I contact the developers often. Many of them are very good at getting back to me. It's just scary knowing that it can sometimes take a few days to get the issue resolved, waiting for their result and a fix.
I have no idea how something as complex as WordPress functions. I'm not mad, and I hope I didn't give anyone the impression I was. I'm beginning to think that updating WordPress (for the WordPress developers), is a bit like needing to use a tractor in the middle of a flower garden. There's no easy, simple way to get the tractor into the garden without something becoming tangled or trampled. The garden is free to develop on its own, and the pathways pretty much always become overgrown between updates.
The last thing I want is to go for months without updating. I could end up with a dozen or more plugins that no longer function, instead of one or two. I always update as soon as I possibly can.
Today, Contact Form 7 tangled with NextGEN Gallery after the updates (3.4 and the CF7 respective update). The last time I updated WordPress, I couldn't get NextGEN to work at all. Infact, it crashed my site. At the time, to get NextGEN to work again, I had to take a crash course in memory allotment and tweak a php.ini file. I go for days not having the time to properly take care of some business matters. When updates cause troubles, it's never really a good time.
Today, when Contact Form 7 caused photo upload troubles with NextGEN, I found a different contact form to use. I like the clean, simple aspect of CF7. I will check with them in a week or more to see if they have their issue resolved.
