first off, I don’t like “hacking” a plugin that’s being actively developed because then I potentially have to choose between forking the plugin (and losing future improvements) or potentially losing my own changes when the plugin gets updated. Neither is ideal.
As for validating first name for numbers… I can see how some would consider it an edge case, but I have a specific situation on one of my blogs where I’m getting spammed by “subscribers” whose usernames are all a hash of alpha-numeric characters. These are not legit subscribers, and they’re hurting my email reputation. Why would I *not* want to protect my email reputation?
Really what it boils down to is, there may be plenty of situations where MailPoet users could benefit from a validation system that is more fleshed out or extensible. For example, a MailPoet subscribe form could be an extensive form asking for lots of info from prospects who are showing interest in a business process, specialized product, feedback survey, “new account” questionnaire, etc, and being funneled into a specific list within MailPoet.
Being able to validate fields for their intended information-type would prevent the blogger/website-owner from having to waste time managing requests that are spammy, or that are legit – but incomplete.
Ultimately, I don’t think stricter validation is an unreasonable request as it improves the quality of MailPoet as a product. I see MailPoet as having the potential to be so much more than just a tool for bloggers to gather subscribers into their “post notification” list. It would not be a far stretch of the imagination to see MailPoet being used as a full-on email marketing tool. And having field validation that is stricter (compared to where it is today) would improve the quality of the plugin overall.
Please consider improving validation in some way.
Thanks!
Chris