It has been long over due. For those of you who have been waiting, thank you. To any new users who find this, I hope you enjoy. I planned to include more features than those of which are being released, but in lieu of some bugs introduced with WordPress 3.3 which render the 1.x branch of Propel useless, I decided it was better to hide some partially implemented 2.0 features than to fix the bugs in 1.7 or postpone the release of 2.0. Before you upgrade to from 1.7 to 2.0, it is strongly recommend you take a full backup of your database. The major changes being released are largely internal.

New Features (2.0)

• Propel 1.7 moved to custom post types. Propel 2.0 now takes full advantage of the default UI functionality and used the interface provided by custom post types. This allows for better integration with WordPress as a whole, and Propel now plays well with other plugins that modify custom post types.
• In 1.7 project and task meta were stored as a single key as a serialized array. This made filtering data impossible. Each piece of data is now stored as an individual metakey (documentation will be provided on how to take advantage of this). This is why you will receive a database update notice when you upgrade from Propel 1.7 to 2.0.
• Changed the priority from 1-10 to use Low, Medium, and High instead. After the upgrade, any tasks previously with a priority of 1-3 will be low priority. Tasks with a priority with 4-7 will have a medium priority and tasks with a priority 8-10 will have a high priority.
• Changed progress from intervals of one to intervals of five. Upon upgrading, your previous tasks progress will be rounded to the nearest five.
• Removed the shortcode for a frontend display (sorry! I know some people used this, but it is kind of unnecessary. I will explain how to display your projects and tasks in the frontend in another post later)
• Ability to categorize tasks
• A better interface for adding terms to tasks
• Ability to assign projects to clients
• Ability to globally turn on/off start date, end date, project progress, and project client (keep in mind, using the “Screen Options” at the top of your WordPress admin pages, you can hide columns and widgets).
• Task “type” taxonomy – giving you the ability to classify tasks as bugs or features.

Partially Implemented / Hidden Features (2.1 ETA ~1.5 months)

• A taxonomy to reflect the “state” of a task –  Not Started, Started, Completed, Delivered, etc…
• Ability to add custom task “types”
• Better filtering (if you have a lot of tasks, it is very hard to manage the tasks via the All Tasks page)
• Roles and capabilities. In its current release, everyone can see all the tasks. The goal here is to create two “roles” – Project Manager and Developer. Developers would only see tasks assigned to them, while project managers would be able to see all tasks.
• Email notifications when a user is assigned a task, a task is updated, or a comment is made on a task.

Planned Features (2.2+)

• A full featured theme (this will likely be a paid add-on)
• GitHub post-receive hook endpoint (add comments to tasks and complete tasks when you commit to github)
• Integration with WP-Invoice (need help from the WP-Invoice guys for this)
• Ability to group tasks into “task lists” or “milestones” or “sprints” or “iterations” or whatever project management paradigm calls it.
• Gantt Chart
• Burn Down Chart
• Other charts that I don’t know about
• Features you request

The Propel front end currently relies on jQuery to create a tabbed interface for your projects. This brings along with it the power and flexibility of the jQuery UI. Propel comes bundled with all of the default jQuery UI themes, but if you want more control, you have two options:

Override the default CSS

WordPress will include your themes style after the plugins have been loaded. The Propel frontend is wrapped in a div with a class name of propel. Thus, defining styles for the descendants of propel can give you full control of the look and feel.

Roll your own jQuery theme

To roll your own theme, start by going to the jQuery UI – ThemeRoller page.

On the left you will see the ThemeRoller widget.

This widget allows you to modify the various aspects of the UI. The changes will be automatically reflected on the right.

Once you are satisfied with your theme, click the orange Download theme button in the widget. On the next page, be sure to check all of the components. Then click download*.

*If another plugin is including the jQuery UI, it might conflict with Propel’s styles. If this is the case, you must set the CSS scope before downloading. On the right, click the Advanced theme settings and in the CSS scope box put .propel

The dot before propel is not a mistake. Now you can download the theme.

Once you have downloaded the theme, extract it. There will be three folders and one file CSS, development-bundle, js, and index.html. Open the CSS folder. In this folder will be another folder which has the name of your theme (black-tie in the above image). This is the folder you must upload. You can upload this folder to any location that is publicly accessible.

For Propel to recognize your new theme, in your WordPress themes directory, you must create a folder called propel, and upload folder from the previous step. For example if you are using the twentyten theme and the folder from the previous step is called custom-theme, the final directory structure will resemble the following:

+ wp-content
---- + themes
-------- + twentyten
------------ + propel
---------------- + custom-theme

Once the theme has been uploaded, log in to your WordPress administration panel and navigate to the Propel settings page. If you did the previous steps correctly, your theme should appear as the last theme in the list. Select it, and submit.

Once the theme has been uploaded, in the WordPress admin, navigate to Settings -> Propel set the Custom Theme Directory to the new themes stylesheet.

1. Optimized JavaScript includes
2. Fixed jQuery conflicts
3. Improved the “Propel” / “Info” page by adding widgets / meta-boxes

The next update will include a new dashboard as well as fix some styling issues.