argue that the plugin should then only do it on it’s pages so it does not stop you updating it via the settings? I’ll keep it in mind next time I’m working on it.

A wp patch will hopefully be in a future wordpress release: see http://lists.automattic.com/pipermail/wp-trac/2009-November/058200.html

I like your plugin very much!
I’m running a website for my cycling club based on wordpress. What i want to implement is a page accessible only for registered members of the club (using the Alexander Schneider’s UAM (http://www.gm-alex.de/projects/wordpress/plugins/user-access-manager/) which shall display an address list of all the members. I expanded the users profile with some custom fields following Justin Tadlock’s user profile extension tutorial (http://justintadlock.com/archives/2009/09/10/adding-and-using-custom-user-profile-fields).
So far, all works nicely; all users can maintain their address info in their profile, and your plugin allows me to design a report with these custom fields. brilliant!

There are just 2 bits missing to success:
The more important one: Is there a way to display the [users: Details] of your plugin on a page? performance is not much of an issue, the list wont ecceed 100 users.

The less important one: i want only members of the club to be diplayed, but we also have guests registered as users so they can access forums and such. I can identify them by another custom field. Is there a way to filter the user list so it contains only users that have a flag of some kind set?

It would be great if you had a solution for this… and thanks again for your work!

Martin

Hi Anna-Marie,

thanks for the reply! 2 clear cases of rtfm on my side it seems…
It worked like a charm, thanks!

Martin

Just downloaded the latest version of the plugin and great to see the titles are there but the backslashes and quotes are still there as well.

See http://webdesign.anmari.com/wordpress-user-lists/comment-page-1/#comment-3904.

Hi, I’m not sure if you got my quest about errors when trying to modify lists or change field names, but I realized I didn’t give much info. My site is using PHP Version 5.2.8, and I just upgraded to the WordPress 2.9.1.

Here’s what happens if I try to update a list:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function filter_var() in …/wp-content/plugins/amr-users/ameta-admin.php on line 215

Here’s what I get if I try to change field names:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function filter_var() in …/wp-content/plugins/amr-users/ameta-admin.php on line 101

Hi there.

I think the amr-users pluging is exactly what I’m looking for.

Unfortunately, the activation fails with and error message “Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.”

I’m using Wordpress 2.9.1 and amr-users 1.4.5.

I’ve tried it on two different wordpress installs. Any idea what’s happening?

In advance, thanks for your reply Anne-Marie!

-sveinh

Hi Adam,

It is hard doing plugin development if one has to cater for old or incomplete versions of PHP – I do tend to assume a fairly reasonable setup and would have thought that those validation functions should be there!

If you think of changing, my hosts are great they have been very responsive when I have wanted to play around with different Pear modules etc. I have been with them for about 10 years now – http://webdesign.anmari.com/hosting/

There is also a major updated coming – I may make the validation dependent on filter function existence…… but then there may well be something else!

Hi Adam…
I appreciate your comments and agree that in an ideal world (especially if one were getting paid!) there would be all sorts of support tools available with each plugin.

But time is precious – I find many people do not bother reading the documentation – they rather just give it a go and then log a problem if it fails. I have tried detecting inadequate php versions programatically in other plugins, but sometimes it just won’t parse if it encounters the functionality in question. Sometimes I do not even know that I am using something that other older php users do not have, or that some hosts may not have installed ! (until they log a problem that is).

Many users are supremely non technical (you should see some of the questions I get!) and would have no idea how to check. Several don’t bother checking anyway even when the requirements are noted in my various plugin’s readmes ) but just ‘try’ …)

That said I’ll highlight the requirements more in the next release and include for this who have no idea how to check (probably don’t have access like you do) a link to http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-php-info/

Hi

This plugin looks great but after reading through all the comments I can’t work out the following:

Your default Users: Member status and dates listing shows the following exclusion:

Excluding where: user_level=10 or 8,

However I cannot find the user_level option anywhere to make use of this in my own custom list

Digging into my user_meta table I can see that the default wp_user_level field is actually stored as myTableprefix_user_level (not sure why) so do you think this might be the reason I am not seeing the user_level option?

Lastly I am using Excel 2003 and cannot get past the back slashes issues even when importing as text and using doube quotes etc like some others.

Hi again

I don’t have the option of adding anything in the capability-subscriber field as it is not shown in your plugin anywhere?

There seems to be something fundamently wrong somewhere else – for example if I go into Configure list 2: Users: Member status and dates I can see the following:

Field Name Display Order Include
User Name 1
Registration Date 2
3
4
5
6
7
User Status active

i.e. there are blank fields at 3,4,5,6,7

I will have a look through your plugin code now as I have a suspicion you are searching for fields using the standard wp_ naming convention hence why these are not being shown with my custom_wptable_ naming style.

As for Excel textothers others are having the same issues but once I get this working I will also look into this and post anything I find for both issues

BTW thanks again for this great plugin!!!

Hey

Thanks again for trying to help me – it is greatly appreciated!

I have saved the nice names yes and don’t see the capability-subscriber field in there either.

In my myTable_usermeta I have the following values:

meta_key myTable_capabilities
meta_value a:1:{s:22:”subscriber”;b:1;}

So I definitly have some ’subscriber’ users. Any more ideas?

Btw if you need a beta tester for your new version then I am happy to help you out – just email me.

I will try disabling my various othere plugins one by one and see where that gets me – always fun

The site I plan to use this on is set up to support a top secret WP plugin that we are beta testing currrently and hope to have launched within 4-6 weeks. I can email you some further details but don’t want to discuss this publicly for obvious reasons. With the site not being launched I will not be able to stress test it like your 10,000 user site but as a fellow WP plugin developer myself I should be able to spot any issues etc ok.

Once the plugin is launched the site should get many 100s or 1000s of users but I can’t make plans to launch until I know I can manage my users and their accounts efficiently and your plugin almost answers all my prayers!

I will deal with the Excel issue later down the line

Oh my andy – that’s two rather obvious bugs – not allowed on my plugins! The second one is copied code and ran without error on my system because it called the other plugin’s uninstall.

They will be fixed in next release due soon… still testing and fixing it!.

Hi anna-marie

I have installed this plugin with the intention of 2 things.

A it is viewed on the frontend and b it can display extra profile fields.

I have added extra fields using ‘cimy extra user fields’. But it doesnt show up as an option to display in the list

Is there something i am doing wrong?

Other than posting twice… No it is not you.

I loaded the Cimy plugin to see what it does. Unfortunately it is not using the wordpress user meta table for the extra fields. It creates it’s own custom tables, one of which does essentially the same thing. From a design point of view, this is not a great decision. If one uses wordpress DB and functions as much as possible, it facilitates use of the other wordpress features or plugins (such as mine!). Consider dropping a comment by the author. It should be an easy change and would make the plugin more wordpress compatible.

If you are not too attached to Cimy, use the “Register Plus” . I have used this before for other websites and tested it with my plugin. It created the extra fields using the user meta table (and so the fields appear in the user list plugin lists) and created them very sweetly in the registration page (if you want them there!).

A future version may allow one to specify extra tables keyed by user id (or some such to such) but this may be a while. Better to use register plus.

Dear Jon,
maybe it’s late at night where you are!

If you go to the settings, you will see the lists are numbered. I have given 3 example lists but you should create or configure as many or as little as you wish.

In the shortcode you then need to choose which list, using list=1 or list=2 or list=3 etc. So n represents a number, you are not meant literally to put an ‘n’. The message is telling you that you have no list ‘n’ configured!