Good idea

  • Revised review. Note that I don’t actually need or use this plugin, but it seems to get the job done.

    Original (incorrect) review below.

    This plugin is a hazard, avoid it. I was handed a site by a client from another developer which used this plugin, and upon transferring it to a staging server dozens of these Black Studio TinyMCE widgets vanished.

    I wasted hours of my time tracking down the problem to this plugin, which takes all of the data given to it and runs it naked through the standard serializer before regurgitating it into the WordPress options table. That means that when replacing URLs when moving a site any URLs inside of the widgets get replaced and invalidate the entire serialization, causing all of the widgets to vanish.

    Any PHP programmer should know better than to write serialized output to the database, and WordPress offers many better options for storing data. The design of this plugin is ignorant at best and lazy at worst.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Plugin Author Marco Chiesi

    (@marcochiesi)

    Hi there,
    your review is absolutely unfair. The storage of serialized fields may be deprecable, but it’s the standard way adopted by WordPress for storing widgets data, I mean ALL widgets, not just the ones made with this plugin (ALL widgets sticking to WordPress standards and documentation behave that way). The storage is performed by WP core functions, not directly by the plugin/widget, which only declares which data needs to be stored and retrieved. Further information about this topic is clearly stated in our FAQ that you should have read before posting such a review. The FAQ also explains how to correctly change the URL of a site avoiding issues, and points to the relevant documentation in the official WP Codex. You should just have read the documentation before wasting your time, it looks the only ignorant here is you. I hope that you’re going to resubmit your review.
    Regards.

    Thread Starter Puck6633

    (@puck6633)

    That’s fair. I don’t appear to be able to edit or delete my post but I rescind my comments about this plugin. I gave WordPress too much credit in assuming it would normally store widget data in its own table. I guess it’s just another case of deplorable programming practices in the WordPress core.

    Plugin Author Marco Chiesi

    (@marcochiesi)

    You can change your rating / review by going on the plugin’s reviews page and being logged in with the same account (direct link). I would really appreciate that. Thank you.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • The topic ‘Good idea’ is closed to new replies.