4 years and 2 months later… TheyWorkForYou plugin gets an update

Shocking it’s been so long really, but I’ve finally revived my TheyWorkForYou WordPress plugin.

When I first released it, all the plugin did was supply a TheyWorkForYou widget. Nothing’s changed! That’s for good reason though… At the time, the latest version of WordPress was 2.8.6 and we’re now on 3.8.1 so a lot has changed!

Crucially, the way plugin developers add widgets has changed so that needed to be updated.

Also of huge importance was that the original plugin hard-coded my own TheyWorkForYou API key and was a key reason why the plugin never made it to the WordPress.org plugin repository. There is now a simple settings page for you to enter your own API key, and the widget isn’t even available to you until you do that.

I have a bunch of other enhancements I want to add, all of which are listed on the GitHub issues page for the plugin. If there’s something you’d like to see in the plugin, please add it there too.

Given the amount of functions provided by the TheyWorkForYou API there are probably loads more things the plugin could do – please think of them and ask me to add them. Or, even better, fork and pull on GitHub and to add them yourself.

Finally, to use the plugin you can;

  1. Go to Plugins > Add New in your WordPress dashboard, search for TheyWorkForYou and install
  2. Download from the WordPress.org plugin repository and install manually

One important note: if you are using the original plugin, you’ll need to remove that first.

Enjoy!

Comments

6 responses to “4 years and 2 months later… TheyWorkForYou plugin gets an update”

  1. Eddie Avatar

    Just installed your plugin for my local MP at http://richardgraham.org/ . It works a treat, so very well done

    1. philipjohn Avatar
      philipjohn

      Fantastic, thanks for letting me know – great to see an MP using it!

  2. Terence Avatar
    Terence

    If would be nice if worked on WP 3.9, but it doesn’t.

    1. philipjohn Avatar
      philipjohn

      Gah, that’s no good 🙁 I haven’t had time to test it yet. Can you submit a thread in the support forum for the plugin (http://wordpress.org/plugins/theyworkforyou/) detailing exactly what’s wrong, and what you’ve tried with troubleshooting please and I’ll get to it as soon as I can. Thanks!

  3. Myf Avatar

    Hi! We at mySociety are glad that others can access the TWFY API so easily via this plug-in, too. Thanks for making (and reviving) it.

    We just wanted to mention that licensing terms and conditions will still apply to anyone using it. Those are listed on the API page so hopefully people will see them when generating their API key: http://www.theyworkforyou.com/api/.

    In short, use that is both low volume and charitable is free, but anything else means that a small charge is incurred. Would it be possible to update the blog post to make this clear, please? Thanks!

    1. philipjohn Avatar
      philipjohn

      Of course! I’ll update this post and also make sure the plugin readme is clear on that point too.

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