I usually don’t give bad reviews

Hi Damir,

I wish you would have sought out support before leaving a review.

We cover this issue in multiple ways:

1. In the FAQ.

2. In the plugin settings.

3. In the support forum.

Whenever you install a plugin that makes an educated guess about who’s human and who’s a bot, there will be false positives. This is true of any and every security measure you add to your site.

It’s important both to fine-tune the settings for your specific needs, and to monitor for real people that might be getting caught in the spam filter.

I’d love to help you do just that, if you’d like to give Stop Spammers a second chance.

Thanks

Hi Bryan,

I know there is a setting for WooCommerce compatibility, but when I first noticed it, I didn’t activated it because it says “not recommended”.

WooCommerce compatibility should be default setting, not something that should be enabled / configured additionally. It’s nonsense that you have to install plugin and right after that, adjust settings to avoid a known issue.

If you change this “Only Use the Plugin for Standard WordPress Forms” setting to be enabled by default, or if you find any other way to avoid this issue, I will be happy to remove my negative review.

Otherwise, it broke 5 of my websites, literally every site on which we installed this plugin, so it’s a very common issue and I feel responsibility to warn people. Not to mention I had a very bad experience with my clients.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by Damir Tahiri.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by Damir Tahiri.

Hi Damir,

I completely understand how you feel, but like with most things, it’s more complicated than that.

Toggling the feature on by default. Actually, I almost implemented that myself in the last update we just pushed, but rethought that at the last minute. That would have already been too late for you anyway, but is exactly what you’re talking about.

However, here’s the issue. It’s not just a WooCommerce thing; it affects the website itself and hundreds (maybe thousands of other plugins). If the option only affected WooCommerce, it would definitely be baked-in. Another important note, is that it doesn’t necessarily impact all WooCommerce users, only some, so it seems it’s an even more granular thing with the way both plugins are setup.

Toggling this feature on means removing protection basically from the entire site and all third-party plugins, and so while it would protect WooCommerce users, it would leave everyone else vulnerable. The entire philosophy of security for both us, the developers, and you, the end-user, is about balance.

Of course, we recognize that WooCommerce happens to be the most popular plugin of all compared to other popular plugins that Stop Spammers protects, so it’s not something we take lightly.

There have always been warnings about WooCommerce, but in the last update, I did add a more prominent warning wherein I actually detect whether WooCommerce is activated, and if so, show a more direct warning.

But, I understand very well that no matter how or how much we warn people, some are going to miss it, so we need a more automatic solution.

What I’ve suggested to the team:

1. That we track down exactly what the conflict is, and add better support for WooCommerce forms. Difficulty: Hard (but, more ideal)

2. That we, rather than disabling protection for everything, surgically just detect WooCommerce pages on the front-end, and disable Stop Spammers checks in that instance only. Difficulty: Easier (but, less ideal)

Either way, we’re a tiny team with not a lot of funding, that relatively-speaking, is supporting a massive free community.

Slowly, we’re getting a bit more support with the release of Stop Spammers Premium, but we’re a long way away from paying ourselves or being able to hire on extra help.

You don’t have to remove your review, just know that we care, and we’re doing the best we can.

Thanks

Hi Bryan,

Just to remind you, I would really be happy to remove my negative review, so please let me know if you come up with any solution for this.

Regards,
Damir

From our FAQs:

Can I use Stop Spammers with WooCommerce (and other ecommerce plugins)?

Yes. But, in some configurations, you may need to go to Stop Spammers > Protection Options > Toggle on the option for “Only Use the Plugin for Standard WordPress Forms” > Save if you’re running into any issues.

This was there before, but it didn’t saved us from loosing revenues on multiple websites.

I noticed this later, but as I mentioned, there is additional note for this setting which says “not recommended”.

It’s still confusing and not enough obvious for such crucial functionality.

We’re already working on additional improvements and have reached out to WooCommerce to inform them of the issue and see if they had any interest in collaborating to improve things.

Unfortunately, this is not a priority for them (understandably), so most likely we’ll be simply disabling Stop Spammers on the front-end automatically wherever WooCommerce is detected.

It’s not ideal, and will leave WC vulnerable to spammers, but it’s the best short-term solution. Whatever we decide, it will be in the next SS update.

Ok Bryan, please let me know when you come up with any solution. Thank you.

New update just went live. We now have some serious safety checks in place for WooCommerce. I sincerely hope this never happens again, and the warnings are now so aggressive, I think it’s a safe bet.