Plugin abandoned ?

  • clipper87

    (@clipper87)


    5 years, 9 months ago

    Let me first say that this plugin is based on a fantastic concept. To date I have not found any alternative. The bad news is that for some reason the developer @barrykooij no longer updates it. I have been chasing him for almost 2 year’s now to get something fixed on one of the paid options I use to no avail. I also chased him to get some kind of confirmation that the plugin was still being worked on as it had not been tested against recent versions of WordPress. See https://ww.wp.xz.cn/support/topic/plugin-abandoned-49/ For some reason that triggered a fast reply and the next week he posted v4.4.3 (14 months after the previous update) containing “small minor fixes and tweaks”. I doubt that anything actually changed in the code. I think it was merely a meta update to make the plugin look as if still being worked on altough I did notice some posts here that referred to issues after the 4.4.3 update. Not sure what to think of that because meanwhile WordPress evolved as well. Take a look at the issues brought up here; no replies except at times from @hchouhan who to my knowledge is not involved in the development; at best he gives answers that basically can be found in the manual, for all the rest he points to the developer @barrykooij. IF the developer @barrykooij himself replies the tactique is to divert issues to a private mail message. From my experience it ends there. I don’t inted to offend anyone here but I -like many others- deserve far better @barrykooij

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • cmply

    (@cmply)

    5 years, 9 months ago

    I agree with this. I was in the exact same boat and shared a similar experience here:

    https://ww.wp.xz.cn/support/topic/beware-no-tech-support-for-paid-extensions/

    Their two paid plugins (MailChimp Lock and Download Page) began to conflict with one another after a WordPress update.

    I was told it was too difficult to fix and was just issued a refund without any further explanation.

    It’s unfortunate as it really was a great solution while it was working. If they are able to fix the issues, I’d renew the plugins.

    Plugin Contributor Barry Kooij

    (@barrykooij)

    5 years, 9 months ago

    I just wanted to reply to this for anyone else reading this so they can also read our side of the story.

    Because there are two users here with separate stories, I’d like to address them both separately.

    @cmply had an unfortunate conflict of 2 of our paid extensions. While we did try to resolve the issue, we were unable to do so. We have given this user a full refund of their purchase and explained to them in detail that it is, unfortunately, technically not possible at the moment to resolve the issue.

    @clipper87 bought one of our extensions that he is using on his website. He purposed a new feature for the extension, which I think sounded like a good addition. I told them that I’m willing to add this new feature in the future to the extension. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to add this new feature yet because of other priorities. Please note that this is concerning a new feature to a paid extension. I’ve also given @clipper87 an extra free year on the extension to show I’m sorry for not having the time to build the new feature yet. I’ll contact you privately via email to issue a full refund so you can search for a different solution.

    I’d like to close this thread by clearing some other things up.

    no replies except at times from @hchouhan who to my knowledge is not involved in the development; at best he gives answers that basically can be found in the manual, for all the rest he points to the developer @barrykooij.

    This is simply not true. @hchouhan has been working for Never5 for years now, helping people for all of our products on the w.org forums and in our premium email support.

    IF the developer @barrykooij himself replies the tactique is to divert issues to a private mail message. From my experience it ends there.

    I’m not sure what you’re trying to imply here but you act like there’s a big scheme going on. While in reality, it’s WordPress official rules that we need to ask people to contact us privately when the question is regarding a premium (not on w.org hosted) website. And it doesn’t end there, we help and answer hundreds of people monthly with their websites and their purchase. Respectfully, we sell a reasonably large amount of extension and plugins every month, if we would ignore all of our customers, don’t you think the forums would be full of people asking for help?

    I hope this explains more for others reading this post. To clarify, Download Monitor is still maintained and developed.

    Kind Regards,

    Barry Kooij

    Thread Starter clipper87

    (@clipper87)

    5 years, 9 months ago

    The truth of the matter is somewhat different I’m afraid:

    I am using 2 paid extensions and for one of them (mail lock) there’s 2 issues that as far as I’m concerned are to be considered technical issues:

    1. After clicking on the mail lock “download” button the download starts but there is no way to show a message or redirect to some page to confirm the download has been initiated & taken care of. Right now just continues to be displayed. Adjusting this behavior with some code imho is a very small undertaking.

    2. The styling of the Download button has a problem on mobile if the label is longer than the word “Download”

    And then there is indeed a feature request for a double opt-in to avoid that people enter bogus email addresses so they don’t waste my time when trying to follow up on their download. It is true that no commitments were ever made about implementing this. While unfortunate, the lack of this feature never lead me to think that the plugin is abandoned let alone spread rumors about it being abandoned.

    The release history https://ww.wp.xz.cn/plugins/download-monitor/#developers was what started worrying me and others as the last update was april 3rd 2019.
    ww.wp.xz.cn thereafter started signalling that the plug may have been abandoned / no longer maintained as it had not been tested with the last 3 versions of WordPress.

    It was only per my public insistence in this forum that the plugin got a so called meta update june 8th with undisclosed “fixes and tweaks”.

    Another thing that started worrying me was the lack of reply/action via private email for support requests.
    I’m not trying to imply anything here so let me just share the following timeline of events which again lead me to think the plugin is being abandoned:

    – The last private email about my issues I sent to @barrykooij was on june 8th. He replied that he’d do a meta update and get back to me the next day for my other issues in that email.
    – The meta update materialised but I did not hear from @barrykooj until june 12th @barrykooij telling me that he had not forgotten about me.
    – Nothing futher happened.
    – June 24th I emailed @barrykooij to get a status update but I did not get a reply.
    – July 14th I emailed @barrykooij again to get a status update & asked if this plugin was still being worked on.
    – I did not get a reply.

    Today august 27th -almost 3 months late- I replyed to @dyin that I suspected this plugin was dead in the water based on my experiences.

    Basically I’d like to just get on with things: I have repeatedly stated that this plugin is unique & great and I’d be happy to pay for it for many more year’s to come.

    I look forward to an email from you @barrykooij

    Plugin Contributor Barry Kooij

    (@barrykooij)

    5 years, 9 months ago

    @clipper87 I think we mostly differ in expectation what is considered to be included in a premium extension. Point 1 in your last comment is something that is not included in the basic plugin and therefor something we can’t code for you. If you say

    Adjusting this behavior with some code imho is a very small undertaking.

    this might be true but this depends on the rest of your website. As we have stated you are free to modify our code in any way you want, we can also refer you to a third party to create this for you if you are unable to do so yourself. We just don’t do custom client work, this is outside of our scope of development support.

    Regarding point 2, this is most likely because of your theme as we apply minimalist styling to our products so they can adopt theme styling. This is something we normally don’t mind helping out with so I think this question got lost in discussion regarding your other feature requests.

    Again, you say you’re not trying to imply anything but you do spread news that Download Monitor is (or might be) abandoned.

    I understand that you want to get on with things. The lesson I personally learned here is that I should have been more clear in letting you know a feature is not supported and refunded your order earlier. I’ll email you the financial details later today but I will refund your current business with us so you can move on.

    For me this closes the case, I hope it does for you as well and it will stop you from hooking into other support post suggesting things that are untrue.

    I wish you the best, I will ask a mod to have this post locked.

    Kind Regards,
    Barry Kooij

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

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