Flaky, Resource Heavy

I write this review with reluctance, and I’m prepared to change it depending on the author’s response.

You see, I encouraged the author to create a way to migrate content from WP-Ad-Manager, a fork of Ad-minister. Both have been out of production for several years and it was time to make a chance to a more featured plugin.

After migrating two sites to AdRotate, I ran into a glitch. When I brought up one of the sites, which had a block of four separate banners, on atop another, with separate shortcodes and positioning, one ad would repeat itself, meaning the actual fourth banner would not be visible. A refresh would fix it until I brought up the site again, but clearing browser caches and using different browsers didn’t change anything. The duplicated banners would also sometimes change. It wasn’t just one.

When I brought this to the attention of the author, with screenshots, I was told on several occasions it had to be my fault. I must be a dummy and somehow duplicated the banner code. But that’s not so. I checked it. The duplicated banners sometimes changed, and a browser refresh would fix it.

So how could it just be duplicated banner code?

I wrote the author again and made it crystal clear what the problem was and that the banner code, shortcodes and positioning were correct..

Crickets.

One the problem, or at least a symptom: With AdRotate installed, the two sites have four times as many MySQL queries (120 versus 30). The author’s sarcastic dismissal: Well, that’s because AdRotate does more. I have a dedicated server with a multicore processor, so perhaps it’s not a big deal. But it might be on a shared server.

I made the code changes on a copy of the original theme. I’ve since restored the original theme at WP-Ad-Manager to restore proper functionality.

Blaming a problem on the customer doesn’t solve it, or dismissing a problem with an offhand crack, doesn’t address either situation.

That’s why I cannot recommend this plugin.

Gene Steinberg