I can see you’re frustrated at the recent changes, but I’m not sure that you can fairly say the code is bad or that this is now nagware.
The code works exactly as planned, and therefore is good ?? What is bad for you is that you don’t like what the code does. That means you need to decide whether this plugin fulfills your personal needs and preferences, or as you say it’s time to move on to another plugin.
To be fair to the plugin author, all he has done with the validator is update the plugin so that users don’t fall foul of new ways in which mail is classified as spam, as sending a message which claim to be from a different domain to that which it is actually being sent from is a case where CF7 users can lose their mail to the spam folder. The issue is valid and well documented, and anecdotally I think we all have received spoofed mail (think of those message that claim to be from payapl.com
, but are actually from a crook who is after your money). Mail providers are tightening their rules to address this phenomenon, and CF7 has merely taken steps to help the overwhelming majority of the users to easily ensure they comply with the current best practice.
The author has been fair in creating a filter to disable the validator for the minority who don’t choose to use the validator, and placing this in the functions.php
file of your child theme with a clear label (/*this code does x y z*/
) means that it will never be overwritten on theme update.
Finally, I don’t think it is correct to call the validator nagware, which typically means “a type of shareware that persistently reminds (nags) the user to register it by paying a fee, where the intent is generally that the user will register or buy the program to get rid of the trial version’s annoyance” 1. The author does not benefit in any way from this reminder in the admin section, and rather than ask for a donation/like/review/upgrade, the reminder is purely for the user to prevent their mails from falling into the spam folder.
I’m fine with the new feature (as you can tell), and feel that the filters plugin authors include are exactly for this use case where you prefer to tailor the plugin to your particular preferences. This helps us to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.
BW
EDITED