Idea Factory

August 19, 2015

Idea Factory Plugin

Front end submission and voting system.

Idea Factory was born out of necessity, and the frustration of the lack of plugins that did exactly what I wanted it to do. This plugin allows users to submit new ideas from the front-end, and vote on them. Currently it allows a user to vote once per idea, then locks them out. It’s also currently limited to logged in users, for now.

  • AJAX powered front-end submission and voting
  • Works for both logged in and logged out users
  • 1 vote allowed per user per idea
  • Emails the admin of a new submission
  • Automatic setup or use anywhere with a shortcode
  • Optionally set a threshold where each idea will be given a status based on total votes and emails the admin
  • Automatic status grading
  • Extensible with hooks and actions on events
  • More ideas loaded with AJAX on front-end
  • Mobile friendly

Installation

Uploading in WordPress Dashboard

  1. Navigate to ‘Add New’ in the plugins dashboard
  2. Navigate to the ‘Upload’ area
  3. Select idea-factory.zip from your computer
  4. Click ‘Install Now’
  5. Activate the plugin in the Plugin dashboard

Using FTP

  1. Download idea-factory.zip
  2. Extract the idea-factory directory to your computer
  3. Upload the idea-factory directory to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
  4. Activate the plugin in the Plugin dashboard

Screenshots

  1. What you see when you visit yoursite.com/ideas

    What you see when you visit yoursite.com/ideas

  2. User submit new ideas within a popup modal

    User submit new ideas within a popup modal

  3. New ideas are logged as a custom post type

    New ideas are logged as a custom post type

  4. You can change a few settings here

    You can change a few settings here

  5. And more settings here

    And more settings here

FAQ

Can I override the layout?

Yep. Copy the file from idea-factory/templates/template-ideas into your theme and it will use your file instead. Note, you’ll need to keep track of updates to the source file and update accordingly. Check out using hooks, actions, or filters for adding, or changing things.

Changelog

1.2

  • NEW – Added an option to enable public voting
  • NEW – Added a reset button to reset public votes
  • NEW – Added “Author” to the Ideas
  • FIXED – Fixed strings that were not translatable
  • FIXED – Fixed minor security that would allow vote spoofing
  • FIXED – Added capability checks to reset events
  • FIXED – Only show the Idea Status if threshold is “on” in the ideas list
  • FIXED – Fixed broken check for admin notification
  • FIXED – Frontend UI improvements
  • FIXED – Added high priority to load the plugin styles after the theme styles to avoid CSS override and to not use !important.

1.1

  • NEW – Added a “threshold” option where, when set with a numerical value such as 10, each idea will then be automatically approved or declined based on reaching 10 or more total votes and will send the site admin an email with the status update
  • NEW – Added a dropdown box on all ideas to manually change the status
  • NEW – Added an option to manually reset all votes on all ideas back to zero
  • NEW – Added a status column within the edit posts screen to show the status of each idea
  • NEW – Added a shortcode [idea_factory] to show the ideas and voting form with options to hide the form, votes, or voting
  • NEW – Added an option to disable the automatic archive
  • TWEAK – Instead of posts being put into draft when the option is selected, they are put into “pending” allowing proper review

1.0

  • Initial Release

Details

  • Version: 1.2
  • Active installations: 300
  • WordPress Version: 3.8
  • Tested up to: 4.3.34

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