No updates in over 2 years

  • pjrobertson

    (@pjrobertson)


    6 years, 6 months ago

    [Rating updated from 1 star to 3 stars]

    Seems like the new devs are more responsive than the original Adknowledge folks (see the responses below), so I have increased my rating. Now I can give a real review of the plugin itself (as opposed to the plugin support):

    Great plugin, and it works really well. However it does have a few shortcomings (in terms of page load speed, try running a site with YARPP enabled through Google Pagespeed / Lighthouse):

    a) Despite there being a cache, it’s really inefficient:
    i) In order to just determine whether the cache table exists, it runs a whole ‘SHOW TABLES’ query, then does the searching in PHP which is really inefficient. It should really run a ‘SHOW TABLES like %s’ call (or even better, just use the maybe_create_table() WP built in function: https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/maybe_create_table/ )
    ii) The plugin queries the cached list of ‘related posts’ twice. Once to see if there are actually any related posts, and then a second time to actually get the list of related posts (using a join). I get the way it’s done, but it might be nice to improve this.
    b) The number of CSS files included by this plugin is a little bit over the top. It would be nice to be able to disable ‘extra css’ all together, so that I can use my default styles and save on loading extra render-blocking scripts.

    I hope the new devs can improve this!

    [Original Review]
    What a joke, the new ‘developer’ (Adknowledge) pushed out an update last week with the description “After a bit of a hiatus, we’re back!”

    If you look through the source code, the only thing that changed is the plugin version number and author (as well as the ‘Requires PHP: 5.2’ tag in the readme).

    This plugin is great, and works well, but the developer doesn’t seem to care about the plugin or how they communicate with their users. A completely useless changelog tag of “After a bit of a hiatus, we’re back!” and a lie that they’ve actually updated the plugin shows that there’s little support for this plugin now, and people should look elsewhere for other related posts plugins.

    • This topic was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by pjrobertson.
    • This topic was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by pjrobertson.
    • This topic was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by pjrobertson.
Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Plugin Author YARPP

    (@jeffparker)

    6 years, 6 months ago

    @pjrobertson Thanks for posting a review, but your statements are not entirely accurate.

    The plugin had been delisted due to an email address issue and this was resolved with the release to get the plugin back into the directory after 6+ months. We consider this to be a big step, and yes, after a 6-month hiatus of not being in the plugin directory 🙂

    The plugin is also no longer maintained by Adknowledge. A group of us with deep expertise in Content Recommendations and experience with maintaining very popular plugins have very recently taken Yarpp over from Adknowlege. More on this will be shared very soon.

    After a break of many years, the plugin is 100% supported now that the baton has been passed on. A larger update (hand-in-hand with proper communication) is being carefully worked on with a focus on a host of bug fixes and compatibility updates which will be available once it is properly tested, ready and updates properly communicated. Stay tuned. ❤️

    And as you stated, “the plugin is great, and works well“. There is no reason to look elsewhere. Yarpp will be even greater soon, in line with its storied origin history.

    Thread Starter pjrobertson

    (@pjrobertson)

    6 years, 6 months ago

    Great to have some more feedback and communication, thanks Jeff. I think it would be great if you take parts of your response here and write it into the plugin description itself, that way more people can know about the progress!

    Thanks

    Plugin Author YARPP

    (@jeffparker)

    6 years, 6 months ago

    That’s a great call… done! Now included in the latest changelog –
    https://wordpress.org/plugins/yet-another-related-posts-plugin/#developers

    We would appreciate it if, given the new information you would consider updating your star rating of this review, more reflective of “the plugin is great, and works well”… It would make a huge difference to Yarpp and our morale!

    Plugin Support Michael Nelson

    (@mnelson4)

    6 years, 6 months ago

    👏 good user feedback from @pjrobertson and developer response from @jeffparker, in my opinion.

    Thread Starter pjrobertson

    (@pjrobertson)

    6 years, 6 months ago

    Thanks for the response and update to the changelog @jeffparker ! I’ve updated my original review.

    Plugin Author YARPP

    (@jeffparker)

    6 years, 6 months ago

    @pjrobertson Thank you for the very detailed constructive feedback in your updated review. Performance is a key area that we too have identified that needs to be improved. We are looking into this.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

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