[Plugin: Frontpage-Slideshow] Collection of user info?

  • I installed this plugin the other day and noticed it says “In order to faster bug reports, troubleshoot and for some statistics, some informations are collected and sent to this plugin:’s author. The informations that are sent are this site URL, this site admin email address, the WordPress version, the used theme and its URI, and the used version of this plugin.“

    While I have nothing against someone wanting to make it easier to help those who ask for assistance, the plugin as it is gives you no choice in the matter of whether to send this information. Furthermore automatically collecting emails I’m pretty sure is a big no-no for wordpress plugins, collection of other info aside. I’m not sure why you would need to collect emails in the first place as that would be supplied by anybody contacting you.

    If you want to make it easy to pass the details of a users installation/version info you could append that to any support links that would pre-populate a support form when clicked.

    Also FYI the contact site you list as “modulaweb.fr” in the top getting help box incorrectly links to modulawab.fr

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Plugin Author jeff_

    (@jeff_)

    Ok

    1) Its easy to deactivate this feature
    2) I collect email address mainly because a lot of people are not responding to the forum, or just even forget where their message is… or I need to know if the fixes I propose did the job or, most of time, I just need more informations.
    3) I do not spam (aks the 18k more websites admin that uses the plugin ?? )
    4) Collecting emails is an easy way to ask for the authorization to use a screenshot of an original integration or ask for an original template code to distribute with the plugin
    5) Sometime, people are claiming they are the admin of a website, but they aren’t. Having the given admin email is an easy way to verify and to alert the real admin (occurs 2-3 times per month)
    6) Some people, mainly web startups, are using the plugin on many individual websites and specify the same admin email address : its a way to find and contact them in case of major security problem or side effect caused by some automatic upgrades (it occured for a side effect with one version)
    7) I never ask for money for giving support : the plugin is free, so that the support (as you don’t ask me to code something special just for you)
    8) yep, first time I implement this feature, it was disabled per default… and it was a pain in the ass to explain people how to enable it and why… so I preferred to always enable it.

    Thank you for the ?modulawab.fr? link… my fingers do shit sometimes… anyway, every time someone contact me by mail, I ask him/her to write the question here so that the community can helps too and been helped eventually.

    Plugin Author jeff_

    (@jeff_)

    Oh and, again, I don’t want people to contact me directly for support
    1) I got a life and sometime I just don’t have time to answer,
    2) When people contact me directly, no one else can learn how to fix the issue.
    3) Responding to issues, find their cause, try to fix them… takes a long time, so if I do that work as many time as someone got a problem… it will become a 2nd job for me

    For all those reasons, I’ll never put any help formular onto the plugin admin page of a link to any formular : its a free software, made for the community (and sometime with the community)

    But yeah, you’re right, I’ll put a way to activate that feature to make it ?On demand?

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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