Almost there

Please note that in one of the recent updates, if you are logged in as admin, you can sign up other users from the public side sign-up form via a live search function on either first name or last name. Start typing a name, select one from the autocomplete options, and then that sing-up will be attribute to the user ID of the user you select. So, that function is already there, but just not on the back-end.

Your gripe with the plugin is more of a feature request, so feel free to post it in the feature requests section of my site. I can’t please everyone, and I’m not trying to. This plugin was designed for my son’s grade school PTA site several years ago, and there have already been many more features added than what we needed at the school, and since my son has moved on to another school, and I no longer manage the site, I do not personally use the plugin for any of the sites I manage. I offered it here as a free plugin to the WordPress community in hopes that it would help others.

It’s open source, so I gladly accept code contributions, and have already had some recent features that were added by contributions from other developers, so feel free to submit your own code for consideration if this does not do everything you wanted.

The whole reason I developed this plugin to start with was because I could not find something that fit all of our needs for the PTA web site… this plugin is a branch/fork of another plugin that I started with that was closest to what we needed. It is now heavily modified with many different and additional features. But, there is simply no way that I can anticipate (or even want to) every feature that every possible user could want, so it seems weird you mark down the review to only 3 stars just because it doesn’t do one specific feature that you want.

I absolutely loved the plug in. Writing and developing plugins is one area that I have not yet ventured into and the inability to add names on the backend is a major stumbling block for me rating it higher. It absolutely is wonderful and I thank brilliant selfless developers like yourself for creating such wonderful works. Every other aspect of this plugin will work wonderfully with our application. The backend functionality, as I said, is the only thing holding me back from rating it a full five stars. If added in a new version I would gladly increase my rating as your plugin deserves it.

OK… but seems like you are confusing “feature request” and “review”, and you contradict yourself by saying you love the plugin, but only give it 3 stars simply because it doesn’t do something in the exact way in which YOU think it should be done (where, in fact, you can, as admin, sign up other users… already a feature of the plugin).

That’s the equivalent of me saying that although I love WooCommerce and use it for many sites that I develop for other clients, I should give it a bad review because I often have to do some custom extensions (such as my Wholesale Ordering extension) to add some features that it doesn’t already have.

There is simply no way that a developer, like myself, can, or even should, try to put in every possible feature they can think of (or that is requested)… it’s simply not possible.

However, a review like yours that says “Almost There”, leads others to believe there is something wrong with the plugin, making it non-functional. I can understand a bad review if my plugin crashed your site or caused compatibility issues with something else, or threw out errors, or simply didn’t function the way it claims, but that’s not the case here.

But, hey, it’s a free plugin that I make absolutely no money off of, so I shouldn’t take offense, and I do appreciate (and take into consideration) all feedback and feature requests. You are certainly free to try to find something else that has all the exact features laid out exactly the way you want them… but, to me, sounds like the only way you’ll get that is by spending a significant amount of money to hire someone to develop a plugin to your exact requirements.

Also, regarding this:

By making the signup process only on the front end, you run the risk of someone else signing up for that position that is already filled in person instead of through the website.

That is also not true. There is already a feature where you can hide sheets from the public, allowing the admin to work on them, or create sheets ahead of time, and then make them public (visible) when they are ready. So, that argument against my plugin is also not valid. The plugin already does exactly what you want, allowing the admin to sign up users for tasks even before they make the sheet visible to the public… they just do it from the front end instead of from the dashboard. Even if we tried to set it up to assign users to tasks from the admin dashboard, the sheet and tasks would first have to be created, and so would still be visible to the public unless you select the option to hide them, and the I would need to create an all new admin dashboard interface to pre-assign users to tasks (but, not everyone makes their volunteers have user accounts, so that needs to be taken into consideration as well). You end up with a bunch of redundant code since this can already be done easily from the front end.

Just in case you missed that option/setting on the sheets.