Bloated unnecessary code

Thanks natalie for your feedback
can you give me more details about the annoying images in this plugin?
and about “target_blank” on links shown by the plugin they are used so any one clicks on a link from the related links list will not leave your blog.
and what is the problem of using a ul inside a p tag ?

and what do u mean by this?

It also uses source scripts from the plugin builder’s url which makes the plugin unable to support itself in the event the author of this plugin changes those urls at all

btw, thanks for your feedback and if you have any other notes about our plugin it will be appreciated.

Hi Lenky,

The target attribute is deprecated and it’s a bad choice to use it. If people want to open a link in a new tab or window they can, but if you force the issue they can’t override your choice. I prefer the choice left up to me. Recommendation: Remove the target attribute (as well any script used to trick the validator into letting it slide). It’s a bad practice.

The p tag is allowed within the li element, which is a child of the ul. It is invalid to place a ul within a p tag. Recommendation: produce only valid, semantic mark-up (you don’t put lists in paragraphs). One oversight on your part destroys the validity of 100s, possibly 1000s, of blogs.

As far as the source scripts, I haven’t looked at the plugin (just explaining what Natalie pointed out), but it sounds like you have script on your domain required to use your plugin. If that’s the case it consumes your bandwidth, slows processing for the user, and if your server is down (or the URL changes), the user is SOL.

Hope this helps.

Mike

Thanks [MikeCherim] for the clarification.

I’ll add an option on the lenky plugin options page to choose what the admin want about the target attribute ( More options are always better ).

And about the validation problem, i’ll fix that in next release. (Thanks for notifying)

regarding the source scripts on my domain required for the plugin, it is a must as the post data are sent to LENKY and then the results are sent back to the blog, and i don’t think it will make your blog slower because of the cache system as all related results for posts are cached on your server.
And don’t worry about changing that links.

Lenky: Looking at the plugin I see this:

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://lenky.net/plugin/prototype.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://lenky.net/plugin/Modal.js"></script>

Bad, bad, bad. You should include prototype and modal in the plugin files and not reference them from your site. Or better yet, use wp_enqueue_script to load the built-in prototype in WordPress, and include modal in the same fashion.

You add link tracking back onto your site. Also bad, link tracking should be local and the results should be visible to the blog’s own owner.

You’re using external images all over the place, like https://lenky.net/images/link_error.png and so on. All these should be included with the plugin and be local to the site.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with creating a web-service for other sites to hit. But the only thing they should hit is the web-service itself. Making them get images and javascripts from your site is bad bad bad. Making the returned links track-back through your server is horrifically bad. And regardless, all this should be explained in detail in the readme along with reasons why you’re doing it that way instead of making it local.

A plugin should be self-contained, for the most part. For every external hit, you need to have a good reason for it. If lenky.com ever went down, all sites using this plugin would throw up a ton of errors, and the reason would not be obvious to those users.

I’ll add an option on the lenky plugin options page to choose what the admin want about the target attribute ( More options are always better ).

No, just do what was suggested. Leave it to the user and quit trying to micromanage the user’s experience and hijack his browser window. That’s bad form. The sooner you understand that, the better a plugin developer you will be. This sounds like a great plugin, but I’m staying far far away from it until the suggested modifications are made.

@lenky: What jonimueller said is the proper answer. Don’t invite your plugin’s user to abuse their power because they won’t know better. You, on the other hand, now have that insight so you can choose to do the right thing and now do know better.

Good options plus bad options does equal more options, but as long as bad options are in the mix, more is not better.

Thank you all for all of this, i am working now on fixing the validation issue, so that no blog that have lenky plugin installed will get validation errors.
and i added a piece of code to the plugin so that if lenky’s server is down or the blog having lenky installed encountering trouble connecting to lenky server, no errors will appear in the blog but an error message will appear only on the plugin admin page.
next release also will have all js/image files included with the plugin.
and about the target blank attribute i removed it.
Thanks again, and if you have any other suggestion it is appreciated.