Very poor support. Good idea, but nothing else.

  • allen-hoorn

    (@allen-hoorn)


    10 years, 10 months ago

    I wish I could give this plugin a higher rating. However, there is no documentation to accompany it, so you have to spend hours and hours trying to get the plugin set up. Unfortunately, you won’t find very much help from the developers or other people out there. All of the support seems to be conducted in German, which is fine if you speak German fluently enough to understand technical language. Even with my rudimentary German skills and a trusty translation package at my side, I wasn’t able to find simple answers to simple questions.

    For instance, if you have your WP media files set up to be stored by month and date, like most people, the plugin will not be able to handle your media slugs. One part of the program will translate your slugs using dashes while the other part will output the slugs using slashes. That means, your media files will work fine for your main page, but will get messed up in RSS. That is big trouble for podcasters.

    Also, some of the JavaScript in the web player is corrupt and crashes weaker browsers like Safari. So, if you plan on using their web player, you will have to let people know they shouldn’t try to view your pages with Safari or they will be starting over.

    Of course, all of those bugs could probably be worked out easily by the developers. But, they don’t seem to be too interested in being helpful. And, again, all of the forum activity and answers that do exist are not understandable to the lay person that doesn’t speak German.

    Oh, well. I am hopeful they will get their act together. It looked like a great idea until I tried to use it.

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
  • Plugin Author Eric Teubert

    (@eteubert)

    10 years, 10 months ago

    Hi Allen,

    You’re right, the project is missing detailed documentation for now. There is http://docs.podlove.org/publisher/ but it covers only some special cases. An english “getting started” screencast series is planned.

    However, we use GitHub https://github.com/podlove/podlove-publisher/issues to answer questions, both german and english. Feel free to post your questions there.

    ___________

    Regarding your slug question: The Podlove Publisher assumes your media files are all in the same directory. So you should not use the WordPress uploader but direct FTP/sFTP. Slashes in file slugs are not expected because file names cannot have slashes.

    Regarding your Web Player crash: A crash-bug like this is not known to us. It would be really helpful if you could show us an example site.

    ___________

    Thank you for the feedback!

    Regards
    Eric

    Thread Starter allen-hoorn

    (@allen-hoorn)

    10 years, 10 months ago

    This is part of the trouble I guess. There is no indication that you should not use the media uploader for the files. I don’t have a problem using FTP to upload files, but in the custom post page backend for episodes, you should make it so the Add Media button doesn’t appear. That gives the impression that it’s okay to use the uploader.

    I did have success, after a few hours, and changing my settings for the entire WordPress in getting the Uploader to work. All you have to do is go into the Media settings of your WP and uncheck the save files in month and date folders radio. Then the slugs work just fine. But, it took awhile to get to that point. Of course, since most episodes will be longer than 10 MB, FTP might be the best answer in the end.

    As far as the JavaScript is concerned, I ended up having to deactivate the plugin because it was constantly crashing Safari as soon as the page started to load. I do most of the work on my website in Firefox, but like to do my flash elements and Javascripts with Safari because that seems to be the weakest browser out there for those types of elements. So, if something works on Safari it usually will work with just about everything else.

    So, I don’t really have the plugin up on my site anymore. I only know that it is related to the JavaScript of the web player because it works fine (and looks good!) in Firefox. And, the page works fine when I disable Javascript in Safari or when I enable Javascript and delete the shortcode for the web player.

    If you would like, I can reactivate the plugin for awhile on a special page if that will give you information you need to look into it.

    Plugin Author Eric Teubert

    (@eteubert)

    10 years, 10 months ago

    If you would like, I can reactivate the plugin for awhile on a special page if that will give you information you need to look into it.

    That would be really helpful, thank you!

    Thread Starter allen-hoorn

    (@allen-hoorn)

    10 years, 10 months ago

    I reactivated the plugin on my website at . Everything works well in Firefox, but when you go to the page in Safari, it crashes the browser. And, again, everything works as long as JavaScript isn’t enabled.

    Plugin Author Eric Teubert

    (@eteubert)

    10 years, 10 months ago

    I reported the issue here: https://github.com/podlove/podlove-web-player/issues/84
    I am not developing the web player, so feel free to follow along there.

    Plugin Author Eric Teubert

    (@eteubert)

    10 years, 10 months ago

    Looks like your theme is incompatible with the web player: https://github.com/podlove/podlove-web-player/issues/84#issuecomment-19164650

    Thread Starter allen-hoorn

    (@allen-hoorn)

    10 years, 10 months ago

    Not really an explanation as much as a cop-out on the part of the web player designer. Since Twitter Bootstrap is becoming more and more a part of WordPress development, he really should consider finding a way to design his plugins so they don’t crash.

    And, simply claiming a theme is incompatible with a plugin is also in poor form. If a plugin can’t be used with basic themes, then it isn’t very useful at all.

    I’ll have to stick with the low rating unless y’all can come up with a real solution that doesn’t involve blaming other creators for the shortcoming of your plugins.

    Moderator Jan Dembowski

    (@jdembowski)

    Forum Moderator and Brute Squad

    10 years, 10 months ago

    And, simply claiming a theme is incompatible with a plugin is also in poor form. If a plugin can’t be used with basic themes, then it isn’t very useful at all.

    It depends really. On these support forums here the first steps to diagnose a problem is “Switch to the Twenty Twelve theme and deactivate all of your other plugins”. It’s a temporary step that can lead to finding where and what the problem is.

    Reading this review it’s unclear if those steps were even attempted by you.

    There are a lot of bone headed themes and plugins out there that are doing things wrong. If a plugin is using good accepted methods of coding here and other plugins are conflicting with it then you maybe able to find the problem and work with the author to resolve it.

    That would be a positive contribution on your part.

    I’ll have to stick with the low rating unless y’all can come up with a real solution that doesn’t involve blaming other creators for the shortcoming of your plugins.

    As I’ve not found the post in these forums where you did or asked for help with the basic troubleshooting, and you’ve just left an unflattering review for another plugin related to this same problem then my recommendation is for readers to take your 1 star review with a large grain of salt. 😉

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
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