My Dashboard isn’t your playground

Wow! I have been running this plugin for years and I have never seen someone that upset about a message the appears ONE single time!

All you would have to do it close the message, and it will never show up again.

I wish I could make people like you see it from the other side. It’s crazy how entitled some people feel for great software, then get totally for free, and they freak out like crazy when they see an up-sell ad that actually supports it. Like, really, how does it offend you so much that you have to click an X once?

I maintain and give free support for this plugin, I do not know how effective that ad is, but I like to think it’s given me a few sales that I need and deserve! Because more than 99% of people do not have a pro subscription. I actually just did the math, the plugin is installed on over 40k sites and I do not have 1% of that as pro subscribers.

It’s awful enough that people just take free software for granted and never give back anything, and I honestly was in that crowd before I became a developer of open source myself. But the others at least just click the X and not complain. But there are a hell of a lot of awfully ungrateful people out there. The difference between them and you is, they are ungrateful in silence. To go out of your way and leave a negative review because I am trying my best to be able to maintain this plugin is really uncalled-for.

I love how you put features in quotes like they are not real or not worth paying for. They absolutely are. But thanks for the spell check, I guess.

And you tagged your “review” with “abuse” ?? that is funny. I am watched a few Soft White Underbelly videos in the recent days. I am glad I am the type of “abuser” who dares to show ads in his software, rather than the other type, the real ones you know.

And to the others reading this, don’t be that guy! I have to think about maybe reducing the text a little, never want so see anything like this again. I am not sure if it really matters how big it is, 99%+ people close it right away anyway, so does it really matter how much text is in there? Honest question.

I actually have some understanding, but nothing like that I would justify this kind of reaction. I know dashboard messages and ads in WP can get annoying but, again, try to see it from the other side.

Furthermore, I know WordPress devs are planning and working on the?WP Feature Notifications?(formerly WP Notify) project that will address and manage Dashboard notifications better and give developers an API to register messages, and they will not pile up and clutter up your Dashboard that much from what I can tell. Last change on Github was 4 months ago, so it’s looks like it’s not moving that fast, but when this lands in WP developers like me can use this new API. But do get your hopes up that all the plugins will instantly have better messages once this comes out, but at least for ARVE I will make sure I will use this new API when it comes out.

I know plugins are worth a lot of work. I also know it takes effort. But you need to understand that it’s NOT okay to take so much space on the dashboard for your plugin. You can put as big a notification as you want on your own plugin’s setting page. You can remind me EVERYTIME how I am an ungrateful freeloader when I use your shortcode but please don’t abuse the dashboard area.

It’s alright to show a smaller notification but a large block containing a bullet point list of content is not okay. This sets up a precedence that quickly becomes an annoyance. I understand that you only show it once but you are missing the point that there are tons of plugins who do that (sometimes it’s not even to advertise the pro version but just to ask for review!) This creates an ecosystem where everyone thinks it’s okay and when we login, we don’t even see the dashboard anymore and everything is pushed down to the bottom. Then we have to click through every single “x” (some of which are sometimes bugged out) before the clutter can be removed.

WordPress has guidelines for this (albeit how strict is open to interpretation) as highlighted here. You have a right to advertise for your free work and that’s okay but please consider adding in a way that it’s atleast collapsed RIGHT ON TOP OF THE DASHBOARD! I mean a line or two is okay but you literally had a bullet list of things right there in the dashboard! (instead of maybe have it collapsed or linked to external site!)

To give you an example, take a look at this. Not my own example but I found it with a quick google search and it perfectly mirrors my example. Now, on TOP of that, imagine a whole BLOCK of text.

Imagine if others start doing the same? Every plugin puts in paragraphs or a bullet-list of features? Yes, we can dismiss them but does that make this behavior acceptable? To me it isn’t. I’ll change the rating to five because I do agree with you on one thing that my anger that day does not justify causing your product harm by muddling its rating and I am, at-least, content that you actually took time to respond.

Thanks and good luck for the future.

P.S. I really don’t know what you mean by “And you tagged your “review” with “abuse”?“
I didn’t even know you could do that ( I noticed just now). So, don’t know what happened there.

• This reply was modified 11 months, 2 weeks ago by navienavnav.
• This reply was modified 11 months, 2 weeks ago by navienavnav.
• This reply was modified 11 months, 2 weeks ago by navienavnav.