Buying this plugin will make you grey haired well before your time!

If you are new to WordPress look for something else! You need to do a fair bit of work to incorporate this plugin into your site over what it offers. It isn’t just to add it and everything will work. If you are an experienced developer you may end up being furious with the amount of money you have paid for this plugin.

I’m an experienced developer with over 10 years of full-stack experience so I’m not new to web development but I was looking for something to save time instead of developing an application myself. I researched thoroughly and at the time I felt that BDP was a good choice after reading the comments and reading what was available on the website.

A year on I wish I had made another choice. Due to ill health and being very busy in work I have had limited time to spend on a project that I had with BDP. My progress has been made so much slower due to all the problems encountered with the plugin. I have wasted so much time fighting with the plugin and trying to get help. I have come to understand that the information available about the plugin doesn’t really reflect what you really get and I suspect that many of the 5 star comments are written by people before they have actually started digging in and trying to build something more advanced than the most basic directory with the plugin.

After reading the website and comments you feel like you will get a really good product that is really stable and fully developed but I found that it was very deceiving in what you actually get, especially when it comes to the extra themes and add-ons. For me I looked at a number of the example websites that BDP showcased on their website to be able to judge what was attainable and I read deeply and asked questions but couldn’t really get the information I needed but assumed that the showcased websites were demonstrating what was easily possible with the BDP (the way they were presented gave me this impression) and the theme that I liked the look of. There was nothing explaining the large amount of extra development that was needed to achieve anything like what was portrayed in the showcased sites. The theme that I bought doesn’t even have the functionality that is available in the basic theme. You would expect everything in the basic theme plus more and better looking but it is actually less. It is really disappointing and feels like it is a total rip off. Because the theme is ‘unfinished’ or badly planned it means that you can’t create a usable site. Searching will take the user to a blank page with a link that doesn’t take the user back to the directory and there are no buttons like the basic theme, so the user is totally confused. Then if there are results of the search listed, the side categories menu only shows this result which is also confusing. The worst thing is that again there are no buttons back to the directory and the link in the side menu fails. When I bring these problems up I am told that the themes differ slightly and they will make a note of it and I’m given links on how I can write my own code to add what should be included. This is so extremely disappointing, there are many problems with this theme, such as bugs and it is totally useless from a user experience perspective. It doesn’t feel like BDP are interested in fixing the issue. So that was a waste of money and I’ll probably need to use the basic theme if I want to make my site more user friendly and/or put a fair bit of work extending the plugin to add basic behavior that should exist and that is available in the free theme. Basically you are on your own was the answer. This was a deep disappointment and I don’t really want to continue using the plugin but have just paid a lot of money. I’m looking at other options for future projects. I won’t pay another penny for this plugin.

Then when it comes to the support, you will spend half your time sending emails back and forth trying to work out all the bugs and problems that exist but also trying to work out how to do simple things because the plugin options and menus are pretty confusing and not user friendly. If you are based in another time zone this will be a fairly long lag until you get a reply each time. I have found the support is pretty good and they are friendly but it is so frustrating that you need to waste so much time contacting them to fix all the problems. I’ve had problems with the maps, the licenses, the import and export the theme and pretty much most parts of the directory.

The directory has potential but with all the problems and bugs and unfinished themes it feels way over priced, it makes me angry thinking about all the problems and the ridiculous price that I have paid considering all the problems.

I would guess if you just want something basic then stick with the free plugin. If you want something more advanced then do your research and be prepared that you will need to do a lot of work on top of just buying this plugin. Some of the competitor plugins are far more appealing when it comes to visual presentation, BDP feels like it is stuck in the 60’s and buying a theme to improve on that will leave you with less functionality so if you want a better looking directory then either use a different plugin or be prepared to style the plugin yourself and stay far away from their themes.

• This topic was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by junipa.