Overall very nice, but…

Thanks a lot for the very thoughtful and detailed feedback @cassman. We always appreciate when folks are honest with us about what’s working well and what could be improved with the plugin. I’ll respond to each one of your comments to provide some context, but also in case the information would help others.

I like how simple this plugin is to setup and use. Very intuitive, but that’s because it’s basic. Less is more, perhaps.

This is great to hear. Our number one priority with our work is to keep everything as simple to use as possible. Like you noted, we struggle with the idea of adding a lot of features as this naturally makes systems more complicated to use. That said, there are also features that hopefully make the administrator’s job easier.

1) No way to duplicate an opportunity. Seems pretty simple and obvious, and I doubt I’m the first person to have an identical event at the same place at a future time, but with this plugin I have to input everything again. There’s not much to enter (less is more, as I said) but it would make my life a tiny bit easier.

This is definitely something we’ve heard before and is high on our list of features to add. While it’s not as easy to build as just copy and paste since there is a lot of other information stored for each opportunity like publish dates, featured images, etc., it is something we would love to build out since it would really benefit those with recurring opportunities.

2) Recurring opportunities are essentially useless. I would use recurring opportunities as a stand-in for duplicating one time opportunities, but they can’t be displayed together for some reason. Even the docs suggest not using them. Not sure why they exist, TBH.

I would love to hear some more information about this. The flexible volunteer opportunities, which I assume is what you mean when you say “Recurring opportunities” are meant for volunteer opportunities that don’t exist at a specific date and time. For example, this might be an opportunity focused on ongoing social media support or a flexible summer internship.

In regards to displaying flexible opportunities with one-time opportunities, the issue there has to do with ordering the opportunities. One-time opportunities are ordered with the soonest opportunity first, but that wouldn’t be possible with flexible opportunities since they don’t have a start date and time. If you want, you can place both the one-time opportunities and flexible opportunities shortcodes on the same page. The only potential issue there might exist with pagination, but that’s not a huge deal.

Let me know if I’m misunderstanding your complaint here at all.

3) No way to setup time slots or shifts during an opportunity. At an all day event, I need 2 volunteers for 2 hours each from 9 to 5. All I can do as it currently stands is create 4 separate opportunities (9-11, 11-1, 1-3, 3-5) with 2 volunteer signups for each (unwieldy), or 1 opportunity for the whole day, where people sign up and then I have to ask them what time slot(s) they can work (extra work required).

I completely hear you on this one. This comes back to keeping the plugin very simple to use and allowing time slots would definitely complicate the WordPress admin. Like you said though, it ends up creating more work if that’s a requirement for your organization. While we haven’t heard this concern much in the past, it’s definitely one we’re going to keep in mind moving forward.

1) Integration with WP users. I would like logged in users to be able to sign up for an opportunity without having to enter all their information again. If this exists, I don’t see it. If it’s possible using some other plugin or extension, I haven’t found it.

Thanks for sharing this. This is good feedback and definitely something we’ve considered in the past.

2) I agree with the idea of showing featured images/thumbnails on the main Opportunities page. Also seems kind of obvious.

This one is unfortunately a little trickier than most people expect. The issue comes down to image sizing and the fact that themes tend to display featured images very differently. If we included code to display the featured image by default, we would likely have a lot of folks upset about how they display and the size of each image, since both are so dependent on the theme.

All that said, it is possible to display featured images using the templating system within the plugin. You can copy the opps-list-one-time.php file into a folder within your theme called “wivm”. Once that’s there, you can add the code <?php the_post_thumbnail(); ?> wherever you want the featured image to display. I agree with you it’s not perfect, and obviously not everyone would be comfortable making changes to the code, but hopefully it’s enough for those who really need to display these images.

Thank you again for all your detailed thoughts. They are incredibly helpful as we consider the future of the plugin.

Jonathan

Thanks Jonathan, I appreciate the response.

Clearly I misunderstood flexible opportunities. That makes a lot more sense now. And thanks for the tip on how to display both one-time and flexible on a page. I will try that.

Please consider adding “Make this a recurring opportunity” if at all possible. We have need of volunteers to help at several local farmers markets, which happen every Saturday, Sunday or weekday from May thru October. It’s going to be a PITA to add separate opportunities for each one. To be able to tick a box and select a recurrence schedule would be neato keen. ??

Also appreciate the tip on displaying thumbnails. I’ll give that a go when I can.

If you could shed any light on how to seamlessly integrate this plugin’s volunteer/users with other plugins’ usage of WP users, I’d really appreciate it. I have an interesting situation I’ll post in another thread on that very topic.

No problem at all @cassman. I’m always interested in having an open conversation about how we can improve the tools we make.

Please consider adding “Make this a recurring opportunity” if at all possible. We have need of volunteers to help at several local farmers markets, which happen every Saturday, Sunday or weekday from May thru October. It’s going to be a PITA to add separate opportunities for each one. To be able to tick a box and select a recurrence schedule would be neato keen.

We definitely think this feature would be really valuable to those using the plugin and it’s something that’s high on our radar. As I’m sure you can understand, since the plugin is free we normally have to prioritize our paid work so we can continue to operate as a business. We’d love to be able to get to this and a number of other features as soon as possible.

If you could shed any light on how to seamlessly integrate this plugin’s volunteer/users with other plugins’ usage of WP users, I’d really appreciate it. I have an interesting situation I’ll post in another thread on that very topic.

Sounds good. Feel free to post your request in another thread and we’re happy to take a look.

Jonathan