SimplePress Suddenly Starts Charging For Support

I feel your pain. Thank god, that I was turned off by the responsiveness of SimplePress and never used it in a production site. There’s a lot of open source choices for you. I hope you find one that works for you.

I have been on the verge of using it. I actually installed it on one very simple site and liked it. I had a very simple question about a plugin that would notify each (of a dozen) users of a new post. I emailed the moderators and told them I’d pay if I could be assured that such a plugin existed but got no response.

It’s such a turnoff.

MickeyRoush, other than bbpress, what else do you like? I wanted simple:press because it had a plugin that allowed posters to attach documents so I could use it as a simple document repository. bbpress doesn’t have that but it does have the notifier.

@ BobHatcher

They only other WordPress forum plugin that I have experience with is Mingle Forum.

https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/mingle-forum/

It’s a lot lighter than SimplePress but I don’t believe it has as many bells and whistles as SimplePress.

I just know that many sites I work with just need a simple forum that they can post and reply on, so bbPress usually fits the bill. In fact, I’ve had some clients only want something simple like bbPress. They don’t want all the bells and whistles.

If it’s any help, when my wife and I looked at forums we very nearly went for Mingle. We got as far as installing it and almost chose it over SimplePress. The only reason for going with SimplePress was because it did something that the others didn’t… and for the life of me I can’t remember what it was! It was quite specific to my wife’s requirements, perhaps being able to create read-only threads at a certain level that only certain forum members could reply to… or something. Anyway, it was an oddity that most forum users wouldn’t require, so with this in mind I would also recommend Mingle.

I found BBPress a bit confusing. It was trying to be a bit too clever and required a bit too much of a learning curve to get our heads around. Perhaps it’s great for full-blown forum requirements but, like I said, my wife’s is a small community with only certain needs. Mingle very nearly fit the bill, so definitely worth a peak. Oh, and their support was really responsive and helpful too.

Yeah, with bbPress some themes require some css and other editing to make them look just right. So I know what you mean there.

I have bbpress running on four sites right now, and simple:press on one. bbpress is very simple (far simpler than simple:press) and it works great, but it doesn’t have the ability to have attachments into posts.

My sites are all private in that everyone gets redirected to a WordPress login page and everyone has been added as users. I use a plugin called “Restricted Site Access” for that and it’s brilliant. Getting notified of new content is mandatory for this group.

Because my sites are available to a small group we use it as a document repository too that’s why I want members to be able to attach files. But, the notification requirement is far more important. So, until and unless the simple:press guys get back to me to tell me they have a notifier plugin I’ll stick with what I have.

@ BobHatcher

You may want to look into these plugins. I’ve never used any of them, so I can’t really provide any comment on them.

For attachments:
https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/gd-bbpress-attachments/screenshots/

For notifications:
https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/bbpress-notify/
https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/bbpress-new-topic-notifications/

Hi All, I’m also irritated with this new pay scheme, which is also rather pricey I’d say for something that one is not likely to use very often. It’s also irritating because there upgrade to v5 seems to have stripped out a bunch of standard features. All the post editing options seem to have disappeared for example. Anyone know how to get these back? Anyone having a similar problem??

I have been on Mingle, and have over 3300 posts from 170 users, but it is just not as feature rich as I need. So I’m trying to experiment with SimplePress. The main reason is that it seems to have the features I want, and that I can export all my current forum content from Mingle to SP. However, I don’t want to spend $39 on support if it turns out I can’t do what I need done. I don’t mind them charging somehow, I mean, I don’t do things for free why should we expect them? But it’s a bit risky until I know it works for me.

I can’t figure out how to export the forum from Mingle. It asks for:

Mingle Database Name
Mingle Database User Name
Mingle Database Password
Mingle Database Host
Mingle Table Prefix
Wordpress User Table Prefix

I don’t know where to get ANY of this information, as I use Mingle as a plugin. I never manually setup a database for it, and don’t know how to get the information to enter. Does anyone know where you might find that stuff? I’m sure it has to be word-for-word for it to work. My whole plan of moving to simplepress is a waste of time if I can’t get this to import.

It’s been two months now since I posted my original objection and we have heard nothing from SimplePress.

Seems the developers are lying low.

What SimplePress did is pretty bad. Getting people to use it for free than all of sudden start charging for support. I guess it’s their plugin and they can do what they want, but from now on I have to recommend to everyone that they use an alternative. Especially when trying to decide what’s best for you.

I am really disappointed in what Simple:Press did, I had a few issues with the forum that I didn’t know how to fix without the support forums. Due to this I moved to BBPress, which is in my opinion the worst forum provider I’ve ever used but that’s another story…

I use buddypress so I wanted a forum that could incorporate this somehow. After weeks of trying, testing and searching I’ve realised that Simple:Press was the best for me which is such a shame since I can’t use it properly as they now charge for support and plugins!

I had an account with them which got deleted! I contacted them via Twitter and they didn’t respond after I requested for my account to be restored as they said that earlier accounts could still access the forum.

I hate bad customer service.

@ nicoleuk

You should try Mingle Forum.
https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/mingle-forum/

It’s more robust than bbPress, but less so compared to Simple:Press.

bbPress is built on the same mind set as WordPress. Keep it simple and let the deveolper/designer make it look right. So it can take some work making it look right per theme. Some themes it will work right out of the box.

I have a BuddyPress site that uses Mingle Forum instead of the bundled bbPress. It works good.

Thank you, I am now using Mingle Forum and it’s been great so far! I managed to find a mod to incorporate it with buddypress. So far so good.

I with you MickeyRoush I use mingle forums and even though it lacks alot of nice features that would be wonderful if it had. it is a great forum solution to simple:press of BBpress.
I tried using bbpress by my theme just does work well with it and idk where to start or how to start to make it look and work right.

Mingle-forum is the best solution for forums on WP to me. Easy Simple and Support is quick nice and they explain everything nice even for new users.
Its sad that simple:press did this with no warning and no alternative support oh well it will only hurt them by losing user base. im sorry but 40 bucks is not worth asking 1 question that you will need