Poor documentation. Poor execution.

It seems the Kaltura team is back at it again, and i don’t mean that as a positive statement.

The horror show that is the update to All-In-One version 2.5 wordpress plugin. There are so many things wring with this update, it’s hard to know where to start. SO i’ll give a typical scenerio.

Installing:
There is absolutely NO documentation for configuring the ” settings.ini” file. The default values are horribly wrong in most cases. If you have CE5, you’ll need to change ALL the ID numbers. Every last one. PERIOD!
Alas, the intellectual giants that developed this monstrosity fail to even HINT at where these magic Conf ID’s come from. With kaltura’s default install, you’ll have more than 100 UI Conf ID’s listed. Good luck guessing the correct one.

If you are using CE5, get ready to feel the pain. Once you’ve managed to get the conf id’s correct, you’re still out of luck. The editor-side selection of videos will actually work. However, once added to your post, the player itself will not be visible on the live page. Just a big fat blank NOTHING where the video player SHOULD be.

CE6, you’ll have it a little better, once it’s properly set up, you MIGHT be able to see the videos in your page.

Updating from Previos version (2.4.4 i believe) Will present a nightmare.

Unlike EVERY DECENT PLUGIN for wordpress. This one adds a table to the database (for the widget), as well as adds about 6 – 8 entries into the wordpress options table. Seems legit, however, if you uninstall the plugin. It doesn’t remove these settings. Which means when you reinstall, yer borked, if you update, you’re borked.

you will need to MANUALLY remove these from the database. YAY Sql fans! Boo anyone without proper knowledge. You may inadvertently #! the entire site.

Now we move onto a more geek oriented subject.

IT’S SLOW!! It’s like trying to race a turtle if your a snail. A single video on your main page will bog the entire page down waiting for the player to load all the data. YAY DERPS!

It’s SHODDY CODE!
Turn on debugging, and enjoy the spectacle. several errors with the php code itself. The code isn’t nececerily bad, just many outdated strings. Using functions improperly, and not sanity checking code to prevent blank-page-of-doom is bad. Trap your errors silly.

So… as a recap, and possible solutions:
a) Installation:
Add a readme file that ISN’T 4 – 6 years old and default from version 1.0 of the script / kaltura.

b) Upgrade:
Create an uninstall script to remove the entries made by plugin in the wp_options table. also, remove the table created by the widget portion of the plugin.

c) Performance:
Instead of calling on Kaltura for every bit of information, preemptively upload thumbnail, and any other static yet small data points to a temp directory within the plugin, or an addition directory within the wp-content structure. Slimline some of the scripts, or data actually accessed to speed up page loading. i.e. You don’t need to gather ALL data in an array, then later strip 99% of it out. clean it up.

D) Performance 2:
Update your syntax and coding practices. If you’re coding for php v1.4.2 you’ll have problems with depreciated functions, and syntax if the plugin is run on php v5.x. Should probably repackage the plugin with several flavors for diferent PHP versions. I’m not saying make 300 versions. but just the one’s needed. i.e. php 4.x 5.x etc…