Why Don't Plug-ins just work?

  • Why do so many WordPress plug-ins simply not work? I must have installed and tested over forty plug-ins of various types since starting with my site and I can honestly say that of these, about three or four worked straight out of the box, a further dozen or so could be made to work after fiddling/tweaking/posting increasingly desperate messages here and elsewhere and the remainder just had to be uninstalled and binned for any number of reasons.

    Looking through these forums, they are packed with posts from people who can’t get this, that or the other to work and I simply don’t believe they are all idiots. This doesn’t happen to anything like the same extent with apps such as Joomla, Drupal or phpBB. Is there any quality control on what is added to the plug-ins repository or can just anyone add anything they happen to have dreamt up?

    I should like to say that, in terms of support, there are a couple of developers who have been absolutely first-class and I cannot praise them enough. The majority have either not responded to enquiries – civil though these have invariably been – or have come up with suggestions along the lines of ‘have you tried deactivating it and reinstalling’ – the plug-in equivalent of ‘try turning it off and then on again’.

    Have I just been unlucky? </rant>

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  • Well, honestly I can hardly remember any plugin NOT working for me. Okay, I don’t use 30 Plugins on a single installation, most of the time I have 5 or maximum 10.

    I also developed two plugins (currently working on them since a long long time) but I tried to solve all problems people had with them asap and honestly most of these problems where PEBCAK – Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard. On my point of view WordPress and all the plugins are free software and there is absolutly no right to complain about them not working. I understand it’s frustrating to try a lot of plugins to find them not working or not working as expected but the developers created them spending hours, days and weeks and release for free. Some plugins may break due WordPress updates, some developers reach the limit of their know how when a problem appears. The answer “have you tried deactivating it and reinstalling” would also be my first answer – because of PEBCAK. If you request support you should tell exactly what the problem is and what you have tried to solve it. I don’t know how often I head “Help me! It’s not working! What can I do?” since I started developing software.

    What you can and should do: Rate this plugin negative. If they get a lot of negative votes you will prevent others from downloading them.

    Thread Starter michael walker

    (@michael-walker)

    All fair points and I should like to say that I am kind of letting off steam here after a succession of such incidents. The reason I’ve had to try so many plug-ins is because I’ve usually had to try two, three or four that all purport to do much the same thing in order to find one that actually functions. I realise a lot of users don’t help themselves with ‘Help – I’m stuck’ messages, but personally I’ve always tried to be as informative as my – admittedly limited – knowledge permits. I realise they’re free etc., but so is chicken pox and it doesn’t really alleviate one’s disappointment, somehow. Even the couple of commercial plug-ins I’ve tried have been just as buggy.

    I still find that, out of the various CMSs etc that I’ve deployed, WordPress and its associated add-ons are easily the most likely to throw tantrums of some sort or another. I was just wondering if it’s just my luck, or what others’ experience has been.

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