Changes settings with every update to include their own ads

  • Back in the day when this product was called Sexy Bookmarks, it was great. Since the change to Shareaholic it has steadily gone downhill.

    It resets the “hide related posts” checkbox on every update, so I had to go in and re-check the box on multiple posts every time.

    It turns its own affiliate and ad links on with every update. Sleazy, guys, very, very sleazy.

    It has settings in two different places–my admin panel and their website. Talk about a pain to maintain, especially when the same settings appear in both places and can be set in a different way in each!

    There are better plugins out there for both the Related Posts function and the Sharing function. For all the time it takes to undo the damage from an update, it’s worth it to spend $20 or so for something off CodeCanyon. At least that way the financial cost is in the open and you won’t have to worry about what’s being leached off your website by this plugin.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Plugin Author Shareaholic

    (@shareaholic)

    @mugwumpr thanks for the review, but we simply don’t do the things you mention reg. reverting settings. If settings are being reverted on upgrade, please let us know and we’ll take a look and fix it. This should not be happening and if it is, it’s a bug. Yes, if you hard “reset” the plugin, all settings will reset to their defaults. My direct email is [email protected] or happy to continue the dialog here. We’d appreciate any additional info as we’d like to fix this bug for others, if it is indeed happening like you say it is.

    Thread Starter mugwumpr

    (@mugwumpr)

    Yes, Jay, it “is indeed happening like [I] say it is”, and if you read all the 1-star reviews over the past 6 months or so on this forum, you’ll see that it’s a very long way from being a unique “bug” situation. It’s “indeed happening like [many people] say it is”.

    It happens on updates. It happens consistently. It happens to many people.

    It happens with advertising settings being turned on after being turned off. Again, please read all the reviews here from the last 6 months. There’s more than enough information to help you get started with this so-called “bug”, because we’re all saying pretty much the same thing.

    There are 65 one-star reviews, nearly all of them for exactly the same complaint. Sleazy practices and advertising settings that turn back on after every update. A ratio of 65 one-star to 104 five-star is very telling, especially when the message in those one-star reviews is the same one. That ratio is more than enough to warn savvy WP users away, and will soon be enough to warn the naive away, too, if it continues growing at the rate it has over the last 3 months.

    Thanks for the offer, but I’ve moved to a plugin I can trust.

    Plugin Author Shareaholic

    (@shareaholic)

    @mugwumpr comparatively few users have brought this up when you consider that Shareaholic is helping over 300,000 active sites. You are referring to a bug that is affecting less than 0.03% of the entire user base. That said, we care a lot about every user, and we welcome your (and anyone else affected by this bug) help to identify the cause / more information, as we’ve not been able to reproduce this bug yet, and yes, we’ve spent countless hours on it. We try really hard to minimize bugs (quite successfully), but given the numerous combinations of hosting providers, databases, PHP versions, plugin conflicts, etc and not being able to reproduce it, this is one of those cases that we really need, and would appreciate your help with.

    Again, to be absolutely clear, this is not intended behavior, and we would appreciate your help.

    If you decide to still not reconsider helping identify the bug, we sincerely thank you for listening and for using our services for so many years.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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