Hi @marcfairlee,
Thanks for taking the time to provide feedback, I really appreciate it!
I’m really sorry that you are disappointed here. Please let me clarify a few things: No features in the free version of TablePress were removed! More than two years ago, I did however indeed discontinue and retire separate “TablePress Extension” plugins, which were available as additional add-ons on the TablePress website. I invested a lot of time into these but having them as separate plugins was an additional maintenance burden that is now gone after integrating them directly.
This affects the mentioned “Automatic Periodic Table Import” Extension whose updated counterpart in TablePress Max since then has been heavily improved, in terms of reliability and stability! In the newest release, it even support email notifications when there are failures, as well as different import intervals for tables!
But: I’m standing by my claim that I will never break the existing Extensions on purpose! This means that the long-retired “Automatic Periodic Table Import” Extension should actually still work! In most cases, there’s a problem with the underlying WordPress Cron system on your site and server, so that I recommend investigating that.
Again, I did not remove any features from the free version! Two years ago, I did however decide that some features that were available separately, as additional add-ons, should receive a new home in the TablePress premium versions, which now allow me to continue working on them and improving them continuously.
Thanks again for taking the time to provide feedback. I hope this clarifies the situation around the retired Extensions a bit and maybe you can reconsider you opinion of TablePress.
Best wishes,
Tobias
Hi. I don’t blame you, everyone needs money. I just said that if you decided to put a free extension behind a paywall, there’s no guarantee you wouldn’t put anything else that was free behind it later. There are so many cases like this, ironically. That said, I will continue to use it until you decide it cannot be used anymore in the updated version or until it stops working anymore. Your addon is great though, thank you.
Hi @marcfairlee,
Thanks for getting back to me, I really appreciate it!
I can see what you mean here, and I understand that there have been cases like that before, but I can assure you that this is not going to happen.
Yes, I did switch the free Extensions to paid feature modules, but I have not and will not remove features from the free version of TablePress that’s on wordpress.org! The Extensions have always been separate, and the increased maintenance burden of offering them separately was just too much. With the free version of TablePress, I do not foresee such issues, so there simply is no reason to change how they work. I’ll much rather try to show users how valuable an upgrade to a premium license is over forcing them by removing features.
With all this said, I hope that you can maybe revisit your rating and focus on the quality of the still available and fully supported free version of TablePress. Thank you!
Best wishes,
Tobias
