I can not recommend this plugin for anyone to use

  • Moderator Jan Dembowski

    (@jdembowski)


    Forum Moderator and Brute Squad

    10 years, 10 months ago

    *Jan looks for popcorn, gets coffee instead. Thankfully.*

    These reviews and the replies sure are colorful for this plugin. Todd, you really need to refrain from implying legal threats as you’ve done in your other comments. You know what I am referring to and those comments were deleted.

    Note: All comments and opinions below are mine and do not reflect the opinion of any other group that I may belong to. So there.

    tl;dr I’m rating this plugin a 1 star. If this plugin were supported and provided functionality transparently then I may revise my review. But there is zero support for this plugin and I do not like having plugins that apparently serves to promote another commercial plugin.

    Review begins below.

    The Admin Pages

    After I installed it I found this in the admin page.

    https://cl.ly/image/450X033x3901

    That’s a lot of way over the top advertisement don’t you think? Especially when the admin part is this tiny little 2 check boxes.

    https://cl.ly/image/2W21320Q0t23

    Two small check boxes buried beneath all that “Sell! Sell! Sell!”. I had to resize the font on my browser (that’s why the font is tiny) to be able to see the whole thing.

    But What Does This Plugin Actually Do?

    As far as I can see, all this plugin does is generates a password for each comment such as “gpK9GOUxU1LM” or “Esxji4SW3dQ9” that the commenter must copy and paste from the field that is marked with “* Copy This Password *” and paste it into ” * Type Or Paste Password Here *”

    That’s not really useful to me as all that does is introduce another barrier to my commenters. I find that using other plugins afford me comment protection as well as pingback and trackback protection.

    Spam protection is not easy but while this is not as burdensome as a CAPTCHA (which I will never use on my sites) it does inhibit comments. To me that’s not SPAM protection as much as it’s “BUG YOUR USERS” protection. Yes that will stop bots (maybe, I installed it on a test blog and that doesn’t get any comments) but I want to encourage real people to comment on my posts.

    This doesn’t really encourage that conversation. I may be looking for anti-spam magic? but there are other plugins that do that successfully without adding anything obvious to the comment form.

    GPL’ed code

    Looking at the code your plugin that is hosted here is 100% GPL and I don’t see any issues there. There are whole sections in the includes directory that I do not think is even engaged but I didn’t do any tracing.

    I sure do not see that code in the sparse admin settings page.

    THE. PLUGIN. PAGE. (insert dramatic sound track HERE)

    Here’s the problem I have with your plugin page on the WordPress repo.

    The first 22 lines of your plugin page are dedicated to selling a plugin on your commercial site.

    That’s 288 words for an advertisement that has nothing to do with the plugin that is hosted on WordPress repository here.

    Not counting the About the Author or the language list you dedicate a whole thirty three words to your actual plugin on that plugin page on the bottom like an afterthought.

    (That’s 33, 3 x 11, 30+3… well you get the idea.)

    Only 11% of your verbiage has anything to do with your hosted plugin here and you toss in that last verbiage like an afterthought of “Oh yeah, I should probably talk about the plugin that I don’t provide any support for.”

    Edit: Correction, it’s a total of 321 words when you combine the text verbiage. So 33 divided by 321… *looks for paper* 10% of the verbiage at the bottom. *Drinks more coffee*

    That’s just thick. It’s oversell plain and simple. You’re using the space allocated to your plugin here to promote your other plugin that’s not hosted here.

    Now plugin support has always been optional and you do get points for coming right out and saying “There is no support for Spam Free WordPress”

    Support (or lack of) should be a critical part of the decision to use a plugin. That statement alone would make me not consider using your plugin for real.

    But using the plugin page here to shill for your commercial plugin? That’s Just Not Cool? Todd. Not cool at all.

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

    (@toddlahman)

    Now I understand why the moderators here will not allow me to defend myself or my plugin in the comments, and instead delete my response, but will allow others to use profanity, and make false statements. I guess moderation is based on the opinion of the moderator, and not objective standards. That’s not professional. If you can’t remain impartial and objective then you should not be moderating comments for this plugin.

    Nothing you’ve mentioned makes Spam Free WordPress any less capable of blocking spam out-of-the-box, with no additional configuration.

    Spam Free WordPress is the free version of Simple Comments, although Simple Comments does have a ton more features and ability to block spambots and hackbots, it is an upgrade from Spam Free WordPress. The plugins use different names to avoid confusion.

    Andrew Nevins

    (@anevins)

    WCLDN 2018 Contributor | Volunteer support

    Hi Todd, if you find profanity tag the thread with “modlook” and a moderator will deal with it.

    Plugin Author Todd Lahman

    (@toddlahman)

    I just want to make one thing very clear. Solving problems, and user experience of my paid software, is all that matters to me. Simple Comments has solved the problems of blocking spambots and hackbots that thousands of other plugins could not, so I am very proud I could make that contribution, albeit the time was not free to develop that solution, and obtaining that solution comes at a small but fair price. Opinions about how I encourage users of Spam Free WordPress to upgrade to a better solution also don’t matter to me, just that my paying customers are satisfied with the solution I have provided for their benefit. Here is an example of real problems that concern me every day, which make the pettiness on www.remarpro.com meaningless:

    https://youtu.be/-5wpm-gesOY

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