Macgamer, what kind of features? Could you please tell me here?
I’m still on 3.7.*, ‘coz latest update broke my site and all stats are gone 🙁
For starters the ability to batch renew ads is gone (why there isn’t just an option to allow them to run indefinitely I have no idea). This coincided with all of my ads having “expired” so I had to renew them all one by one.
Also you can no longer set priorities for ads.
Thanks macgamer, doesn’t sound good to me, but I’m also was thinking to move to PRO version in near feature, or at least make a donation.
Fallback groups have been removed.
Same here macgamer – they pissed me and pissed on me with this… Nothing worked and after I fixed it I realized a bunch of stuff dissapeard. I have 3.7 version and wont buy Pro for what they have pulled…
I brought this up with the plugin dev before he released this update and well, here’s the thread so you can see for yourself all the features he disabled and his terse reply to me: AdRotate Free will be crippled?
I don’t mind him making money off this of course but what a way to do it. I immediately installed Plugin Notes and put a big warning to myself saying “DO NOT UPDATE THIS PLUGIN EVER!”
yeah, bummer… I’ll have to do the same thing with “Do not update Ever”
Went to to the automatic update and it crashed. So, I came here. I’m disappointed in this change. Try explaining to a client that you now have to pay for what was once free. Of course, that makes ME the bad guy…not the plugin developer. (sigh)
I went to the dev’s website because I was excited about his announced Pro version. I noticed he changed the design of his website and peeked around to see what else had changed. Then I found his feature list and realized that I already had the Pro version and that he was planning to strip down the free one on his next update.
Of course, this is not stated anywhere in his plugin description or in the forums. In fact, the description still lists features that only the new Pro (and older versions of the free) have.
I hate sneaky tactics like this and now the dev just made my decision super easy for me — OIO Publisher gets my money when I outgrow AdRotate.
thatwastaxing, exactly! Sneaky tactics is what I hate in this situation most. If developer could announce this sad news few versions ago, I would understand him. But now…
The free version of this plugin does not work for me at all since I upgraded to 3.8. While the plugin developer deserves to be paid for his time and effort but simply taking away most of the free features and charging for it, is beyond sneaky. I am keeping with the 3.7 version until I find a new alternative. I would not upgrade to the free 3.8 version if I was you.
Guys, let’s talk about alternatives. Stable, light, but configurable. Are they exist? I used to work with Google DFP before, it’s massive, slow, but highly configurable.
Having thought about it for a while, I think people are being a bit harsh . The guy has created an amazing product that most of us have been using for free for a long time. And while I agree that it comes across as a bit underhanded to remove features from a free version and add them to the premium version, we can still use the older versions with the features included for free. So in a way the only thing that he did wrong was to not let us know beforehand that by updating to the latest version we would be losing some features and that if we wanted to keep those features we shouldn’t update.
This wasnt nice indeed, had hundreds of ads, that after update set back 1 year (?wtf?) and no batch “renew for 30/60 days 3 months or year” available anymore
I am not against developer’s right to make decisions or PRO version or getting profit in any other way, but I strongly think that the lack of “what changes come with this update” and the expiring of ads is just a mistake
edit: And I am writing this as a “advanced” user able to restore previous version and configuration of the plugin with tables-specific database snapshots. Can’t imagine the stress for other people not having the knowledge or the time
