Donnacha

Why on earth did you give a plugin you call obsolete a five-star rating?

At a glance, as the most recent review, users will presume your high rating means that the problems have been fixed.

Surely a one-star rating would be a better match for your actual review.

As I see it, the vast majority of users will want to translate all their existing content in one go and, then, translate each new page, post, product or CPT as it is added.

Very few people will ever bother to redo a translation unless there has been some sort of formatting error, but all the multi-lingual plugins do allow you to edit the different versions of a post.

While I understand that your current client says that they will manually check the proper quality of the translations, they probably won’t actually bother. If a business is truly finicky about getting everything absolutely perfect, they should not be using machine translation in the first place.

Most businesses will use Deepl as a better-than-average machine translation that gives them cheap access to search traffic they would otherwise not have.

As such, pretty much all users will want to translate all their content into all available languages. 8 languages would be more-or-less the same effort as doing just one. No-one will care about the Deepl fees – an average article translated into 8 other languages will cost under one Euro (800 words x 8 languages = 6400 words = 49,000 characters = €0.98)

You should position your paid plugin with care. Your product will simultaneously piggyback on two other products: the Deepl service, and the existing multi-lingual plugins.

The benefit you can offer users is real but quite narrow. They can already use their multi-lingual plugin to copy n’ paste translations from the free DeepL Web translator and, working manually like this, they can translate every type of post, menu and custom field.

As you have already noted, the ability to batch process an entire website will be your key selling point. If you can release something that can perform that one job reliably, you will have a simple, straightforward product you can sell to a big audience.

Be careful not to confuse your potential customers with too many pricing variations. Have a free version that does one language per site, one post at a time. Let that be how potential customers find out whether your code works. It would be in your interests to ensure that this limited version works with as many different post types as possible, including products etc, and with all the major multi-language plugins.

Your one paid version should simply add all the additional Deepl languages and the ability to batch translate the entire site. Make it a quick, simple tool that will allow WordPress professionals to handle that particular part of their job more quickly.

Resist the temptation to apply crazy per-site licensing. Keep it simple, remember this is just a simple developer tool, like any other, and that site translations are not something they have to even offer their clients if it is going to be too complicated or expensive. Aim to be an easy, no-brainer purchase for most people who make or manage websites for clients.

A SaaS would be a completely different product, it would have a very different market, and it would take far longer to set up than you think. I do not think you have time for that; the opportunity that exists today will start to disappear as the various multi-language plugins start to add DeepL API integration as a feature. Your opportunity, right now, is to get out ahead of them.

The point of selling a WordPress plugin, rather than a Saas, is that you are not dealing with the end-users. You are selling to reasonably technical WordPress professionals who will use it to provide a service to their existing clients. This saves you the trouble of having to market to, and provide support to, the end-users. You are simply providing a tool that WordPress developers can add to their existing toolbelt. If you provide a good tool, at a fair price, the word will spread.

The market of people, all over the world, creating or managing WordPress sites for clients is truly massive. Stay focused on providing a simple tool that will do one job well. Give WordPress professionals a tool that will make it easier for them to unlock the value that exists in the combination of DeepL and the hundreds of millions of existing WordPress websites. It really is a rare opportunity.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Donnacha.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Donnacha.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Donnacha.

I agree that WPML is a car crash, and the company behind it are nasty.

If you think about the type of developers who are likely to use your plugin, however, most will be working for clients and, sadly, due to marketing, most of those clients will be using WPML. Even if other multilingual plugins are better, it is usually difficult to persuade a client to switch from something they are already familiar with.

If the Pro version of this plugin will become an important part of your business, I suppose it will be necessary to support as many multilingual plugins as possible.

I believe that some of those plugins will eventually introduce their own DeepL API functionality, eliminating the need for your plugin, but that is unlikely in the case of WPML. It appears that they will not support DeepL because they do not want to undercut the money they make by selling their own translation services. That is their Achilles heel, and your opportunity.

I have no idea about which multilingual plugin is best, it is a confusing niche. Last year, at WordCamp Europe, I spoke to the French couple behind Polylang, they are very nice people, but I am not yet familiar with their plugin.

My guess is that, for developers who are open to using DeepL, they will not need 90% of the features that the multilingual plugins provide

I would use a multilingual plugin to establish the website structure that gives each of the 8 other languages that DeepL provides its own subfolder (so, /fr/ and /es/ etc), and to supply the language switcher that appears on each page.

Then, I would like to use the DeepL API to translate all the existing posts, pages, custom post types, and all other public-facing text of any kind (including image descriptions, custom meta fields, SEO meta fields etc) into all 8 languages.

Then, I would like the default option, upon publication of new posts, pages and CPTs, to have the DeepL API create the 8 other language versions of that new item.

I would not say that I “researched” anyone, I did what anyone should do when they see a one-star review: I quickly checked the reviewer’s profile to confirm that he has never had a good word to say about anyone else’s work. When you see exclusively negative reviews, well, that says all you need to know about that person’s sense of entitlement and lack of respect for the hard work of others.

I make my living from code, so, I am grateful to any developers who produce a product that does what it is meant to do, and who stick with that product for years, allowing me to build my business upon their code.

In particular, I don’t throw a fit when a free WordPress plugin, providing functionality that I need, happens to have a paid version. I know of no real programmer who would have a problem with the idea of paying some money for code that will save time and allow them to expand what they can offer their clients.

Just to be clear, the paid version of Pinpoint Booking System, the target of another vile one-star review, costs a mighty $5. Five dollars. Seriously, ponder that, consider how far your sense of reality must extend for a $5 premium version to be worthy of your ego-rage.

In a bitter, one-star world, it might seem as if five-star reviews are “shilling” but, no, their function is to call attention to good work and let the developers know that it is appreciated.

I make no secret that I have been using Jomres for almost a decade, and I consider it to be “the most interesting Open Source Software project” because it is a tool that allows almost anyone, with a little determination and patience, to set up a business offering clients booking sites that are immediately valuable to them. That is the sort of niche power than people entering the business today need, there is too much competition to make it as just another Web designer.

Simply through being a user, I have become friends with the developers and, yes, it angers me when I see people come along and trash their work over something as clueless and trivial as how it is installed. You can be pretty sure the reviewer has not spent 12 years building and evolving a platform, that they don’t get up every morning and spend most of their day patiently providing support.

I am glad that, ten years ago, I adopted Jomres as one of my most vital tools. I am proud that I was one of the people who encouraged them to integrate it with WordPress. I have enjoyed watching it continually improve, while competing products disappeared after just a year or two. I am amazed by how much easier it is to use today, how new users can get up-and-running with a fully booking site in minutes, and I shake my head in disbelief when I hear people whinge about completely inconsequential issues. Someone hands you 12 years of focused effort and you’re too busy, pumping your ego with your one-star super powers, to recognize the value of that. Pathetic.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by Donnacha.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by Donnacha.

Jomres is a big system, the WordPress plugin acts as the bridge that integrates it into your site. There is nothing sloppy about this, Jomres has been rock solid for over 12 years and this WordPress integration has been available for almost 4 years without any problems.

@avant-5, looking at your profile, you seem to specialize in hysterical one-star reviews. Jomres is in good company because, in one review, you attack Woo Commerce, the biggest E-commerce product in existence, and had to have a developer patiently explain to you that your issue had nothing to do with Woo Commerce. You still didn’t remove your low rating.

Then you throw a tantrum about another plugin because their paid version has more features. You seem to have no understanding of the model that allows most of the free plugins and themes here to exist in the first place.

As a WordPress user, I depend on the star rating system to help me figure out which plugins and themes are worth looking at. Inexperienced users like you distort the system because, like some sort of power-crazed Yelp reviewer, your first reaction to any sort of frustration, due to your own technical ignorance, is to leave a one-star review.

In the case of Jomres, an incredible feat of Open Source code which allows thousands of businesses to operate independently, you presume that the WordPress plugin review team are somehow not aware of how it works, and that it has somehow remained here, breaking some imagined rule, for almost 4 years because everyone, except you, is an idiot.

I suspect you might have that backwards.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by Donnacha.

Nope.

I took the time to re-install the plugin, to see if they are now allowing WordPress users to at least make a couple of test videos before having to hand over their credit card details.

They DO have a Free plan, no credit card details required, which gives you 5 test videos, but this plugin cannot connect to that plan, WordPress users must go straight to a package which, if you forget to cancel it in time, will start charging your card.

So, my original criticism stands. Whatever the rules may technically be, this plugin completely misses the spirit of this repository. A plugin that gives you zero functionality unless you give them your credit card is going to receive nothing but one-stars from (non-fake) reviewers, and they will completely miss out on the opportunity to demo their service to the massive WordPress audience. Insane. None of the other webcam recording plugins do this.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by Donnacha.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by Donnacha.

@jdembowski – What SaaS provider would put the restrictions in the plugin, where they can be easily removed?

This plugin had zero functionality, not even trial functionality, until you give them credit card details. The plugin description was deceptive because it did not, even once, mention this vital detail.

I now see, however, that they have introduced a free tier which, apparently, does not require a credit card. This is more ethical and, I am confident, will be far more successful in attracting users, some of whom will become paid users.

I will take another look at the service later and change my review if it is, indeed, actually possible to test the service.

I use Jomres every day, it doesn’t mention Joomla anywhere in the admin area.

I just double-checked and the only place it mentions Joomla in the Jomres admin is in the newsfeed widget, everything else is WordPress-specific.

Candy, are you actually reviewing the Jomres website, which describes both the WordPress and the Joomla versions of this excellent plugin?

If so, your two-star rating is incredibly unfair, not just to the developers of Jomres, but to all the other WordPress users who are searching for a good booking plugin.

In over a decade of working with WordPress every day, and trying every single booking plugin that has emerged over the years, I can tell you that this is the only one reliable enough and full-featured enough for real-world business use, but your rating gives the impression that there is something wrong with it. Your rating is particularly unfair because Jomres seems to be one of the few booking plugins in this directory that doesn’t play the game of fake reviews.

Please consider trying the actual plugin and adjusting your rating accordingly. If you a genuinely confused about how any of it works, take a look at the excellent documentation and tutorial videos. You should also feel free to ask questions in the Jomres forum.

Thanks Paul, very interesting; I usually see canonical links given as the permalink URL, I presume for keyword/SEO purposes, but I can see the technical benefit of using the “real” URL instead.

Okay, I understand, plenty of potential roadblocks. Using the nextpage quicktag is an interesting idea.

CommentPress already seems to work perfectly with the Facebook Connect plugin I am using, so, yes, that could be a good alternative route to the at least some of the benefits that the third-party comment systems offer, and without the complications.

I’m also experimenting with the various voting and liking plugins that integrate with the native comment system, that might also allow me to replicate the reputation-gathering aspect of the third-party systems, albeit limited to a single site rather the webwide.. My holy grail would be to get CommentPress working well with both BuddyPress (I see that others are already doing this) and Paul Gibbs’ Achievements plugin, v3 of which will hopefully see an alpha release before the end of the year.

I am extremely curious about the extent to which giving users of a CommentPress-based website a way to thank each other, and to allow them to visibiy accrue reputation, might stimulate more activity, a higher quality of contributions and a greater sense of community.

Thanks again, Christian. By the way, this comment is coming to you, live, from a rather boring Google workshop at the LeWeb conference in Paris ??

Actually, now that I think about it, Facebook Comments would also be useful for yet another different set of sites.

Personally, I prefer Disqus but you can’t beat the sheer penetration of Facebook, particularly if your site was, say, geared towards teenagers.

My presumption is that both the Disqus plugin and the various Facebook Connect plugins use the same hook or whatever to substitute themselves in place of native WordPress comments.

Just to be clear, a Disqus comment thread DOES appear in the CP Comments tab but, instead of having a different set of comments slide open for each paragraph, there is now just one Disqus thread for the page as a whole.

It occurs to me that if Disqus simply perceived each paragraph’s comments as being distinct thread, each could be substituted with a separate Disqus thread – Disqus is pretty flexible, it is possible to get it working on regular, static HTML pages with just a line of code, so, it might be relatively straightforward to get it to do that.

Hi again Robert, apologies for this delayed reply.

Yes, 1.2.1 works flawlessly, you’ve done a great job!

Personally, I will only be using pages and CPTs but adding the option of using built-in ones too would be a good idea if you think it would not add too much complexity; I can guess that, once DMS starts becoming popular, you will get a lot of requests from users who want to map to normal posts.

My next plan is to test just how far I can take DMS – it will take some time but I am going to map a few hundred domains to just one installation of WordPress, I will let you know how it goes ??

It more than a good idea – I think most people currently using WordPress Networks will be thrilled when they realize how much more easily DMS can achieve the same effect, especially with the combined flexibility of custom templates and Custom Post Types

I am still have teething problems, however, with getting CPTs to appear in the Select dropdown. I was unable to reproduce my earlier success, when I was able to get both pages and CPTs to appear by creating a first CPT. Now that only makes the pages appear, the CPTs remain missing.

I am testing using several different installations of WordPress but have been unable to reproduce whatever it was that made DMS recognize the CPTs earlier.

By the way, the mapping to custom post type worked wonderfully, thank you so much!