@nfored,
If you would like tech support, we’re happy to help. However, please be civil.
I’m not sure where all this negativity is coming from. We did not blow off tutakjj, and I’m not sure how our response could be taken as such.
What we did do, was:
- Respond quickly to their question
- Give an honest answer
- Provide accurate information on where the real problem is, so they could fix the real issue.
I’m not sure how any of that can be taken as “blowing them off”, or why you’re giving us such flak.
We never blow off users. I understand that not all plugin devs provide excellent support…but we do. Challenge us on that…take advantage of it.
If you’re having that kind of slowdown, it means that the web host hasn’t configured their system properly. The vast majority of web hosts don’t cause that kind of slowdown. If you’re running your own server, then you may need to make some tweaks.
Maybe you should listen to people and you could have an even better product, rather than insisting they are the problem.
When you say things like that, you make the assumptions that we are unaware of potential issues of a PHP function, that we are out of touch with our users, that we don’t care, and that we don’t like our plugin users. Nothing could be further from the truth.
You could see for your self, but I am sure your to arrogant and sure of yourself.
There is nothing arrogant or wrong about being sure of yourself. We are confident, not arrogant…there is a big difference. We are competent, experienced…and know what we’re doing…therefore we are confident.
However, there are times when we have to unfortunately deliver the cold hard facts, and that isn’t always pleasant. Unfortunately, there are web hosts out there that are not competent or honest.
We actually do know what we’re doing…give us a little credit.
Our development of this plugin goes back to its predecessor and earlier, over 10 years ago. 5-10 years ago, there were some issues on certain web hosts with gethostbyaddr(). Because of that, it is something we had already looked into. We also have the plugin cache the results in memory when it does run gethostbyaddr(). We do run benchmarks on various PHP functions several times a year to test. It hasn’t been a problem in years. However, there are still some web hosts that in rare cases may not have things setup to industry standards.
We do tech support on thousands of websites each year, so we are quite familiar with these types of issues.
There is an alternative method that allows you to set a timeout for the lookup, and it does work in WordPress. It would never take 20 seconds, but it will take longer than gethostbyaddr() for 99.99% of users.
We’ve benchmarked both on a variety of hosting setups, and PHP versions, and the alternative comes out significantly slower every time.
While it may work better when the web host does not have their system configured properly, it will only be better for less than .01 % of users (or less than 1 in 10,000)
The image you linked to definitely is proof that something isn’t working properly on your site, but unfortunately, that’s all it proves. It isn’t proof that the function is bad or that it’s not working for everyone. There is a difference and it’s important to understand that.
We have to make choices that are best for the vast majority of users. Unfortunately, there is always someone who won’t be happy with it. I wish we could make everyone happy…I really do.
That being said, whenever we find out that something starts to affect more than 1 in 10,000 users, we do look into it.
Keep in mind, as I said above… the PHP function gethostbyaddr() is also used in the WordPress core code.
If you want to contact us via the WP-SpamShield Support Page, we can help you with this, and show you how to use the alternative function if you want to test it out, and tweak your WP-SpamShield. We don’t officially support hacking the plugin, but in this case we’ll make an exception.
