New Plugin: Hashtags!

The first new plugin of 2018 and it’s #BIG. It’s something that’s been asked for by the members of our own community for, well… years, really. It’s finally here, though. Alongside latest PeepSo 1.9.3 release. 

Hashtags Plugin is now available for $0 for PeepSo Ultimate Bundle subscribers and $19 for everyone else.*

*Post update: Hashtags are now permanently available for everyone as a part of Free PeepSo Foundation and all of our Bundles.

Upgrades

For a quick and hassle-free upgrade:

  1. Go to the backend of your site > Dashboard > Updates (go here, instead of > Dashboard > Plugins, trust me)
  2. Select all PeepSo plugins that need to be updated
  3. Click ‘Update Plugins’ (note: this will deactivate all of the add-on plugins), don’t worry, they’ll come right back on during Step 6 promise!
  4. Update PeepSo Core
  5. Go to the backend > Plugins
  6. Reactivate all PeepSo plugins

The whole operation doesn’t take more than 3 minutes. Should you have any issues or questions, please do contact usALSO IMPORTANT. We release all plugins at the same time. Sometimes, it can take some time for all available updates to show in the backend of your site. If some plugins’ updates don’t show, wait. Just Wait. Don’t upgrade just some of them. Drink some coffee and wait. Your site needs to catch up to show them all. If you feel like it’s taking too long, contact us. We’re here to help!

Alternatively, if you feel you can’t take the wait, you can go to your account, download the latest versions and do the following: Backup everything. Deactivate all PeepSo plugins from your site. Install the new versions from the zip files, just like on the first installation.

Hashtags

With the hashtags support you and Your Community can tag posts according to the topics they relate to the most. It’s no longer one of many posts on the community. Hashtags and how to use them could be considered common knowledge. The concept of hashtags is widely used across the web at nearly every single social platform.

Twitter and Instagram are prime examples of services which engagement largely depends on usage of hashtags. Users there find the content they’re interested in by browsing posts with a particular hashtag. Now so can Your Community. Your Members with the help of hashtags can focus on the posts they’re really interested in.

The Plugin

Hashtags in Posts
Hashtags in Posts

The plugin also come with a built-in hashtag search. Apart from the regular search in PeepSo you can combine the search with searching for hashtags to narrow posts even further. You can search either by clicking a hashtag or by using the search field. Search also indicates to members what are the minimum and maximum character counts for hashtags. Search results will only show posts users are allowed to see, posts privacy is respected fully.

Hashtags Search
Hashtags Search

Plugin Configuration

The Hashtags plugin comes with a number of configuration options:

  • Update post count in tags every
    Deleted and edited posts are checked periodically to update post counts for each hashtag. Smaller delay means more database load.
  • Process
    How many posts and hashtags to process in a single page load. Bigger batches mean faster updates, but generate higher load.
  • Delete empty hashtags
    When enabled, hashtags with zero posts will be deleted and not shown in the widget or suggestions. Hashtags with zero posts can occur, when posts are deleted or edited.

As well as settings for the Hashtags themselves in advanced section:

  • Minimum hashtag length
    Shorter hashtags will be ignored
  • Maximum hashtag length
    Longer hashtags will be ignored
  • Hashtags must start with a letter
    Enabled: hashtags beginning with a number will be ignored
  • Reset and rebuild the hashtags cache
    Enable and click “save” to force a hashtag cache rebuild. It will also happen automatically after changing any of settings above.
Hashtags Configuration Options
Hashtags Configuration Options

Hashtags Community Widget

The plugin comes with the Hashtags widget that can be placed anywhere on your WordPress site. It shows a tag cloud of the most used hashtags in posts throughout the entire community. The widget’s styling follows PeepSo’s styling settings. Depending on the color theme you pick in the backend > PeepSo > Configuration > Appearance the tag cloud can be light, dark, green, red or blue. Styling can always be changed with CSS overrides if you need further customization.

Hashtags Cloud Color variations
Hashtags Cloud Color variations

Additionally, the widget has 2 settings:

  • Title
    Decide what’s the title for the widget. By default it’s called ‘Community Hashtags’
  • Limit
    How many hashtags should be shown in the tag cloud.

Other Improvements and Fixes In PeepSo 1.9.3

This PeepSo 1.9.3 release was prepared with the 99% focus on finishing up and releasing the Hashtags plugin. However, we’ve managed to fit in a couple of improvements and fixes. The ones worth mentioning are adding follow button to group listing, improved styling and rendering of custom single select profile fields on Members page for searching / filtering members. For the full list of new features, improvements and fixes see the changelog.

Get #Hashtags Plugin

Add Hashtags to Your Community Today!

Brought to you by PeepSo Team Eric Tracz
I'm a Digital Nomad currently living in Manila, The Philippines. Co-Founder and CEO of PeepSo.com. First time WordCamp Speaker at WordCamp Kuala Lumpur 2017, WordCamp Singapore 2019 and hoping to speak more soon. I started my journey with open source nearly a decade ago as a simple support guy. Joomla! was my first encounter with the world of Open Source. After that period of my life got phased out I fell in love with WordPress and never left. I have been both lucky and at the same time I worked my ass off to get to where I am right now. Free time, if I have any, is usually spent with my wife and / or travel around South-East Asia. Even when I'm supposed to be on a little vacation, not a day goes by when I don't check up on PeepSo. So far visited or lived in: Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Hungary, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, China, Japan, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Norway, Germany, Scotland, England and more... Whenever possible, I jump on my Ducati Monster and just ride.

Reactions & comments

Join Our Community!
Join us to discuss PeepSo's features, connect with the development team and give suggestions.

Comments

@peepso_user_11281(Jannik Laursen)
Even when changing max characters, I cannot type #regenerativespaces
January 17, 2018 8:50 PM
@peepso_user_11281(Jannik Laursen)
@peepso_user_7(Eric Tracz) Awesome, thank you!
January 18, 2018 5:11 AM
@peepso_user_7(Eric Tracz)
@peepso_user_11281(Jannik) it's fixed. Please go to your site: deactivate and delete the Hashtags plugin. Go to Your account, download again. Install. Activate. Will work fine.
January 18, 2018 5:41 AM
@peepso_user_12086(G- Man)
Hashtags are great!! The only problem is... a hashtag only seems to function properly and show up in the hashtag cloud when it's used in a post but not when it's used in a reply.
January 17, 2018 9:02 PM
@peepso_user_7453(julian Doyle)
@peepso_user_7(Eric Tracz) Hi, if this is the case then there may be an error as hashtags in comments do turn into clickable hashtag links that if clicked do a hashtag search in the stream and return no posts.
January 18, 2018 2:30 PM
@peepso_user_7(Eric Tracz)
@peepso_user_7453(julian) well depends how you look at it. I can tell you: Hey, Julian, check out the #release tag to find some of the latest release posts. In which example you can just click on the tag instead of just going all the way back to the top and use search.
January 18, 2018 2:32 PM