MD4.3.5 Adds a Slew of New Features, eCommerce Integrations and the Video Page Lead

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As the new year started the very first premium addon for Marketers Delight was released and made waves with MD users everywhere. From then on all I could think about was the next one—which idea will I build next?

After years of building my vision into the website system MD has become today I put serious consideration into my next move (MD4 is almost 1 year old!).

Rather than diving straight into building new addons, I studied my experience from building MD Popups with the goal of finding ways to make the next addon even better. I wrote about the business model I was building towards 2 years ago and I will do as much work as it takes to get there the right way.

Ideals aside, that research led me to uncover fundamental problems in the way MD was built to handle such a system and ones I needed to solve for the sake of future addons, and more importantly, your future experience using them for your business.

These problems, coupled with some interesting ideas shared between MD users and myself, I started to tear apart Marketers Delight in pursuit of MD4.3.5… here’s what I have for you.

First, did you watch that video at the top of the page?

While it may be obvious my video skills are still improving, I did take my more polished programming skills to create a product that embeds YouTube and Vimeo videos from simple links (or custom embed codes).

See, the Video Page Lead was designed to give you methodical control over the headline, text, design, and layout of your video area.

As another new feature of MD (I’ll talk about that a little later), you can place buy buttons and even a popup trigger right next to your video.

Or to put it simply, pointing at buttons in your videos has never been easier.

…did I also mention all of this is accessible from the easy-to-use MD admin panel?

Edit any post, page, or category and you’ll find the simple Video Lead options beneath the WordPress post editor. Built with convenience and a “plug-and-play” mentality, the Video Lead will fit right into your workflow.

There’s also a secret feature that can be used to improve your video’s presentation.

If you use MD Popups alongside the Video Lead you get the bonus “Play Button” feature that opens your video in a popup on the click of a play button.

Combine this advanced functionality with the simple design options available in the Video Lead and you’ll be publishing theater-like presentations to your posts in only a few extra clicks.

Finally, the Category Controls You’ve Always Wanted Right at Your Fingertips

A staple feature of WordPress for years has been the ability to organize posts into Categories. An often underrated and misused feature, Category pages are your blog’s secret weapon for higher reader engagement and SEO success.

Rather than relying on an arbitrary list of your latest blog posts to help readers find your content, you can strategically organize posts into a Category to increase the perceived value of that content as exclusive, or part of a series.

The problem, if you use most WordPress themes, is your Category pages are presented as yet another bland list of most recent posts.

What’s worse is there are no built-in controls that allow you to do something as simple as adding a Featured Image to your Category pages.

Point blank, when it comes to Category pages, your WordPress theme left you behind.

Up until today, so did Marketers Delight.

In MD4.3.5, you not only have access to the powerful Page Leads system (including the new Video Lead), but also point-and-click control over various elements of your page’s layout, and yes, even full MD Featured Image functionality.

For a live example, check out my own WordPress Articles category page and take note of the differences in the layout and presentation vs. other pages around Kolakube.

I have many more ideas in store and see limitless potential for what your category pages can be in WordPress.

Simple Integrations With 2 of the Most Popular WordPress eCommerce Platforms

The thing about WordPress is it’s a modularized platform. What that means is you can turn it into literally anything by pairing it with the right plugins.

This kind of system receives both praise for it’s flexibility and criticism for the technical work it takes to integrate advanced functionality like an eCommerce store.

Thankfully, powerful plugins like Easy Digital Downloads and WooCommerce exist to take power away from those critics.

But the answer isn’t as straightforward as installing a few plugins. Since this is WordPress, the next question that comes up is the famous “will this plugin work with my theme?” question.

MD4.3.5 starts to answer that question by taking the most fundamental feature of an eCommerce store, the buy button, and making it easily accessible anywhere you place call-to-actions on your site.

That means you can place buy buttons in any Page Lead, After Post box, and anywhere else with your eCommerce plugins shortcodes (see the end of this post for an advanced example).

As a bonus, you can even make the buttons in your Page Leads open popups with MD Popups installed and activated.

Why is this a big deal? In simple terms, you can start selling your own product in as few steps as:

1. Install WordPress
2. Install Marketers Delight
3. Install EDD or WooCommerce
4. Add your product in either system (set price, terms, description, etc.)
5. Write a sales page for your product
6. Place Table Lead with buy button at end of page
7. Profit?

Marketers Delight exists to help you make a living from your online ventures by removing the friction that exists between you and website software.

By taking the most important features of mission-critical eCommerce plugins and combining them with the elegant design system in Marketers Delight, you can create functionally beautiful sales pages ready to make you money at the click of a button.

Add MD Customization Controls to Any Custom Post Type or Taxonomy

Everything you’ve read up to this point was to bring you here so I could smash a limitation I’ve been beating into your head since releasing Marketers Delight nearly 1 year ago.

When describing features like Page Leads, Featured Image controls, and Layout Options I’ve had to set your expectation that they’d only worked on posts, pages, and categories.

Not only can this terminology be confusing, the elegance of having these options available was lost on any plugins that added their own pages to your site (also known as post types and taxonomies).

More than any other part of the MD4.3.5 update, I am incredibly excited to tell you that all MD options can be added to any custom post type and taxonomy with a new Child Theme filter.

And yes, this includes any options added through MD addons such as MD Popups, the MD Main Menu, and all future addons built with the ever-improving MDAPI.

For example, if you wanted to add the MD metaboxes to your EDD and WooCommerce pages and taxonomies, you’d find the ID of each and plug them into their respective filters:

/**
 * Add MD meta options to any Custom Post Type.
 */

function md_add_post_type_meta() {
	return array( 'download', 'product' );
}

add_filter( 'md_post_type_meta', 'md_add_post_type_meta' );


/**
 * Add MD meta options to any Custom Taxonomy.
 */

function md_add_taxonomy_meta() {
	return array( 'download_category', 'product_cat' );
}

add_filter( 'md_taxonomy_meta', 'md_add_taxonomy_meta' );

Repeat for as many Custom Post Types/Taxonomies as you have. For a more thorough explanation of this process, read the following doc article (sample filters also included in the MD Child Theme from your account):

Improving the Finer Details of Your Website

Marketers Delight is all about taking care of the heavy lifting in the background while you do the truly hard work of crafting compelling content. In addition to everything above, here are some more improvements MD4.3.5 brings to the war field:

Email Forms Enhancements

• NEW You can now add a small title above any email form as well as disclaimer text under each form. This could be useful for showing a testimonial after an email form, or placing a quick privacy notice (see example).
• NEW Set a custom background color to the Email Signup Form Widget with a convenient color picker right at the bottom of the Widget.
• Fixed a nasty display error that would break the presentation of the MD Admin panel after connecting to an email service.

New Layout Option + Improvements

• NEW You can now display your sidebar to either the left or right of your content box. Set it sitewide through Appearance > Customizer > Layout or set individual layouts from the post editor in the Layout meta box.
• Improved the hiding/showing of controls based on options you select (example: removing the Content Box hides all other Layout controls from the screen).

Smarter Licensing System

• NEW Your license key information, including site activation count and expiration date will appear after each license in the MD Admin Panel.
• The licensing system has been completely rebuilt into the MDAPI to make enabling auto updates in addons dangerously simple.
• With the rewrite, activating/deactivating your licenses should be a lot smoother with fewer, if any, errors.

Miscellaneously relevant improvements

• NEW You can now embed multiple video popups on a single page flawlessly with MD Popups, and each video will stop playing automatically on popup close!
• Fixed a bug with the MD Main Menu that prevented saving options added into the Layout meta box (update the MD Main Menu plugin to get).
• Cleaned up spacing around the MD Admin panel, making your options ever-so-slightly cleaner to look at.
• Removed a bunch of nasty JavaScript errors on post types with the MD options disabled.
• Prevented mobile menu JavaScript from loading when no header menu is detected in MD.
• Fixed a bug preventing various fields in the MD Popups Customizer from saving (update the MD Popups plugin to get).
• Changed post headlines in list to <h2>
• Fixed a potential error notice from showing on password protected posts/pages.
• Tons of improvements to the MDAPI.