Does a job on spam – AND CPU utilization too

Hi @dotcominfo,

I’m sorry to hear that you had a negative experience with the plugin.

However, I have to ask, why would you post a negative review without even submitting a support request first?

WP-SpamShield would never be responsible for the kind of server overhead issues that you experienced. You have to be careful when you deal with web hosting tech support too — most users only deal with Level 1 techs who have very little technical training, and zero experience actually managing a server. Often you have to escalate to a Level 3 tech before you deal with someone who actually knows what they are talking about. We consult with and advise many top web hosting companies on both security and server efficiency issues.

Clients hire us day in and day out to optimize their site performance, and we write plugins that help improve PageSpeed, so that’s one area we specialize in and would never let a plugin slow a site down. We have over two decades of experience in managing web servers and optimizing performance.

According to server technicians, this is a poorly designed plugin as far as it’s burden on the server goes.

The techs you dealt with would not be the ones actually managing servers, and are not qualified to even make claims like that about a plugin.

Most WordPress site slowdowns are most often caused by undiagnosed PHP errors, configuration issues, memory issues, database issues, missing modules, old mySQL versions, and old PHP versions.

When you activate a plugin, and an error occurs, it’s not always the most recently activated plugin that is the actual cause of the issue. Sometimes issues “under the hood” of PHP go undetected for a long time, and things will seem to work fine until a specific trigger occurs. If there is a site configuration issue or conflict, even a perfectly well coded plugin or theme can be the trigger. But the actual issue may be something else entirely.

WP-SpamShield is recommended by many top web hosts, and they specifically talk about how it is light on server overhead, often using the word “scalable”. This directly contradicts the claims that you’re saying SiteGround made. We know that the folks managing servers over there would never make statements like that about WP-SpamShield.

It is important for all plugin users to read the documentation. Please take a few minutes to work through the Troubleshooting Guide and FAQs, as these solve over 90% of issues users have. (Please be sure to follow all the steps, not just read through them.)

Please take special note of FAQ 15, as it specifically addresses your issue:
“Q: Will WP-SpamShield slow down my site, and is there anything I can do to optimize my site for it?” Read the full FAQ:
https://www.redsandmarketing.com/plugins/wp-spamshield/faqs/#faqs_15

If the information provided in the Troubleshooting Guide and FAQs does not solve the issue, we can help you fix the issue on your site. All you need to do is head over to the WP-SpamShield Support Form, and take a moment to fill out a support request. That will allow us to help you diagnose this, find out what the real issue is, and get things working right for you.

Please ask yourself this: When developers spend so much time developing free plugins for the WordPress community, is it really ok to post a negative review without making any reasonable effort to receive support? That’s simply not the right way to handle things.

If you have an issue with something, the right thing to do is submit a support request first, and give the author time to respond. We provide free support for our plugins…all you have to do is submit a support request at the WP-SpamShield Support Page. We provide some of the best support out there.

You might want to take a moment to check out these two posts:

• There’s a wrong way to give plugin feedback on www.remarpro.com
• How to Leave a Good Bad Review

I would ask that you reconsider your rating, as it simply isn’t accurate. Reviews like this simply do not help the global WordPress community.

— Scott

Sorry you didn’t like my review Scott, but I presented a factual account of my experience. SiteGround escalated support was very helpful in assisting me in identifying what the cause was behind the escalated CPU utilization. Once I started working with them on it, it was all very easy to test and isolate.

I didn’t file a support ticket with you because I don’t have the time to invest with your specific plugin. We’ve simply moved on. You’re one of many in the comment spam game, and there’s no benefit to me in helping you dig further into this issue. It would just be a poor use of my time, which is for building websites for my customers.

You shouldn’t be so bruised by my poor rating and review – you have plenty of good ones to offset it, but I thought what happened in my experience might be very helpful to others on web hosts who also police CPU cycles and script executions on a rolling 24 hour period.

Sorry you didn’t like my review Scott, but I presented a factual account of my experience.

No one is doubting that you had a negative experience, and we are genuinely sorry that happened.

I didn’t file a support ticket with you because I don’t have the time to invest with your specific plugin.

Sorry to disagree with you here, but if you don’t have time for a support request, then don’t write a negative review. That’s just common courtesy.

However, if you have you have time to write this review, and then respond to comments, then you do have time to submit a support request with us. It’s doesn’t take more than a minute…and we solve problems quickly.

You shouldn’t be so bruised by my poor rating and review – you have plenty of good ones to offset it, but I thought what happened in my experience might be very helpful to others on web hosts who also police CPU cycles and script executions on a rolling 24 hour period.

We’re not bruised by it — but we do have a right to respond, and rebut statements that we don’t feel are accurate. We just want to keep things accurate and factual.

Unfortunately the statements in your review are based on a lot of assumptions, and will not end up actually helping folks with similar issues. When we diagnose performance issues, we dive a lot deeper into the actually processes and can isolate exactly what the issue is.

The beauty of reviews is that it’s a system for users to report their experiences. That’s all I did. It’s great for you to “fight the good fight” like you do; it lets people know you really care about the performance of your product. Keep it up.

The beauty of reviews is that it’s a system for users to report their experiences.

No one is disputing that.

We don’t dispute a bad review if it’s warranted. If you had contacted us, and we treated you badly, or were not able to fix something, it would be understandable.

One of the major reasons that it is essential to submit support requests before negative reviews, is that most of the time that users come in with a support issue, and they are confident it is due to a specific thing, it actually ends up being caused by something else.

Our diagnostic process is very in-depth and scientific — think of it like WordPress CSI. We go much deeper into the guts of WordPress, PHP, databases, servers, etc than most users would be able to, so we always get to the bottom of things, and identify the real issue.

Our tech support team members are the same people who develop the plugin — seasoned experts — not like Level 1 techs you might talk to elsewhere. So, it’s a whole different experience, and one reason why our tech support is so good.

If people skip the diagnostic process, and then post negative reviews online with their conclusions, all it does is spread inaccurate info, and makes it more confusing for others in the future. There is a lot of incorrect info floating around online and in forums like this, and it makes it that much more difficult for the WordPress community to solve problems in the future.

However, if they do go through the support process first, and still want to post a negative review, at least it will be more accurate, and more helpful to others.

Open source only works if everyone helps build up the overall community. Even if users don’t build the software themselves, at the very least, when a problem arises, they can submit support requests and contribute by helping the developer improve the software. By extension, this helps the entire community.

Think of how many developers will get discouraged and not want to contribute to open source any more if the community is run in a way that encourages negative reviews without support requests. That’s a bit of a toxic environment. We don’t get especially discouraged personally when this happens, but many will, and it has happened many times. There are some very talented young developers who no longer build open source software, because of repeated situations like this.

Even if you are unwilling to reconsider your review, please take a few minutes over the next couple days to at least read these two posts mentioned above:

• There’s a wrong way to give plugin feedback on www.remarpro.com
• How to Leave a Good Bad Review

Just something to think about for the future. ??

It’s great for you to “fight the good fight” like you do; it lets people know you really care about the performance of your product. Keep it up.

Thank you…we absolutely will continue to push for excellence, and will always work to better our products.