Bait and Switch

Thanks @gdavis0007 for chiming in. I appreciate the feedback.

I’d like to add my perceptive on this review. However, it is really difficult to respond to this kind of review and not come off sounding like a jerk. I’m not really all that concerned about sounding like a jerk to @globaldesign – we’ll likely never see nor hear from this person again. It’s evident that this person created that account for the sole purpose of masking who they really are and simply posting this one-off “review” (which is nothing more than a hit job with no useful purpose). You need merely take a look at this person’s profile to know that. The user joined at the same time they posted this review, which is their one and only participation in this forum.

No, what’s more important is the people who come later and (hopefully) take the time to read this response, rather than simply focusing on the title of this review. Since I don’t hide behind a fake username, my name and reputation are out there for all to see.

Do the comparison and draw your own conclusion would be the best thing I could say.

I’ve spent 10 years involved with wordpress.org (and more than 10 working with WordPress) and in that time I have participated in the support forums, not only for my own plugin, but for other WordPress issues. And I have written quite a bit of documentation in the WordPress Codex as well.

I don’t say that to pat myself on the back. I say it to point out that (1) I don’t hide behind a pseudonym/screenname and pretend to be something I’m not. I use my real name and my real identity – my reputation is built on the 60,000+ active installs of this plugin. And (2) I’ve been working with WordPress since it was still in diapers, so I know a little something about it.

They give you a free plugin that does not work with most themes.

I’m not sure how many themes @globaldesign actually tested this on, but I would suggest that the likelihood of that being “most” would be pretty small.

Then there’s the question of what exactly was the issue? Does the theme they were using follow the WordPress theme review guidelines? We don’t know because they didn’t ask for help before making the unfounded claim that I am offering some kind of “bait-and-switch, try this piece of junk and I’ll sell you something better” business model.

All kinds of CSS issues. In order to fix the problems of course you must spend $59.

You are certainly entitled to your opinion about the plugin. What you are not entitled to is to make things up.

Yes, I offer a premium support subscription. After years of offering absolutely free support, the number of installs and requests for support simply became too large for me to handle without resorting to a different business model.

In the two and a half years since I made that change I have not only been cheaper than most direct “competition” (for lack of a better term), this past month was the first time I’ve increased the price of that offering.

However, that’s not the only option. There are over 140 pages of documentation available free and without registration on the plugin’s support site. This includes documentation on how to change the stylesheet, how to load a custom stylesheet, and how to create your own.

There are several stylesheets included with the plugin. I’ve tried to keep them as generic as possible so that they work with most themes. Yes, some of the older ones are a little clunky, but that’s because they were built on older WP themes. I keep them in there because some people still use them. At the times when WordPress releases a new default theme, I generally start working from that to add new stylesheets.

Part of the problem beyond the fact that there are thousands of themes out there is that this plugin allows you to create as many fields of various types that you want. The bottom line is that I’ve allowed the plugin to be flexible so that you can customize the CSS any way you choose for the sole purpose that I want people who use this plugin to be able to make it look professional and fully integrated rather than looking like they are running a plugin that is one-size-fits-all.

One star reviews are not helpful when they offer no reasonable issues. If you have chip on your shoulder about people making a living from their work, so be it. But the plugin works, and (IMHO) works well. I’m not suggesting that every review be 5 stars, but these 1 star reviews that do not give any legitimate feedback are basically useless. There are no actual examples of this person’s issue and what’s worse, there was no known effort to find a solution *before* they posted their review.