Hey @lynaeash,
Thank you for reporting this particular issue! I believe this negative review may be a misunderstanding. Please let me explain.
Considering the large amount of rows from this database table that have “slicewp_affiliate”, I took some time to analyze and clarify the situation.
The “wp_wsal_metadata” table is not a core WordPress database table or a table added by SliceWP. It is created and used by the WP Activity Log plugin. They use this table to save data when certain events happen on your website. Events such as a user activating a plugin, deactivating a plugin, updating a post, etc.
Whenever such an event happens, WP Activity Log saves data about the user that triggered the event. The user’s roles at the time of the event is one of the data points saved.
For more information on the subject, please check out WP Activity Log’s documentation: https://wpactivitylog.com/support/kb/plugin-database-documentation/
Furthermore, I also want to clarify the “slicewp_affiliate” role you’re seeing. The “slicewp_affiliate” user role is indeed added by SliceWP. Whenever one of your users (an administrator in your particular case) is added in SliceWP as an affiliate, SliceWP will also add the “slicewp_affiliate” user role to this user. We do this so you can easily manage affiliate users from WordPress’ users admin interface.
If at some point you’ve added yourself or another admin as an affiliate and then removed SliceWP without first removing the affiliate or removing the user role, this user role remained attached to your user. Whenever this user triggered an event, WP Activity Log stored it. Thus the many “slicewp_affiliate” appearances in WP Activity Log’s “wp_wsal_metadata” database table. Please note that all of these rows would have been created regardless of the user having the “slicewp_affiliate” role or not, as this is how WP Activity Log stores data.
Thus, you’re seeing “slicewp_affiliate” not because SliceWP created a new user role, but because the user that triggered an event already has that user role attached.
With this in mind, I want to assure you that SliceWP did not create 14,500+ user roles on your website.
All of these entries represent the user roles of the user that triggered a particular event on your website. These entries were all added by WP Activity Log, as part of the data they save.
Also, as another point of reassurance, the “slicewp_affiliate” user role has the same capabilities as the “subscriber” role, meaning close to none. It poses no security concern. Furthermore, you can remove this role from all of your users at anytime from SliceWP > Settings > Tools (tab) > Users Affiliate User Role (section).
All in all, considering SliceWP did not create thousands of user roles and it did not populate the database with thousands of rows, I don’t believe this 1-star review for SliceWP is deserved.
Even so, if you have any questions about the situation, please let me know. I’m happy to offer more clarification if needed.
Thank you and best wishes
Mihai
