Is this plugin being abandoned?

Well, a week later and no response.

Front page here now down to “1 of 16 support threads in the last two months have been resolved.”, so I guess the answer to my question is self-evident….

So sad. It was a nice tool. RIP.

Hi Kiwi3685

Yes I saw your post last week – but have not had time to answer you – we maintain just on 90 plugins Free, Premium and custom plugins, plus we are working on open source release of the Theme Framework that we have been developing and using in our client site for over 3 years – plus WordPress major version 4.4 is due out in 12 days.

This is a plugin that we use in all of our clients sites and ages ago we released it open source on here. Re this:

I’m becoming concerned that this plugin, which has been excellent, is perhaps being abandoned.

Please look at the plugins changelog and you will see that we released a major new version just last month with 4 new Features. There have been 7 new version in 11 months.

Re this:
The developer(s) no longer appear to respond to any comments on this support forum.

Yes when we are extremely busy working we cannot be taking the time to support a plugin that we provide, maintain and upgrade for free. I am sorry but that is just the reality of it. We work with the plugin everyday on 150+ clients site and know that there are no bugs or if we see one we fix it and put out an update.

If we have a time when all of our Premium plugin support is done (paying customers) and we are not in a crazy busy time then we do some support on here – but it is not reliable because as you would appreciate we must do the work we are paid for first.

I know it is not ideal and there is no Premium version of this plugin to upgrade to to get priority same day support – but like all plugin authors we provide the plugin in good faith without fee or obligation.

Anyway thank you again for your feedback and apologies to you and any other user – but at this moment in time – we have no time to do support on this or any of our Free plugins.

Regards
Steve

Steve
Thanks for your candid response. I do understand the problems you face, and did recognise that in my original post. Thanks also for posting the latest update to the code.

I accept there have been plenty of updates, but that doesn’t, in my opinion, replace the need for active support.

I have a very strong view, and no offence intended, that plugins should not be made or kept available if it is not possible to provide timely support, or at least prompt responses to questions.

I know of a number of users of PVC for whom your latest update will be a great relief. But for myself I have taken on-board your very reasonable admission that “we have no time to do support on this or any of our Free plugins” and so have deleted it and moved to an alternative.

Hi kiwi3685

Yes no problem about using something else – we provide the script for free because as I wrote we use it in our client work all the time. If other people choose to use it and find it as useful as we do then that is great.

Re this:

I have a very strong view, and no offence intended, that plugins should not be made or kept available if it is not possible to provide timely support, or at least prompt responses to questions.

With all due respect you should try writing a plugin – then giving it away for free on www.remarpro.com and then regularly releasing Maintenance Updates and Feature Upgrades and giving one on one support – forever. If wordpress where to invoke a rule that compelled developers to give a lifetime of free support for users I think that you would quickly see that the number of plugins in the repository would fall from 40,000 plus to not many.

You see that is what developers commit to when they release any software on www.remarpro.com – Not only the initial time it takes to develop the script but then maintaining / developing the script for life (that is forever) – that is why you find so many abandoned plugins on the repository – over time many developers just tire of the time commitment or their job / career commitments change over the years (we all have hobbies we where once passionate about but no longer do).

That is why we don’t use any free plugins in our client sites (except our own) – we only use Premium plugins because we know that the developer is getting paid for their work and will be more than likely be there each year to maintain the plugin and if required give support.

Anyway all the best

Regards
Steve