Personally, for free plugins, even if they’re completely broken or they wreck my website, I prefer to just suck it in and move on to something else, rather than leave negative reviews.
I rationalise that no one is forcing me to use the plugin, and it’s the least appreciation I can show for the hundreds or even thousands of manhours that these developers pour into their themes and plugins that I get to use for free.
Of course, if you’ve paid for add-ons and they are not working as advertised, that’s a totally different ball game, and I completely understand your frustration and negative review.
After testing this plugin extensively and reading through dozens of support threads, I’ve come to the conclusion that the developer(s) might be very inexperienced in software development generally, or inexperienced in developing packaged marketplace software for use by others in an uncontrolled environment where the code must necessarily play nice with 3rd-party code.
My opinion is formed from the MANY conflicts reported here in the plugin’s support forums, which, I believe, are primarily caused by the non-adherence to common WordPress coding standards and best practices.
There’s one thing being a code ninja in a corporate environment where every line of code and infrastructure are strictly under your control, and developing for an open jungle like WordPress.
That said, I’m still very appreciative of the developer’s free plugins and service to the WordPress community. I only hope they’ll slow down and fully adhere to WordPress coding standards, study the problem domain thoroughly to understand and better support best practices (outputting the wrong canonicals for DIRECTORY and LOCATION pages is simply criminal, in my opinion)… and implement a better testing suite to thoroughly test their awesome plugin before release.
Just my two cents.
Well, I personally don’t think it should take months to build a working website.
So if you are using a theme or plugin that does not work and you have to keep going back and forth with a support team for months. This ends up with a non-working website.
To your point Yes, from a selfish point of view it is better to move on and use another product.
Posting and warning others however does (hopefully) help correct the fact that people are putting out untested broken products into this community.
The idea of reviews if I’m not mistaken is to give a new user or purchaser a heads up good or bad.
So while it does seem that you are simply a shill, I won’t hold that against the plugin authors.
However, anyone else reading this may not?
As I said they are working on fixing these issues. My review simply takes the position these are things that should have been found in testing and fixed before the plugin was ever released. Leaving a notice for others that even after all these “fixes” the plugin (and the PAID for extensions) still are not fixed, and leaves me with a website that is not ready.
To your point Yes, from a selfish point of view it is better to move on and use another product.
That’s an interesting point of view I never considered before. 😀
So while it does seem that you are simply a shill, I won’t hold that against the plugin authors.
Must this turn into a personal attack?
And here I was even thinking I was overly critical of the developer!
Not a personal attack.
Just an interesting observation, since you decided to respond to MY REVIEW instead of writing your own?
Andrew Nevins
(@anevins)
WCLDN 2018 Contributor | Volunteer support
All reviews whether one star or 5 stars are welcomed as they reflect real user experiences @gappiah . You can respect the community and someone’s time and still review something as a terrible experience.
@franktcmarketing There’s nothing wrong with your review, but it is written in a way to warn others off. That’s an invitation for discussion. If that’s not what you intended then in future I would recommend writing reviews just in your experience.
Too new here I guess. Never thought of a bad review as anything other than a warning to others?
Nor did I think it was a forum for discussion. If I don’t like a bad review someone else leaves I get to post my own experience ( as you pointed out ) and the reader gets to take all the reviews into consideration.
Now yes, I would expect an owner to reply but NOT someone who has not used the product?
Again I had no idea this was a discussion forum, but thanks for straightening me out on that.
