Instead of review (for now)
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First off, congratulations to your one-of-a-kind labor of love plugin! Just short of a thousand options, no one is going to attempt to beat you there. ??
Must have taken you a lifetime to code this. It surely took me half a lifetime to go through the options, lol. Let’s share a good laugh, shall we? ??Why I’ve put the review on hold: I’d like to give your plugin high five later, and give you sth much more valuable immediately: detailed feedback/suggestions.
For a start (cause I am starting with the plugin too):
1) All your ? and sometimes ! help texts are coded to come up with the website’s popup alert box, correct? This permanent clicking to get the box away is…. nerve-wrecking. And if you felt “you don’t need to click to open help in the first place” then I’d counter “if the help texts weren’t needed why have them there?” ??
So, all other plugin authors (I know of) use different ways for help texts, none uses those popup alerts. I’d guess the most user-friendly way is how Michael Torbert with his very mature “All in One SEO” does it:
– a question mark, tagged “Click for help”
– you have to click it too, yes
– but: the help text shows up right underneath/next to it
– this is clever AND user-friendly because:
– the second-best way (show help on hover) does not allow:
– putting links in
– letting users open up all comments and do a ctrl-f page search ??(the “open up ALL comments” is a hint: even he doesn’t have that extra button yet, but should)
2) The current popup alert box code is flawed anyway (I won’t say “error” as I can’t assess that): During the “getting to know wppa+” period … I have the “Settings” page open all the time of course, fully expanded each section, for the reason/tip just mentioned.
And permanently the browser forces me back to the settings page because that alert box popped up AGAIN saying “[website name] says: undefined”.
It doesn’t even say WHAT is “undefined”, so it’s an entirely useless and annoying flaw. Enough said. ??3) I do NOT suggest you reorganize all settings (and make them consistent, at the moment many references don’t even match your newest table organization…).
Why NOT suggest it?
A more systematic and intuitive and consistent structure would surely benefit your plugin yes, but: it would waste your time. I don’t want that. Leave that.4) However, what I would suggest: Get rid of all those “options” that you yourself say “strongly discouraged” and such.
Why waste your (and our) time?(unless of course, you aimed to win the wp prize for the plugin with the most options? I doubt that)
More to come.
I trust you notice I am trying to help, not criticize. Where it sounds like that, it’s just funny to make it “stick”. ??
Again, thank you for an amazing labor of love plugin!
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Thank you for your review. It is most appreciated. Especially issues that affect user friendlyness are very welcome. I am developing this for only just over 8 years now, and believe me, all settings: either i needed them myself, users asked for it or they were needed to avoid conflicts with certain themes or plugins.
As you noticed: there are references that point to the worng setting, due to reorganisations in the past. If you can name any of those inconsistencies, please tell me, i will be pleased to fix them.
Settings often belong to two ore more topics, so, to orginize them in a logical way – i.e. to convert a multi-dimensional matrix into a flat table – is very complex and not a straightforward thing to do, but i am aware of it. This is why you can select up to two keywords near the top of the page to show all related settings.
Funny but a few hours ago, i think approx when you edited the above, i finally digged into the code to find the cause (or causes) of the annoying ‘Undefined’ alert box. I hope, and i think, it should be fixed by the next minor update.
A related topic is that when you run a maintenance proc interactively (Table VIII Start! buttons) and a server error occurs, you will see an confirmationbox asking you if you want to continue. You want, so in the next version you will only see an alertbox after 10 server errors, so the maintenance procedure will almost aways continue on a hidden browser tab without the confirmation box.
Your suggestion on displaying helptexts differently is very usefull. I do hardly need any helptexts as you will understand, so – like what i said about userfreindlyness – applies here too. I will see what i can do on this topic for the upcoming fix release. Pls stay tuned…
For a ‘newby’ it should be sufficient to answer the 16 questions in Table 0: Quick setup, and playing around on https://wppa.nl
Always open to usefull suggestions.
PS: A [!] button as opposed to [?] for the helptext means: your setting is NOT the default.
<input style=”/*! width:100%; */margin-top:8px;marg ….
Please never ever modify plugin code, if you want something that needs code change, i will do it in a way to preserve backward and forward compatibility.
Changes you made yourself will be lost at an update.Add to Table IV-A15 (Custom style):
.wppa-upload-button { width: auto !important; padding-left:20px; padding-right:20px; }do not “overwrite” one’s standard button and input css at all
This would really lead to incredible bad layouts on many themes…
there are a LOT of “invalid property values”
Pls supply links to pages where you find this.
I use the console on firefox that tells me the errors and i can only fix errors i see…Almost all widgets have their ‘box’ alternative. If you miss one, pls tell me.
On the https://wppa.nl homepage, there is a search box right below the paypal button.
Enter e.g. bestof and you will get a list of topic exerpts, including a page that describes the ‘bestof’ feature, as box and as widget.– table 2C4 is not high enough for fb buttons to display fully even when only 20*20; table 1C4 and 4a have no impact
I just verified that it works like expected. See:
https://wppa.nl/screenshots/wppaspec/oc1/cv0/ab99/pt4773– in upload box: put image types allowed
That is a good idea.
– max upload size: let us choose! on web, camera photo sizes make no sense anyway, smaller is best! (unless photographer/sale)
The default max upload size is defined by the server memory available needed to downsize/create thumbnail. This is meant to inform the user that IF he uploads a larger image it is likely that the upload will fail due to a server error.
If you want, you can set a smaller max size – and even min size – in Table VII-B10.1 and 10.2. There will be an errormessage if you attempt to upload outside this range.– when photo upload too big, it keeps green “Done!” but should say red “Failed!”
– “Upload Photo” should only be clickable once: i hit it multiple times, and the processing never stopped….
– should also have Cancel button, was needed in my test case already.
– we should be able to make fields mandatory to be filled before one can click upload?I will get into these.
– on successful upload (particularly if only one photo allowed), there should be a link to the photo, or to the album, or the photo or album itself be shown; at the moment, nothing. it stays with the green “done”
VII-B11 allows you to link to the front-page after successful upload. One can not link to a photo or an album, one can only link to a post or page.
Use the upload dialog on album covers or on the thumbnail area: Table II-D19. Using this will reload the page with the updated album content.
Note: the visitor must have upload accees rights (is the owner, or the owner of the album is —public—) to the album for the upload dialog to show up.Much easier: offer “enter link” (alternative at least)
NO! wppa is a cms. It will only show its own content.
Pls tell me your setings of Table IX-D
9 Grant an album Create an album for each user logging in.
10 Grant album name The name to be used for the album.
11.0 Grant parent selection method The way the grant parents are defined.
11.1 (depends of 11.0)I can not reproduce the multi album issue even with s2member activated.
I really want to know how you managed this, to be able to prevent it in future situations.
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