Well, as usual we've been really busy working on new features and fixes, and this time we have some great changes on our AWS and Importer addons.
MemberPress AWS Addon 1.2
We've refactored our AWS addon in several major ways. Not only has the underlying code been rebuilt for better performance, reliability, and compatibility with both WordPress &Â AWS, but we've also added several new features. Here are just a few of the new features.
- Just as with previous versions, our AWS addon will not only allow you to create expiring links to protected resources on Amazon S3, but will also allow you to embed expiring urls into audio and video players. However, some of our users have experienced problems with the way our addon was embedding the audio and video files. That's why in 1.2 we've made significant enhancements to the audio and video embedding. We've made it fully compatible with WordPress' built in audio and video code (we actually use WordPress' built in video embed code now). This super-tight integration with WordPress' existing audio / video embed code means that now other plugins that style or make other modifications to WordPress' built in video player will work on videos embedded via our MemberPress AWS addon as well.
- MemberPress AWS video fallback formats work now. This means that if you want maximum compatibility across different browsers, you can upload different formats of your audio and video files to Amazon (or use Amazon's Elastic Transcoder to encode additional video formats) and the MemberPress AWS addon will automatically select the best video format for the browser the user is currently using.
- Recently Amazon AWS introduced a new way of “signing” expiring urls, which they call V4 signatures. The MemberPress AWS addon now supports V4 signatures. These new signatures are more secure than the original way Amazon has signed expiring urls but are computationally more complex, so we still recommend you stay with the old signature formats if you can. Some newer Amazon AWS regions only support V4 signatures though, so this is a critical new addition for some of our users. If you decide to use V4 signatures, be prepared to also supply MemberPress AWS with the AWS region that you're using.
- We've increased the overall reliability by utilizing WordPress' built in media player and by using Amazon's official SDK now.
These new changes should also be fairly backwards compatible with older versions of the MemberPress AWS addon and we're really excited for users to have the opportunity to be able to take advantage of the simplicity and new features of MemberPress AWS 1.2!
MemberPress Importer Addon 1.2
We've made several important mods listed below.
- We changed the UI to be simpler. All you have to do now is select the type of data you want to import, select the file, and then pull it in.
- We've added several new upload types including Custom Post Types, Taxonomies, Tags, and Categories. Really, the MemberPress Importer has grown from an addon to just help you import membership specific data to one that will import membership data and any other data in WordPress you can imagine.
- We've also added a ton of fixes and increased stability to make things flow nicely for you.
All in all, the new MemberPress Importer can be used as a membership data import and a general purpose importer for all of your WordPress data.
We're really excited for you to go out and start playing with these new releases, so download and start using them today!
Blair,
Great news on the AWS update. I have been a MemberPress fan for a long time, but the original AWS add-on wasn’t where it needed to be. I have tested the update and all the issues I had are fixed. Works slick. Great job. My goal is to use only the MemberPress plugin to control access to all my content and this update means I can delete yet another plugin.
We’ve been getting some very positive feedback from folks using the new version of our AWS add-on.
Haha … it’s also our goal is for you to only have to use MemberPress for access control. 🙂 So this is great to hear.
Thanks for the feedback … we really appreciate it.