Why are we doing this? Lot’s of reasons:

1. The IssueM plugin is the best issue based solution for WordPress and we want everyone to use it.
2. We want IssueM to become the #1 platform in the world for magazine and news publishers. Yeah that sounds pretty lofty, but think about it… WordPress is the best blog based publisher, why not add issue functionality? WordPress drives 20% of the worlds website traffic today and is growing. The magazine/news publishing industry has a mess of publishing solutions for sale that don’t come close to what WordPress offers. Why not publish with what NYTimes, Mashable, TechCrunch and millions of others are using?
3. We want more feedback from you (as you are part of the WP community) to show us all the things IssueM can be used for and tell us what you need.
4. Financial: With wider distribution and premium add on plugins, themes and services we will become a stronger organization which helps you, the WordPress developer/publisher.
5. Developer friendly: You will be able to jump right in and make the platform stronger.

A hint of what’s to come…

on June 16:

You will have access to an out-of-the-box, ready to go, responsive platform to quickly set up your magazine site… absolutely free.

Oh and if you want premium support for only $65 for the next year, buy the plugin before June 16 and you will save some dough. All existing licenses will convert to our premium support plan.

We welcome any thoughts or comments you have! And follow @GetIssueM for the latest updates.

Version 1.1.8 is out the door, please update!

The latest version now adds a shortcode to display the current issue name:

[issuem_issue_title]

This gives you one more way to let readers know what issue they are currently reading. In the example below you can see the name of the issue above the articles list.

Permissions update

IssueM permissions now follow the standard WordPress user subscriber/author/editor roles. Editor and below will not have access to the IssueM settings or Help sections.

WordPress category/tag function update

== Changelog ==

= 1.1.8 =
* Fixed bug in advanced search shortcode
* Added pre_get_posts filter call to modify the WordPress Categories/Tags query if not using IssueM Categories/Tags
* Added shortcode to display current issue title
* Fixed IssueM Category and Tag names
* Fixed permissions
* Fixed typo in str_ireplace helper function

Version 1.1.8 is out the door, please update!

The latest version now adds a shortcode to display the current issue name:

[issuem_issue_title]

This gives you one more way to let readers know what issue they are currently reading. In the example below you can see the name of the issue above the articles list.

Permissions update

IssueM permissions now follow the standard WordPress user subscriber/author/editor roles. Editor and below will not have access to the IssueM settings or Help sections.

WordPress category/tag function update

== Changelog ==

= 1.1.8 =
* Fixed bug in advanced search shortcode
* Added pre_get_posts filter call to modify the WordPress Categories/Tags query if not using IssueM Categories/Tags
* Added shortcode to display current issue title
* Fixed IssueM Category and Tag names
* Fixed permissions
* Fixed typo in str_ireplace helper function

• Spanish
• Swedish

Specific issue display can now be controlled by the issue slug.

If you need to publish a specific issue on a specific page or post you can do this with a shortcode using the issue “Slug” Here is an example shortcode:

[issuem_featured_rotator issue=issueslug]
[issuem_featured_thumbnails orderby="menu_order" order="ASC" issue=issueslug]
[issuem_articles orderby="menu_order" order="ASC" show_featured="1" issue=issueslug]

You can find the issue slug in the Dashboard under Articles/Issues/yourissuename:

• Spanish
• Swedish

Specific issue display can now be controlled by the issue slug.

If you need to publish a specific issue on a specific page or post you can do this with a shortcode using the issue “Slug” Here is an example shortcode:

[issuem_featured_rotator issue=issueslug]
[issuem_featured_thumbnails orderby="menu_order" order="ASC" issue=issueslug]
[issuem_articles orderby="menu_order" order="ASC" show_featured="1" issue=issueslug]

You can find the issue slug in the Dashboard under Articles/Issues/yourissuename:

Major updates to the plugin include:

• Mobile responsive design: the featured rotator images, thumbnail images, and output now scale to fit mobile devices (requires a responsive theme).
• Quickly add author credit without having to add a new WordPress user (check off “Use IssueM Author Name instead of WordPress Author” in Article/IssueM Settings
• Added Spanish translation for the plugin
• Updated CSS styling to deal with themes overwriting the Featured Image Rotator

Responsive full width view:

Responsive mobile view (WP Twenty Eleven theme):

The following winners were chosen by random drawing. They will each receive a 1 year license extension for their IssueM plugin. I am also delighted to read the thoughts that were shared about their publishing experiences (they are included below). I thank you for taking the time to write!

Liquid Imagination

From the publisher: Liquid Imagination is a magazine of stories the awe and excite the readers. For years I upgraded the site every issue with a static html site. About two years ago I decided to try WordPress as a basis for the site. It worked well … except WordPress really isn’t a good content management system, and setting up each issue was still more work than I thought needed. Then a friend told me about IssueM. I tried it out and will be publishing my third issue of Liquid Imagination using this extension.

Keep it simple. Even though an awesome layout is important to display the character of the magazine, what really counts is the content, and an easy way to update and incorporate new content, which is why I now use IssueM.

The Field Educator

From the publisher: Creating a scholarly conversation around social work field education. Publishing an academic journal online in issues and volumes is important for citing scholarly work, but it is a challenge in today’s blog/stream web world. IssueM was a great solution for us!

Odinia International

From the publisher: I am an Odinist priestess and our publication, FoxFire, is the journal of our religious organization, Odinia International. Our faith is the native European religion, which goes back to Cro Magnon times. It is very important to have a place for Nordic, Germanic, Celtic, Anglo Saxon and other European people to publish and express themselves, or even to see things from their own point of view as a tribe.

Too many to list but, it would seem that it is more or less a full time job! The problem with listing one is that I am still working on all of it. Today I learned a little about SSL, and last week it was like buttons, but I seem to have lost my likes somehow (!), next will be keywords and tags and podcasts, and it all seems a bit like quicksand. I suppose the most important thing I have learned is that it is *possible* to do this at all, and honestly, I would not have managed to get this far without issue m to start me off.

DotsOnline

From the publisher: We are working with small African American businesses worldwide. Our goal is assist, design, and help to launch, advertise and promote their companies. At,the same time, we offer them a web banners to link their products brands names, and or services to their local communities, major cities, nation and the worldwide. Through advertisement and web links we educate, train and support their businesses needs to build up their brand identity to consumers around the world.

It’s been less than a year in the making but our IssueM plugin has seen some significant improvements in a short period of time:

A few of the highlights include:

• Hiding the draft issues RSS feed so Google doesn’t crawl through them
• Letting you order articles using the WordPress Order field
• Ordering Issues in the Dashboard and on the Archives page
• Letting you quickly migrate Posts into Issues
• Highlighting currently viewed articles in sidebar widget
• Added lots of options to control Current Issue content
• Adding an external link feature to issue covers
• Added grouping articles by Category in the sidebar widget
• Releasing a developer version
• and of course many bugfixes

Thanks for a great start! More to come :)

Version info:

= 1.0.0 =

* Beta Release

= 1.0.1 =
* Beta Release
* General Code Cleanup
* Added ability to choose open target for PDF links
* Added a number of helper functions
* Fixed template names

= 1.0.2 =
* Added RSS Feed filtering, so draft issues do not show up in RSS feed and only the active issue article shows up by default
* Added category and number of Article options to Article List widget
* Minor bug fixes

= 1.0.3 =
* Fixed Verify API button
* Fixed Archived Issue default format alignment
* Fixed IssueM Cookie settings

= 1.0.4 =
* Fixed PHP Warning bug for site with no issues
* Added ability to users with ‘manage_issues’ permission to see Draft issues
* Added ability to specify an issue in the issuem_articles, issuem_featured_rotator, and issuem_featured_thumbnails shortcodes

= 1.0.5 =
* Added IssueM Migration Functionality, to migrate Posts to Articles
* Fixed issuem_archives shortcode to display correctly
* Added CSS and JavaScript auto version matching with IssueM version

= 1.0.6 =
* Fixed bug IssueM Migration tool link showing up when it was not enabled
* Fixed bug in Active Issue Widget, not showing default IssueM issue image when not specific issue image was set

= 1.0.7 =

* Set default issue order by issue_order instead of issue date
* Added filter to set default page content for issue page (if no content exists)
* Hot linked cover image to issue page in Active Issue widget
* Added CSS to Article List Widget to highlight current article (if on one)
* Fixed Article List Widget so it displays empty issues

= 1.0.8 =
* Set default issue order to issue_order for widgets
* Enabled issue order sortable column in dashboard, set it as the default sort
* Fixed some missing l18n text
* Added orderby option to article list widget
* Added issuem_issue_url filter for users who want to change the default Issue URL
* Added ‘external link’ field to issue meta, for users who want to link to a PDF/URL not hosted on their own site
* Fixed bug caused by users who set the Issue Order for only some of their issues
* Fixed bug in issuem_replacements_args workflow

= 1.0.9 =
* Fixed bug with issue order causing last Issue ID to be first regardless of order
* Added ‘article_category’ argument to issuem_articles shortcode, now you can specify a single category

= 1.1.0 =
* Fixed bug getting new version information from IssueM API
* Added API warnings and errors

= 1.1.1 =
* Added informational buyer’s news section to articles page
* Added show_featured option to articles shortcode (off by default), to prevent articles in the rotator/thumbnails from also appearing in the article list

= 1.1.2 =
* Fixed bug in buyer’s news

1. Keyword
2. Issue
3. Category

Add this simple shortcode to any page:

[issuem_advanced_search]

and this is what you will get: