Looks great and promising but….

  • …how do you use it??

    See, it installed just fine. I created a project and category just fine….now what??? There is ZERO documentation on how to actually USE this plugin.

    ” Project Panorama is a simple and effective alternative to basecamp an “

    The description is cut off. As someone who is trying to find a good Project Mangement solution, seeing this plugin is just frustrating as it does not tell you what it actually does.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Plugin Contributor 3pointross

    (@3pointross)

    We include a link to the full documentation on the description and in the readme.txt. Is there another place that you expected it to be?

    Thread Starter DragonDon

    (@dragondon)

    Hi 3pointross,

    Thanks for the reply.

    A link in a readme.txt? You do realize that when installing from within WordPress you don’t see that text file right?

    What stuns me is how often directions to use the plugin is not included in the control panel. This plugin is by no mean alone in this failing. In oder to get that link you provided I have to FTP into my site, open the directory and then open a text file, copy the link, open a new tab and paste the link. Why is it not simply included in the control panel for the plugin itself? Wouldn’t help documentation make more sense to be WITH the plugin and not in a little file that in very inconvenient to get to?

    Sure the link may be in the description but how do I get that? I now have to go to ‘add new plugins’ search for your plugin, click on ‘more details’ and then find the link. That’s a lot of work to find documentation. It’s akin to buy a car but the manual is only available at the car dealership where you bought it.

    Again, you are, unfortuneately, the final one that I’ve experienced and it’s annoying when a help file isn’t in the program itself. (can you imagine Microsoft saying, “The help file is in a folder on your hard drive” and never being able to jsut click on ‘help’ or hit ‘f1’ from within Word?)

    I hope this convinces you to make things easier for the people to use your product. Do not take this personally, it just a bad habit many plugin authors have gotten into and not really understanding the user side of things.

    Dragondon, there’s a link to the full documentation on the main plugin page, if you’d scrolled down you’d have seen it ( that page is filled in using readme.txt too ).

    I will point out though, that adding these directions into the plugin itself takes time, and effort, which costs money. These plugins are free and open source, they don’t earn the developers money. When a company or a freelancer releases plugins, remember that they have paying clients and services that they need to spend time on to put food on the table and pay the bills.

    In this case there are premium/professional versions of this plugin, and an entire website ( https://www.projectpanorama.com/ ).

    Plugin Contributor 3pointross

    (@3pointross)

    Why is it not simply included in the control panel for the plugin itself? Wouldn’t help documentation make more sense to be WITH the plugin and not in a little file that in very inconvenient to get to?

    This is a good idea, thanks for the suggestion DragonDon.

    Tom — thanks for sharing your thoughts and coming to my defense :). You’re absolutely right, it is hard to find time to update free plugins when you’ve got paying projects. I do my best to create useful tools for the community, but I’m sure there are areas I could improve!

    @dragondon that is not a good attitude to have in the WordPress community. This is a plugin that has had hundreds of development hours put into it and offered free for use to whom ever and on unlimited sites and due to not reading the plugin description properly you have abused the developers and given the plugin 1 star.

    If you want to discredit hard working developers then maybe you should build your own plugin or look at another CMS.

    @3pointross – great plugin keep up the amazing work.

    I think the free version of the plugin is enough to realise that it sets up a great baseline for presenting projects and managing client interactions on those projects. I’m about to buy the pro version as it’s CHEAP for the $, and see how I go implementing it into my business workflow and how it goes with the other suite of plugins I use for business.

    It would be great to see the development roadmap for this, as I would love to see billing/invoicing integrated so they can be triggered when you hit a milestone, plus time tracking and designer/developer/team management.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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