Parse.ly Plugin 3.14: New Release and Default Version

We are delighted to announce that the Parse.ly plugin version 3.14 will become available in VIP staging and production environments on Tuesday, March 12, 2024. Before using it in production, we recommend testing the new release in staging.

This release will become the default in production on Tuesday, March 19, 2024, and all non-pinned environments will be auto-upgraded to this version. These changes do not affect customers who don’t use wp-parsely, or use an integration method outside of mu-plugins.

What’s new

• The new smart linking feature can automatically embed related links within a block or an entire post. It uses Parse.ly AI to identify the most relevant and high-performing content on your site, and automatically embeds them as links in the post. Not only does this save you time otherwise spent finding related content, but embedded links improve recirculation and increase traffic and engagement across your site. This feature is entirely opt-in, as are all our other AI features.
• The new option to use full metadata for non-posts helps Parse.ly customers see metadata for non-posts in their Parse.ly dashboard. For questions or support on this new capability, please contact support@parsely.com.
• New and improved look for the Content Helper! In the last few months we’ve introduced several pre-publishing tools that are powered by AI, and with this release we are making it easier for you to publish faster in one view, and see how your work is performing in another view. Our goal is to simplify and streamline your experience in the WordPress block editor so you can work more efficiently, and we hope this updated user interface will help with that!
• To complement all this work, we made internal changes to enable our use of the latest version of the Parse.ly AI API, which should improve the quality of suggestions and also allow for additional features in the future.

Parse.ly Plugin 3.13: New Release and Default Version

We are delighted to announce that the Parse.ly plugin version 3.13 will become available in VIP staging and production environments on Tuesday, January 23, 2023. Before using it in production, we recommend testing the new release in staging.

This release will become the default in production on Tuesday, January 30, 2023, and all non-pinned environments will be auto-upgraded to this version. These changes do not affect customers who don’t use wp-parsely, or use an integration method outside of mu-plugins.

What’s new

• The Content Helper now remembers your settings. No need to select the same filters over and over again!
• As part of the Content Helper, we’ve added a new Excerpt Generator feature which quickly and easily generates an SEO-optimized excerpt of your post or page.
• The Content Helper Title Suggestions feature (available only in certain installations) now allows you to specify the tone and persona of the titles to be generated. If none of the predefined tones and personas are a good fit for what you’re working on, it is possible to set custom ones.
• To complement all this work, some bug fixes and numerous other smaller improvements have been added to this release.

New Release and Default Version: wp-parsely 3.12

wp-parsely 3.12 will become available in VIP staging and production environments on Tuesday, December 5, 2023. Before using it in production, we recommend testing the new release in staging.

wp-parsely 3.12 will become the default version in production on Tuesday, December 12, 2023, and all non-pinned environments will be auto-upgraded to this version. These changes do not affect customers who don’t use wp-parsely, or use an integration method outside of mu-plugins.

This is mainly a maintenance release, which adds an experimental feature that will be enabled in certain installations.

New Release and Default Version: wp-parsely 3.11

wp-parsely 3.11 will become available in VIP staging and production environments on Tuesday, November 14, 2023. Before using it in production, we recommend testing the new release in staging.

wp-parsely 3.11 will become the default version in production on Tuesday, November 21, 2023, and all non-pinned environments will be auto-upgraded to this version. These changes do not affect customers who don’t use wp-parsely, or use an integration method outside of mu-plugins.

What’s new

In this release, the Parse.ly Content Helper has received some major improvements. Notably:

• The Dashboard Widget now displays 5 results by default and supports pagination for viewing even more results.
• The Content Helper Sidebar was enhanced with the same filters that are present in the Dashboard Widget. This now permits viewing performance data and related top posts for a wider range of periods, as well as viewing related top posts by Avg. Time in addition to Page Views.
• The Related Top Posts panel now allows for fine-grained filtering. You have the option to select filtering by Tag, Section or Author, and the ability to specify the value to filter by (Page Views and Avg. Time). This new feature gives granular control in filtering results like never before.
• The Dashboard Widget and Sidebar now offer more time period selections for filters. The new additions are last 10 minutes and last 1, 2, and 4 hours.

Other notable changes include:

• Improved credentials validation in the plugin settings page.
• As it didn’t influence results, the “boost” field was removed from the Recommendations Block and Recommendations Widget.
• Added support for 9 Post Types that were supported by Parse.ly but missing from the plugin.

New Release and Default Version: wp-parsely 3.10

wp-parsely 3.10 will become available in VIP staging and production environments on Tuesday, September 26 2023. Before using it in production, we recommend testing the new release in staging.

wp-parsely 3.10 will become the default version in production on Tuesday, October 3, 2023, and all non-pinned environments will be auto-upgraded to this version. These changes do not affect customers who don’t use wp-parsely, or use an integration method outside of mu-plugins.

What’s new

• In the Content Helper’s Dashboard Widget, you can now change time periods to show last 24 hours, last 7 days, and last 30 days. You can also view performance for Page Views or Avg. Engaged Time.
• The codebase was upgraded to React 18 and all dependency debt issues were resolved.
• The code’s adherence to WordPress and VIP Coding Standards was improved by upgrading to WPCS and VIPCS 3.
• Some bugs were fixed.

New Release and Default Version: wp-parsely 3.9

wp-parsely 3.9 will become available in VIP staging and production environments on Tuesday, September 5 2023. Before using it in production, we recommend testing the new release in staging.

wp-parsely 3.9 will become the default version in production on Tuesday, September 12, 2023, and all non-pinned environments will be auto-upgraded to this version. These changes do not affect customers who don’t use wp-parsely, or use an integration method outside of mu-plugins.

What’s new in wp-parsely 3.9

Here are some of the enhancements that are present in the new version:

New features

• The plugin now provides filters for disabling Content Helper features, allowing you to disable the Parse.ly Content Helper partly or entirely.
• The plugin now automatically tracks Custom Post Types by default. This functionality is only available to new plugin installations. Existing installations will continue to work as before.
• Improvements were made to the settings page that include small UI updates, obsolete options removal, and some basic validation functionality.
• Plugin itm_source strings are now appended to URLs that come from the plugin, allowing you to associate page visits to the plugin.

Optimizations and quality improvements

There are dozens of improvements in this release to keep our code updated, improve its coherence, improve automated testing, and fix bugs. Some notable ones are:

• Preventing plugin settings from getting saved more often than they should, saving unneeded trips to the database.
• Eliminating unneeded calls to the Parse.ly API, which should result in faster Content Helper operation under certain cases.
• Bug fixes to our Recommendations Block.
• Merging 100 dependency updates into our codebase.

New Release and Default Version: wp-parsely 3.8

wp-parsely 3.8 is now available in production and staging environments. Before using it in production, we recommend that all customers test the new release in staging.

wp-parsely 3.8 will become the default version in production on Tuesday March 14 2023, and all non-pinned environments will be auto-upgraded to this version. Please note that the auto-upgrade has already taken place in staging environments.

Those changes do not affect customers who don’t use wp-parsely, or use an integration method outside of mu-plugins.

What’s New

• The Track Logged-in Users option is now off by default.
• The Recrawl and Advanced settings options are now displayed by default, in separate tabs.

To complement the release, we also made numerous smaller improvements and bug fixes.

The full changelog of the release can be found here.

New Release and Default Version: wp-parsely 3.7

wp-parsely 3.7 is now available in production and staging environments. Before using it in production, we recommend all customers test the new release in staging.

wp-parsely 3.7 will become the default version in production on Tuesday March 7 2023, and all non-pinned environments will be auto-upgraded to this version. Please note that the auto-upgrade has already taken place in staging environments.

Those changes do not affect customers who don’t use wp-parsely, or use an integration method outside of mu-plugins.

What’s New

The Parse.ly Content Helper now offers a Dashboard Widget that shows the website’s 3 top posts in the last 7 days.

The Parse.ly Content Helper is also available when viewing Post Listings. There, we’ve added a Parse.ly Stats column that shows page views, visitors and average time for every published post.

To complement the release, we also made numerous smaller improvements and bug fixes.

To learn more about the Parse.ly Content Helper, we encourage everyone to visit its documentation page.

The full changelog of the release can be found here.

New Release and Default Version: wp-parsely 3.6

wp-parsely 3.6 is now available in production and staging environments. Before using it in production, we recommend all customers to test the new release in staging.

wp-parsely 3.6 will become the default version in production on Tuesday January 17 2023, and all non-pinned environments will be auto-upgraded to wp-parsely 3.6. Please note that the auto-upgrade to wp-parsely 3.6 has already taken place in staging environments.

Those changes do not affect customers who don’t use wp-parsely, or use an integration method outside of mu-plugins.

What’s New

The highlight of this release is the redesigned Content Helper, which now features 2 panels. The original data shown by the Content Helper was converted into a redesigned Related Top-Performing Posts panel.

We’ve also added the new Performance Details panel, which shows performance metrics about the post or page currently being edited, such as:

• Number of views and visitors.
• Average time spent on the page by visitors.
• Referrer data, including direct visits.

To complement the release, we’ve also improved the plugin’s settings page, our inbuilt support for the Co-Authors Plus plugin, and fixed some bugs.

To learn more about the Content Helper, we encourage everyone to visit its documentation page.

The full changelog of the release can be found here.

Release of wp-parsely 3.5.2 and Related VIP Platform Upgrades

Release of wp-parsely 3.5.2

We have released wp-parsely 3.5.2 which will land into staging on Tuesday 4 October.

This is a maintenance release that:

• Improves the Content Helper’s error handling and messages.
• Implements loading the plugin’s options using sensible defaults (when needed) in parts of the code where this was not yet supported.

IMPORTANT: Customers who use integrations (Facebook Instant Articles, Google AMP, and Google Web Stories) with wp-parsely should definitely test this release as it refactors related code.

Upcoming wp-parsely Upgrades on the VIP Platform

Here is a timeline for the upcoming wp-parsely upgrades on the VIP platform:

4 October

• Default wp-parsely version gets upgraded to 3.5.1 in production (already available in staging).
• wp-parsely 3.5.2 lands into staging.

11 October

• wp-parsely 3.5.2 lands into production.

This effectively means that wp-parsely 3.5.2 will become the default version for production sites on 11 October.