[Plugin: PhotoSmash Galleries] Farewell for PhotoSmash
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Hi Everyone,
PhotoSmash is shutting down. It’s been my pleasure, but alas, all good things (at least it was good for me ;-))…
http://smashly.net/blog/farewell-to-photosmash/
Cheers,
Byron
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Hey Bryon.
I wanted to say Thank You again for such a great plugin. And thank you for your support of it, which was truly the best, you are a classy dude.
I think the plugin is great and I for one have not found anything that compares, you mentioned NextGEN but I think of that as something totally different, no community aspect to it. I could be wrong, I have never really researched it as I have been totally satisfied with what you wrote. I am not sure whats up or who #40 is but I totally understand the primary reason and how priorities change and there is not enough time.
What do you see happening with this? It seems like a sudden and drastic pull of the plug but I guess how else could you do it… I for one want to keep playing with it and understand how it works. Is this alive on a repo somewhere or any forums for it or is just dead, I should get over it and move along?
Anyways, I wish you all the luck with whatever you are doing.
Cheers,
Zac
I’m also sad to see it go. Just recently started using it and haven’t even got it completely set up for the site it’s on, but it seems very robust and I had plans for more use of it.
Thanks, Byron, for your work.Hi Zac,
It has been my pleasure.It may seem sudden on the outside, but back in November, Photosmash experienced a sustained spike in downloads that has only grown. My time for supporting (answering forum queries) went from 30 minutes to well over an hour per day, frequently 2 hours or more. 3 little boys at home and a full-time job, and it was more than I could sustain long-term. I am one of those people who feel compelled to answer every request.
So, to prevent new users from coming onboard to a ship with no one at the helm, I will remove it from the repo. This being a GPL world, hopefully someone else will take it up and repost photosmash under their own user ID (and hopefully they’ll adjust the links in the readme.txt as appropriate if they do). I’d rather PhotoSmash go out (at least under my name) with a decent record of support and success for its users, rather than disintegrate over time.
One of the fatal flaws (and there were a couple), was that it was susceptible to bad behavior in other plugins and themes. This was usually manifested in jquery.forms.js and thickbox. Too many users come in with a theme or plugin that wreaks havoc, and that’s 10-15 minutes a pop. I tried articles, links to other resources, etc, but, ah well…
So, this has been brewing over several months. I haven’t broadcast it, which may have been the wrong thing to do. But, unfortunately there isn’t a Codex entry on how to gracefully bow out.
Thanks again for the kind words. Best wishes,
Byron
Oh, no… this is such sad news!
Photosmash is an awesome plugin, and I’m really sorry to see it go. But, I totally understand how a project can become too much, and start taking time away from real life.
Even though I only recently started using Photosmash, I still appreciate all your hard work. Best of luck on your next endeavor.
I was wondering if you could answer a couple questions. My usage may be a little unique, as I’m not actually using the “gallery” portion of the plugin. I’m building a site that hosts weekly photo assignments, where anyone can upload. I’m using the built-in WP gallery function, so I’m really only using the upload function of Photosmash.
I’m wondering how difficult it would be to strip out all the gallery, ratings, etc… from the plugin, and only keep the upload form and attach-to-gallery functions? Do you think this would be relatively easy, or is this actually a huge undertaking?
Better yet, I don’t suppose you have any interest in creating this new streamlined version of Photosmash (hint, hint, wink, wink). š
It would be much more of a niche plugin, so support time would probably be considerably less. There’s no other plugins that I’ve found that have this functionality, so it’s definitely something that’s needed.
Anyway, I completely understand if you have no interest in this kind of plugin. But, any advice you can give would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Hi again Byron,
As a followup to my last post, I found this statement written by you on your forums about a month ago:
“I am, however, planning to build a bridge that will let you use Gravity Forms for upload. But that’s down the road.”
I was curious if you ever had a chance to look at that? I’m actually a Gravity Forms user, and would love to be able to use it for uploading to WP galleries. I haven’t been able to because Gravity Forms automatically creates a new post when an image is uploaded (instead of attaching the image to the current post). I’ve wondered if this functionality could be accomplished with a custom GF addon, but that’s a little beyond my abilities.
Any thoughts? Thanks!
Hey Byron, is that a way to maybe put you back on photosmash? The person that gave rating 1 for sure didn’t spend much time with PS. Amazing plugin and by far the best forum master I ever crossed. Fast and kind with your replies. When I made my first question and you replied in the next hour, I thought I had been lucky, but when it kept happening all the time, with me and others, then I knew for sure that you weren’t an ordinary plugin developer. If you need some help on the forums I bet people would definitely help you. Myself being one of them.
Anyway, was if a pain in my heart that I read the farewell news, and as a good dreamer I still keep hopping that you may will keep doing your fantastic work with PS and the forum.
Good night and all the best.
Save PhotoSmash
Yes there are other galleries as PhotoSmash, but I chose PhotoSmash, chose not widespread NextGEN Gallery. Why did you! Because I think PhotoSmash develop in much better guidance.
That rating will not mean they do not like PhotoSmash and do not use thousands!
Byron should not give up and should not necessarily seek evaluation by humans.
Does all this not for popularity but because you love will eventually learn remuneration for labor. The award will be much greater than that expect always been so. I’ll give you an example with Facebook are past years to develop and have this popularity they have today. They have gone from zero. But they are not stopped evolving!
Do not give up! Not now when they start gaining popularity.
And all users get lazy Rate PhotoSmash otherwise ask questions in the Forum but an estimate can not give!
I like PhotoSmash and will not stop using it even be terminated!
Cheers,
Dobrin Draganovone of the best plugis that i ever used, excellent suport. Bad news about the shutting down. Thanks for all Byron!
I have not used your plugin, but I see a general pattern with other developers.
Why not provide a pro version or paid support? And I do not mean charging between $60 and $180 for a pro version which is too much for a lot of people, but charging something like $19 a year for support.
You plugin has been downloaded 74.000 times. If 5% ask support twice a year, I can imagine it will consume a lot of your time. If each support takes 5 minutes and you spend 2 hours extra a week on updates, it will be 14 hours a week that you are spending on this plugin! But what if 1% is willing to pay for support at $19 a year, that would be $14K a year or $19 an hour. Surely you can find someone willing to provide 10 hours of support a week for $12 an hour, leaving you $24 an hour for the 2 hour updates + 4 hours for extra questions and communications between you and the other support member.
If you turn your payed support into a forum, you can prevent people from asking the same questions.
I have been using wordpress since 2005 and as wordpress matures, the plugin mature, the time spend on plugins increases, but also the number of large to huge wordpress sites increases. Resulting in more developers making money from wordpress (plugins). I am sure $15 to $25 a year for support is very reasonable.
Hi Byron,
first of all I’d like to thank you very much for your excellent photosmash! I’m using it extensively on my community site for more than a year and I’m pretty sad hearing you’re shutting it down.
I’m also using NextGen on the same time, for different purposes (ngg for slideshows, ps for user uploads and star ratings, to name just a couple of examples).
I really hope you reconsider, it will be such a pity for one of the most robust, well designed, functional and excellent supported plugins of WordPress to vanish just like that.
There will always be poor ratings, no matter what (even wordpress itself gets lots of poor ratings form time to time :p)
There are always ways to keep things under control, John25 already mentioned one. On the other hand, if your decision is indeed final, we ought to respect it, to thank you for your hard work all this time and to wish you all our best for your future activities.
Best regards!
Thanks everyone! I deeply appreciate the kind words. Most PhotoSmash users have always been very appreciative and that’s always been a source of satisfaction.
As you have been able to tell, I’ve continued updating PhotoSmash as necessary.
I am, however, working on a complete rewrite of PhotoSmash that will hopefully correct some of the dumb things I did as I was learning how to write PHP and the WP system (2 years makes a lot of difference ;-). And it is also intended to address a few of the things that people have been clamoring for: simplify! simplify! simplify! comments on photos, private galleries, user-specific galleries, form field verifications, maybe even multiple uploads…etc.
As you can imagine, this is a months-long project. But hopefully it will be worth it.
To John25’s point above, I am trying to determine how to provide this in such a way that I can provide good support for users without becoming so overwhelmed. So, your suggestions are all welcomed.
Thanks again for your support!
Cheers,
ByronThank you Byron for the wonderful plugin and I’m looking forward to your new PhotoSmash. š
I have one question/suggestion/plea for the next release: please make separate language files.
Right now I can’t update the plugin to its newest version because I have translated it in so many places and update will basically erase all that work. Is it possible to tell me which files and which code has been removed (for the XSS vulnerability), so I can do it myself without losing translation?
Thank you!
Hi Byron,
not sure if you picked up my thanks on another forum somewhere out there but I just wanted to re iterate my thanks for what was a fab plugin, and excellent support.
And the guys are right very different to nextgen, imho far better for my needs. anyway good luck fella.
And this isnt directed to Byron as I don’t want to compound this issue of support but to the general community! unless I do anything as silly as upgrading to 3.1 etc etc my install of PS will keep working right?
wow its like watching Shane this!!!!! (thought you might like that one)
ha ha made myself laugh there! š
Hey Byron,
I just went to the WPPI conference of 20,000 photographers, and one of the speakers there said how great PhotoSmash is, so I came over to use it myself. As you can imagine, I regretted my bad timing since you’re just signing off. I do like Arash’s idea of charging a bit since your feedback and support is so good.
Anyway, I’m glad you haven’t abandoned it entirely, and I look forward to seeing your new plug-in. I do have PhotoSmash up and running on my blog and I’m very happy with it.
Byron-
I, too, would like to thank you for such an excellent answer to the challenges artists and photographers have in showing their work. Your support was excellent, if a little too heavy on the coding side for someone like me who wouldn’t know a php if it slapped me in the face!
I am amazed at the level of customer support you provided. There are always Mr. #40s around who believe it is their duty to bring negativity into the world. However, there are many more people completely satisfied with PhotoSmash.
You are obviously a bright guy so I’m sure you have considered the idea of a paid membership and soliciting help from users who understand the program enough to help with customer support. I hope you will eventually modify your business model to make PhotoSmash a profitable business, not a burden. I’ve owned a business that consumed my life so I understand what you are facing.
In the meantime, I plan to continue using PhotoSmash and looking for some type of community forum for help when needed. Wishing you all the best!
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