Promising, BUT Needs Work

  • I had to fix a bug to get “Submissions” link working (submissions.php). That got me to looking at the code and data handling. That was scary!

    In their registration form template they have a field for ‘website’, yet it does not integrate with the ‘website’ column shown in the admin Users list. Two fields – user_login and user_email are duplicated in the user_meta table.

    That is the biggest “No-No!” in “Database 101” – you never duplicate data. Now you have two fields, one in each of two separate tables, that have to be updated upon any changes. Granted that the username should never change, but “email”?

    What if the user updates his profile from the WP admin panel rather than the BF panel? Will both email fields get changed? Doubtful. There are a host of reasons you never want two tables holding the same data where both must be updated upon any change. This is an amateur mistake.

    Unfortunate, because it is a nice looking, rather slick plugin that shows a lot of promise. But it isn’t ready for prime time just yet.

    PS – another issue is when your user has a field that won’t verify, the error message adds an extra issue. For instance, say you enter one field incorrectly, it will say 2 errors then show two error messages – the first for the actual error and the second just says that there are errors on the form.

    • This topic was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by compusolver.
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  • Plugin Author Sven Lehnert

    (@svenl77)

    Hi @compusolver,

    thanks for your detailed feedback and also for the support tickets you have created. Our dev team is already reflecting your feedback and will take action over the weekend to improve the code if needed.

    Two fields – user_login and user_email are duplicated in the user_meta table.
    –> You are right this is a ugly issue. Thanks for pointing it out. It get stored twice because we store all form elements as user meta if the submission is a registration form. We need to make sure form elements used for user data stored in wp_users table is left out.

    For posts it is working correctly. If the submission is a post we check for post title, content, … and only store the post meta data in the post meta table.

    For the registration and Profile forms we will make sure only the user meta data is stored in the user meta table.
    I have created a issue in Github: https://github.com/BuddyForms/BuddyForms/issues/241

    PS – another issue is when your user has a field that won’t verify, the error message adds an extra issue. For instance, say you enter one field incorrectly, it will say 2 errors then show two error messages – the first for the actual error and the second just says that there are errors on the form.
    –> I have create a github issue: https://github.com/BuddyForms/BuddyForms/issues/240

    Again thanks for all the feedback. We definitely take it serious. Please let me know if you have any questions left. I like to help.

    Greetings,
    Sven

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