Why does this plugin have to be installed on the live website?

Thank you for your assistance.

It’s still puzzling why this plugin is having such a hard time to get out of the box and start running.

It does have authorized access to the WooCommerce store data, all the taxonomy of the products is there to be used for a recommendation quiz. This should not require external API access from your server. Shouldn’t the internal taxonomy data suffice for such a purpose?

Can you clarify for which purpose the API access from your server is required in this case? Is this a plugin which works externally of WordPress or internally within WordPress?

But still, after allowing full access to REST API for “Unauthorized user”, it’s still not enough.

The staging installation is not installed in a password protected folder, there is no plugin “hiding” the staging installation, neither is there the plugin WPML for multilingual support.

I have tried the described steps several times, but in each case the end result is “Network error” and nothing continues from there.

The WordPress installation we are working on has quite a few plugins installed. If there is indeed collision with another plugin, do you have a top-ten list of plugins which, based on your experience and user feedback, do collide with your plugin frequently? Anything other than WPML?

@aesparz asking for direct access, even tempory access, is against the rules here and can get both you and your plugin banned from www.ads-software.com: https://www.ads-software.com/support/guidelines/#we-reserve-the-right-to-manage-the-forums-to-the-best-of-our-ability

@gev0rg now that they have asked, do not provide them with that access, as that would similarly be against the rules here.

Hi there,

Thanks so much for the heads up, we were unaware of this rule and we’ll be happy to comply – our troubleshooting technique can also be done on @gev0rg ‘s end by disabling the plugins temporarily, trying to install our app, and enabling the plugins back again.

@moderator If there’s any further action needed, or if I need to remove my comment (I couldn’t find a way to delete or edit it) please let me know, we’ll keep attentive – our objective is of course offering the most complete support possible, without breaking any rules the forum or WordPress have.

Best Regards,

Hi Gevorg,

Thanks so much for your detailed response

Indeed, we depend specifically on:

1) Your store granting us access to your catalogue and

2) Fetching the catalogue itself, as the app is running within our servers and we need to import the data, as you well said.

You can also try to whitelist our IP – you can find this information just before the last section of this article: https://revenuehunt.com/faqs/woocommerce-error-request-consumer-data/

No information is shared with third parties unless you manually integrate with them (for example, our integration with Klaviyo to send the recommended items on a follow-up email ). For the vast majority of the stores, our app works right of the bat, without any further configuration necessary; as WordPress / WooCommerce stores are much more customisable than other ecommerce platform’s stores, sometimes other plugins or the store’s settings themselves can make the app not function correctly – it’s difficult to say which specific setting / plugin can be causing it, as there are many variables in place. We’d like to ask the @moderator if there’s any alternatives for getting more in-depth data to check / troubleshoot what might be going on, as we’re of course unable to see the specific settings of the store on our end.

If you have any follow up questions, please let me know, we’ll be happy to assist!

Best Regards,

h specific setting / plugin can be causing it, as there are many variables in place. We’d like to ask the?@moderator?if there’s any alternatives for getting more in-depth data to check / troubleshoot what might be going on, as we’re of course unable to see the specific settings of the store on our end.

You can ask for screen shots, debug logs, etc. What you may not do is ask for direct access to the user’s site.

My boilerplate on that follows….

.admin

Please never ask for credentials on these forums.

• https://www.ads-software.com/support/guidelines/#the-bad-stuff

Now for the why: The internet is a wonderful place full of very nice people and a few very bad ones. I’m sure everyone here is very nice however, by giving some ones keys to your house you are trusting they wont steal anything. Likewise the person who takes the keys is now responsible for the house FOREVER.

If something was to go wrong, then you the author may well legally become liable for damages, which they would not normally have been as their software is provided without warranty.

Please be aware that repeatedly asking for credentials will result in us escalating this to the plugins team.

It’s never necessary to do that. Here’s why.

There are many ways to get information you need and accessing the user’s site is not one of them. That’s going too far.

• Ask for a link to the https://pastebin.com/ or https://gist.github.com log of the user’s web server error log.
• Ask the user to create and post a link to their phpinfo(); output.
• Ask the user to install the Health Check plugin and get the data that way.
• Walk the user through enabling WP_DEBUG and how to log that output to a file and how to share that file.
• Walk the user through basic troubleshooting steps such and disabling all other plugins, clear their cache and cookies and try again.
• Ask the user for the step-by-step on how they can reproduce the problem.

You get the idea.

Volunteer support is not easy. But these forums need to a safe place for all users, experienced or new. Accessing their system that way is a short cut that will get you into real trouble in these forums.

Thank you for your reply aesparz.

It’s a decision which every user can make on his own, that is, whether to share the store data of his e-Commerce installation with an external server or not.

But in order to make this decision it’s necessary for him to understand how this plugin works, and unexperienced users may not understand the difference between a plugin that works internally within the WordPress installation and a plugin that outsources its work to an external server where the work is done and the result sent back to the WordPress installation.

I hope opening this topic on this support forum will help users of your plugin make their own informed decision according to their preference.

If it’s about finding out which other plugin may be colliding with your plugin in the given WordPress installation, I won’t need any further assistance from you, thanks for your offer.

But since the owner of the e-Commerce installation is not interested in granting unrestricted REST API access to his sensitive store data to “Unauthenticated user”, which in this case would include your external server, I think we will have to look for an alternative to find a solution for this task.

To the WordPress @moderator:
You may want to forward my user feedback to the plugins team:

It would be helpful if WordPress would mark plugins as either “internal” or “external” on the www.ads-software.com platform. More and more I encounter plugins which refrain from working within the WordPress installation, which’s security architecture has been steadily improved over the course of these many years. Instead the working of the plugin is outsourced for various reasons to external locations. It would be helpful to have this information right from the start and not have to test, and try, and troubleshoot, and ask around until after time and effort spent, this information is discovered. Maybe the WordPress plugins team will find this user feedback useful for their consideration.

Greetings to all on this forum.

Sincerely,
Gevorg

(This topic can be closed after my reply as “having been resolved”)