Notice: Livefyre plugin deprecated

This notice relates to the following platforms: WordPress.com, VIP Go

The Livefyre service was acquired by Adobe in March 2016. Since then, they’ve modified their product lineup.

The Livefyre WordPress plugin hasn’t been updated or maintained since version 1.3 was released in 2016, and support has ended for the plugin. Adobe no longer makes reference to the plugin in their documentation and is, instead, encouraging clients to use their Enterprise Livefyre service with an alternative implementation process.

Additionally, on November 30, Adobe plans to block calls made via HTTP, which the plugin uses.

We plan to proactively patch the shared plugin on the WordPress.com VIP platform, and have provided patches via pull request for sites on VIP Go, so that calls are made via HTTPS. This should allow the plugin to continue to function in the short term.

Long-term, this plugin has been deprecated and we recommend finding an alternative. The Livefyre plugin can be used in a number of ways – If you are looking for a recommendation, please open a support ticket, and let us know how you are currently using the plugin.

If you have any questions, please let us know, and we’ll be happy to help.

Welcome Laterpay, Our New Technology Partner!

This notice relates to the following platforms: WordPress.com VIP, VIP Go

We are pleased to announce our latest technical integration, LaterPay which is now available as a WordPress plugin.

LaterPay offers publishers a frictionless deferred payment approach to monetization that saves users time and increases conversions. Instead of requiring upfront registration and payment – which derails over 98 percent of all intended purchases – LaterPay defers this process until customer purchases across websites reach a $5 threshold. With this approach, publishers can simultaneously expand existing subscription models, increase their paying customer base, and improve their user experience.

With LaterPay, you can choose from a number of monetization solutions that best suit your needs. For instance, you can prompt users to purchase a specific article, timed access to content, or a full subscription. Single purchases and time passes complement the full subscription model by pulling new potential subscribers into the publisher’s ecosystem while generating incremental revenues.

On the WordPress.com platform, you can access the LaterPay plugin via the shared plugins repository, using wpcom_vip_load_plugin() like this:

wpcom_vip_load_plugin( 'laterpay' );

For VIP Go, you can install LaterPay by adding the latest version to your plugins folder. The plugin can be downloaded from WordPress.org.

If you’re interested in exploring or implementing LaterPay as part of your monetization flow, reach out to the VIP team.

Loading Plugins From Your Theme

As of today, you can now use wpcom_vip_load_plugin() to load plugins that are bundled within your theme!

For WordPress.com

This is a follow-up to the recent shared plugins changes, in which some plugins were “deprecated” and moved to our reviewed plugins list. Some of you have already begun moving reviewed plugins into your themes and using require() to load them.

We realised that in making this change we’d overlooked the wpcom-helper.php files that we included in these plugins. By moving them to your themes and using require(), the helper files were no longer being loaded. We considered two options to resolve this;

  1. Have themes also manually require the wpcom-helper.php file
  2. Support theme-bundled plugins in wpcom_vip_load_plugin()

By far the most consistent and pain-free experience would be the second option, and that’s what we’re releasing today. Here’s how it works;

  • In your theme you can now create a plugins folder: theme-name/plugins
  • Within that theme you can place the plugins you would like to use, e.g.; theme-name/plugins/mce-table-buttons
  • That plugin might include a wpcom-helper.php: theme-name/plugins/mce-table-buttons/wpcom-helper.php
  • Now you can load that plugin with wpcom_vip_load_plugin( 'mce-table-buttons', 'theme' );

As you can see from the example above, the second parameter of wpcom_vip_load_plugin() now takes “theme” as a value. When this happens the function looks in the currently active theme for a plugins folder containing a plugin with the name specified. As a fallback, it will also search the parent theme (where applicable) and the shared plugins repository.

For those of you who have already moved plugins into your theme and used require() we will be in touch shortly with a patch to move you to this new method for your convenience.

What about custom shared plugins directories?

If you’re already using your own shared plugins directory (e.g. acme-plugins) nothing changes for you. You can still continue to load plugins in exactly the same way.

For VIP Go

On VIP Go we recommend that plugins are added to your plugins directory, and that you activate them using the wpcom_vip_load_plugins function rather than by using the WordPress plugins UI in the admin area. This ensures that your site code will function in a similar fashion across your different environments (e.g. local development environment, staging site, production site, etc).

New Plugin: Formategory

Formategory is a new plugin available in the VIP Shared Plugin page that allows you to automatically format a post based on its category. It’s handy for auto-appending information to every post within a certain category.

To activate the plugin, simply go to VIP » Plugins & Services and click “Activate” next to Formategory.

Once it’s activated, to format all the posts within a category, navigate to “Category Templates » Add New Template” from the admin menu. Select the category just as you would in a blog post. The text editor here allows you to format the way a post will display.

Example template: '{{ the_content }} John Doe was an early Google investor.' for all posts in the Google category.

Use the buttons in the Template Placeholders panel to insert placeholders for the post content and/or title, and then add content that you want automatically added to all of the posts in a given category or categories. Publish the template, and it will be applied to all of the posts in the categories you selected. {{ the_content }} will be replaced by the post content; {{ the_title }}, the post title.

This plugin can be activated from VIP » Plugins & Services in your dashboard, and can also be found in the WordPress.org plugin repository. You can contribute to the plugin on Github.