I’ve just released a new project – in fact my very first public WordPress MU plugin. As I’ve been working with WordPress MU for a number of years it’s about time I gave something back.
Anyway, the plugin does what it says on the tin. It restricts signups only to people who have been invited. There are a few configuration options, and a page showing some invitation statistics. See more details on the secure invites plugin here.
You can download the plugin from wpmudev.org. As it’s a beta version I expect there to be bugs, so please enter any problems, questions or suggestions you may have below. Thanks.
Hey Chris,
Great idea about the WPMU plugin. Surprised it didn’t come standard with it. That said, I uploaded the php file to my /mu-plugins subfolder and even though I am seeing the Invite plugin stuff on my admin backend, I don’t seem to see a place to actually initiate any invites!
Is there a missing step? Or did I miss something?
Thanks,
John
Hi John. The invitation form is located on the main submenu, next to “Dashboard”. There’s a screenshot here: http://wibsite.com/help/inviting-friends/
Let me know if you have any more questions.
Thanks, Chris. I figured out the problem.
It is with the invite settings – the amount of days you must be a member in order to be allowed to invite others. The default is 100; I set it at 500.
The reason why is that I am a teacher and I don’t want my students to invite others, but I guess I could just disable new enrollment in order to do that.
Great addition though to MU. Thanks for your help!
John
Ahh…another bug – at least for me.
I went to send an invite, and it came back a 404 error. It says that the page “/wp-admin/index.php” is not found on the server. When I checked, the file is there.
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance,
John
That’s really strange John. Can you put a screenshot of the error (the whole window – including address bar) somewhere for me to see. Email me if you don’t want to put the address here: chris (at) this domain.
Hi, sorry for my english.
This plugin is great! But it can do more… If the plugin limit the number of invitations per member.
Can you do this work on this plugin?
Thanks!
Hi Marcelo. That’s a good idea, but I’m not sure when I’ll have chance to work on it. I’ll certainly think about adding this functionality when I can.
Hi Chris!
Can you give me a little help?
I want to enable the invites for subscribers too. My WPMU is closed to people create your own blogs, only to register at subscriber. I want use this plugin with the BuddyPress plugin.
I know a little of PHP, can you give me the line where i need to change?
Thanks
Sorry for my bad english.
Hi Chris!
I installed in WPMU 2.7 not work
“Your invitation could not be sent to xxx@gmail.com. Please try again. If it fails more than twice please contact the site administrator.”
Thanks!
Hi Sink. I presume that the email address entered was a valid one (I guess so if it’s at gmail.com). I’ll give it another try myself and see if there’s a bug somewhere.
By the way, have you tried it with any other email addresses?
Hi Sink. I’ve tried this on a MU 2.7 install and it worked fine for me. Can you provide me with any more details? Thanks.
Hi Chirs
The install I used is subdirectory way(domian.com/blog1, domian.com/blog2)
When I send invitation from subblog, it comes back to Dashboard automatically. Only main blog show fail sending.
‘action’ seems wrong execution
action=”/wp-admin/index.php?page=secure_invite”
What’s more, enter wp-signup.php from website sub catalog… the register page will still show on it. e.g. domain.com/category/uncategorized/wp-signup.php
Some blog you can see invite memu but some can’t, it’s weired could you check?
My hosting is bluehost
Thanks for your help.
I have the same problem as sink…the invitation returns the following error “Your invitation could not be sent to abc@mail.com. Please try again. If it fails more than twice please contact the site administrator.”
do you have any ideas? any help is more than welcome as the website is almost ready but this little glitch…
thanks a lot…
cheers…
Love the plugin but I’m having some trouble getting it to work properly with a BuddyPress install. In short I can’t seem to prevent people from signing up, invitation or not.
Thanks for reporting these errors. I’ve taken a look at the plugin and made the following changes:
– Made the wp-signup.php page more secure, fixing sink’s error for a path like ‘domain.com/category/uncategorized/wp-signup.php’. I think this is a bug with WordPress, but the plugin should now handle that OK.
– Fixed the form “action” attribute on the invitation form so hopefully it will work with subdirectory installs of MU.
– When an invitation fails with the ‘Your invitation could not be sent to [email]. Please try again. If it fails more than twice please contact the site administrator.’ error it’s because of a SQL failure. When this happens the site administrator will get emailed with details of the SQL error which occurred. It should be obvious from that what the problem is, but if you have any questions please let me know here.
– I’ve changed the script to use the wp_mail() function rather than the standard PHP mail() function. I’m not sure this will have any effect, but it doesn’t hurt to do things the WordPress way.
Please download the latest version of the plugin from WPMUDEV: http://wpmudev.org/project/secure-invitations
Hi Chris,
I’ve found your plugin really nice. I’ve one suggestion:
I would be great to have possibility to turn of “Inviting lockdown (days)”, now if I write 0, the invitation form row disappears. I need this to quickly create core community members , now they must wait one day to invite others.
Also I’ve problems with plugins table creation. It doesn’t create it for me automatically. Could you explain how can I do this manually?, I don’t have much experience with PhpMyAdmin.
Thanks for your help.
I found the way to create using your code from plugin:
I went to database, clicked SQL tab and there inserted second code:
create table wp_invitations (
id int NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
user_id int,
invited_email varchar(255),
datestamp datetime,
PRIMARY KEY id (id),
KEY user (user_id),
KEY email (invited_email),
KEY dtstamp (datestamp)
) DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8;
*Note that “wp_” is your database prefix.
Everything works fine, but there is a problem with subdirectory:
I’m now testing my project in subdirectory, and the plugin sends invitation link with http://domain.com/wp-signup.php?email@xxxxx.com, although it should be http://domain.com/subdir1/subdir2/wp-signup.php?email@xxxxx.com. I’m not sure yet is that problem in my wpmu installation or in plugin.
I’ve one more suggestion for development – it would be awesome if email in invitation link was encrypted.
Thank You once more.
Hi Matew,
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Can you give me some more details, please?
I think that’s a problem in the plugin. I’ll try to fix that soon.
Yes, this is something I’ve thought about before. I’ll try to add that feature in.
hi Chris,
thanx for this interesting plugin.
Would there be please a way, to have an option in dashboard, where i could enable either:
invitations only
OR
invitations AND normal signups?
thanx
“I would be great to have possibility to TURN OFF “Inviting lockdown (days)”, now if I write 0, the invitation form row disappears. I need this to quickly create core community members , now they must wait one day to invite others.”
I mean that in fresh WPMU installation I can not invite other people, because there is no invitation form. I and my NEW USERS must wait at least one day to use it (I solved it by changing my ADMIN registration date in database). Also one day is the minimum period of time which new users must wait for making invites(if I write 0 in Invite Settings/Inviting lockdown (days), the invitation form row disappears). My suggestion is to have possibility to TURN OFF “Inviting lockdown (days)” option
“I’m now testing my project in subdirectory, and the plugin sends invitation link with http://domain.com/wp-signup.php?email@xxxxx.com, although it should be http://domain.com/subdir1/subdir2/wp-signup.php?email@xxxxx.com. I’m not sure yet is that problem in my wpmu installation or in plugin.”
I solved this problem by changing Invite settings/Wp-signup.php Page adress to: /subdir1/subdir2/wp-signup.php
Sorry for my english
Hi buzz lightyear
Yes, this has been done. Please download the latest version from http://wpmudev.org/project/secure-invitations
Matew:
That’s very strange, as in my testing setting the “Inviting lockdown” field to “0” works as expected. Can you check in your database what the “secure_invite_days_after_joining” row in “wp_sitemeta” is set to AFTER you save the settings with “0” in the “Inviting lockdown” field. Thanks.
Everything fine there, it was changed to 0. But again Invite option disappears on my local and server installations. I have even disabled all my other plugins, but it still happen.
Thank You for helping me, Chris.
Is there a way to enable users below the admin level to send invitations? My users are all set as authors and the ‘send invitations’ link under the Dashboard doesn’t show up for them. I want all users, no matter what their role is, to be able to invite others. Is there a setting somewhere or something in the code I need to change? Thanks!
I just looked into it a bit more and realized it’s only showing up for my main blog (none of my member’s blogs). Is there some way to change this or to create an external form outside the dashboard to allow invitations to be sent? I’m integrating this with Buddy Press, btw. Thanks!
Never mind, please disregard my previous comments. I figured it out (feel free to delete them without posting).
Glad you got it sorted, Cameron. Would you mind posting here with your solution?
I’m planning on adding a few more options to this plugin, including one that should sort this, but in the meantime some people may find your information useful.
It was just a stupid mistake on my part. I’d put the plugin in the “plugins” folder instead of the “mu-plugins” folder…Once I made the switch it started working perfectly.
Still having a problem getting the plugin to work with BuddyPress nicely. Basically I can’t get it to prevent people from accessing the register page within Buddypress.
Jake, thanks for reporting that. I intend to make some time to work on the plugin this week, I’ll make sure integration with BuddyPress is top of my list.
Aside from buddypress compatibility problem, which you are working on. I also have the “Your invitation could not be sent to abc@mail.com. Please try again. If it fails more than twice please contact the site administrator.”errors.
I’m using the lastest version available from WPMUDEV. I’ve checked and there’s database available. But there’s one thing that I, as site admin don’t receive any SQL error messages by mail.
Please discard the previous comment. I had another similar name tabled wp_invites, which I mistaken with wp_invitations. btw, the plugin download page should include SQL code in order to create wp_invitations for reference. I could never done this without another comment here.
I’m unable to get the invite choice to show up in any member blog, well if I’m using IE 8 both the Invites/Invite settings show up, but it I go to Compatibility mode they both go away. Also no where is the invite form showing up all I get is Invitations per month/ Best inviters/ Invitation list. I have no idea what I’m doing wrong, doing a upgrade from 2.6 to 2.7 and this is one of the features I really want to add in while doing the 2.7 upgrade. Any ideas are welcome 😉 thanks.
Opps forgot the say both the Invites/Invite settings show up in members blogs too in IE8 and FF but still missing the form to actually do an invite.
Takuya, good idea. The code you need to create the table if it doesn’t happen automatically is:
create table wp_invitations (
id int NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
user_id int,
invited_email varchar(255),
datestamp datetime,
PRIMARY KEY id (id),
KEY user (user_id),
KEY email (invited_email),
KEY dtstamp (datestamp)
) DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8;
*Note that “wp_” is your database prefix.
Bill, have you tried using the latest version of the plugin from http://wpmudev.org/project/secure-invitations? The browser you’re using should make any difference, as there’s nothing in the plugin that should tigger any layout differences between browsers. Please let me know how you get on with the latest version.
Yea I was using the newest version, I’m going through the code too see what I’m doing wrong. But the blog is currently a default install using directories not subdomains.
Hi, Chris
“Inviting lockdown (days)”, what you think about one more option with lockdown by hours? It could be specific security for mass blog creation with opened signup.
I still have problem with 0 days. The minimal value is 1 🙁
Thanks for the great plugin, figured it all out for some reason it wasn’t reading the default lockdown days so it was defaulting to 30. Adjusted the menus to how I need them and everything else is working great. I was looking for one feature, automatically adding the invited user to the correct blog. Can’t seem to figure out a way to do this, can’t even figure out where wpmu is setting the default blog meta value during the sign up process. Already added the blog ID to your table, adjust need to add to the plugin to add it in after the user creation process.
For those who has problem with Buddpress Signup page blocking (register page).
Change “Signup page” field value in Site Admin/Invite settings from “wp-signup.php” to “register” or whatever slug, your theme uses for member signup.
For me it works fine.
Matew
Hi there. I’ve installed this into 2.7.1 of WordPress MU but the option to send invites isn’t showing for me at all. It seems to have installed properly but there’s no option to actually send any invites 🙁
I’ve set the time limit for being able to send invites to 1 day and still nothing is showing to send out an invite.
Hope you can help.
Installed the latest version into the correct folder, the 2 options show up the column, however, I’m not able to: (1) figure out how to invite users, and (2) the Buddypress part of my site becomes unavailable for some reason. I set the amount of days to 1 too.
I see the invite page…
http://i39.tinypic.com/mbhe6d.png
But there’s no method of inviting people!
The second plugin page has the settings for days and email to people… that’s great, but I don’t know how to send it out to people.
Is this vaporware or is there a way to see the option to invite people? If so, I’m really excited to use this. Any help?
Also, any ideas why this plugin makes my buddpress site unusable?
Please let me know. Thanks.
@KJ and @Jack: The menu option to send invites should be in the “Dashboard” section of the admin menu. Can you send a screenshot of that menu section or otherwise confirm that the menu item definitely isn’t there.
I’ve used this plugin in several different installations of WPMU and many other people have used it and I’m not aware of a bug regarding the menu option. In fact if the menu part pf the plugin wasn’t working then the site admin menu items wouldn’t appear either.
@Jack: I’m not aware of any reason this plugin would stop your BP installation working. I’ll try it in one of my BP sites to see if there’s a problem.
Oh, it’s the new version of Buddypress. Awful. It doesn’t work for some reason so I had to go back to the original version.
I found the link in the Dashboard. Thank you!
Hi Chris,
Let me start by first telling you that this is a great plugin, it works for me as advertised.
However, since my BuddyPress site shields members totally from the WP Dashboard (to keep things simple) I wonder if you ever thought of offering a true BP version which would be integrated with the bphome theme? In other words, the member function (invite friends) would not be part of the WP Dashboard but instead accessible via the ME page under the sub column MY FRIENDS . The site admin functions (Invites and Invite settings) can stay where they are.
@klaus: I’m working on Integration in Buddypress. I hope I’ll finish it over the next days. I’ll post the code here.
This plug-in has sent me into a storm of thought. I’ve been walking down the road of using DNN and ActiveSocial for my new page. But this plug-in is what’s vying me away from that solution. I hope that Buddypress compatability will come.
Thanks!
Hello again! I’m most impressed with the functionality of this plugin. It really helps me with only registering people that people I trust will invite… Right now the website is live and it works fine except that the statistics don’t show. Any clue to what’s wrong?
Hi Tore. I’m not sure what’s wrong, to be honest. Can you email me a screenshot of what the stats look like, please?
Hi Chris,
Cool plugin. I noticed there are two different versions of Secure Invites available online. Which one is the best for WPMU and BuddyPress? v0.6 at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mu-secure-invites/ –OR– v1.0 at http://wpmudev.org/project/secure-invitations
Hi Chris,
The Invite Friends link doesn’t exist in the Admin > Dashboard panel. Please see screen shot: http://www.flickr.com/photos/reidwalley/3920334319/
I installed both v0.6 (WordPress.org repo) and v1.0 (WPMUDev.org repo) versions but neither has the Invite Friends link available in the Dashboard panel.
I’m running WPMU v2.8.4 and BuddyPress v1.0.3
Hope this helps.
Hi Reid. You should always download the latest version from the WordPress site (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mu-secure-invites/). I’ll remove the WPMUDev plugins as soon as I can as they are out of date.
I’ll email you about the other problem.