Unclear Setup and Not Fully Functional
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EDIT: Changing this review because of the updates.
There have been some substantial UI changes that have made this plugin work so much better than the previous version. Many of the issues with usability before have been addressed and it works as I hoped. So much better and very useful now.
Thanks for listening to the feedback and making these much-needed changes!Original:
I was excited to install this plugin because linking to Buffer would allow me to keep all of my social accounts in a single place (instead of spread all over) and post to all of them. Unfortunately, when you install the plugin there are some additional steps (that should be automated) before you can actually post to Buffer. I found that my posts weren’t being sent to Buffer and then learned that I had to enable every. single. account. Why wasn’t this the default? Why do I have to ADD the accounts? I should have to DISABLE the accounts instead. VERY frustrating – AND I lost time on my posts not appearing on social media. #grr
The second issue is that not all of my accounts are being linked. I have several posts that I sent over to Buffer but out of the 13 accounts I’m trying to share to, only about half actually get the post. Which is pretty bogus.
Finally, there is a Logging function for debugging issues that doesn’t seem to actually do anything. There are some screenshots of some kind of log that I can’t find anywhere on any page. So that’s a bust as well.
I’m giving this 2 stars as I think the idea is great but if I have to manually add posts to Buffer to make up for the failed integration there is absolutely NO value to me. If it would work as advertised and made the setup process more streamlined – and intuitive – then I would give it more stars. The fact that it “sort of works” is why it gets 2 and not just 1.
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Thanks for the reply.
While some people might be distracting with “enabling by default”, I think a majority of WordPress users would expect that to happen. At least show the enabled/disabled accounts with different borders or something so you can see that it’s not enabled. Right now it’s hidden unless you click it. It’s a crap UX.
I HAVE been actively seeking support. Trawling forums, etc. We are engaging Buffer right now to see if it’s a problem on their end. But if this doesn’t work 100% of the time – EVERY TIME – it is not valuable. Period. If I have to manually do things on the Buffer side to post to accounts that didn’t get the original post then I may as well do it for all of the accounts. The benefit of this plugin would be that I don’t HAVE to do that AT ALL. If I have to do it ONCE, it’s a fail. Yes, it’s a high bar. But it’s pretty much what I expect of this kind of integration.
If the Buffer side of the equation fails to resolve the issue, I WILL be reaching out to WPZinc for additional support. Or I’ll uninstall the plugin. My focus is on writing content, not debugging WP plugins and integrations. And that shouldn’t be the focus of any blogger.
Thanks.
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