Broke WordPress Comments

Hi @dalecameronlowry,

Worked fine for a week or two, after which everyone who tried to comment on Chrome or Firefox got this message: ERROR: JavaScript and Cookies are required in order to post a comment. Please be sure JavaScript and Cookies are enabled in your browser. Then, please hit the back button on your browser, and try posting your comment again. (You may need to reload the page.)

Took me half a day to work this out and pinpoint the cause as this plugin, Will never use Spamshield again.

This post really should be a support request, not a review.

I am genuinely sorry to hear that you had an issue.

However, I have to ask, why would you post a negative review without even submitting a support request first?
WP-SpamShield simply does not break the WordPress comments. Over 10 years of compatibility testing has gone into this plugin. If you are having an issue, then there is most likely something else causing the issue, either in your browser (such as extensions that disable JavaScript or cookies) or in your site. It’s most likely not an issue with the plugin.

It is important for all plugin users to read the documentation. Please take a few minutes to work through the Troubleshooting Guide and FAQs, as these solve over 90% of issues users have. (Please be sure to follow all the steps, not just read through them.)

Please take special note of FAQ 9, as it specifically addresses your issue:
“Q: I think a legitimate user or comment may have been blocked. What’s going on here and what do I do?” Read the full FAQ: https://www.redsandmarketing.com/plugins/wp-spamshield/faqs/#faqs_9

For the rest of the FAQ, please click here to read it.

From the Troubleshooting Guide:

If this message comes up consistently even after JavaScript and cookies are enabled, then there most likely is an installation problem, site configuration issue, plugin conflict, or JavaScript conflict.

For the rest of the Troubleshooting Guide, please click here to read it.

If the information provided doesn’t solve the issue for you, we can help you fix the issue on your site. We’ll need a bit more info from you on the specifics, and will need to email back and forth, so please head over to the WP-SpamShield Support Form, and take a moment to fill out a support request. That will allow us to help you diagnose this, find out what the real issue is, and get things working right for you.

Please ask yourself this: When developers spend so much time developing free plugins for the WordPress community, is it really ok to post a 1-star review without making any reasonable effort to receive support? That’s simply not the right way to handle things.

If you have an issue with something, submit a support request first, and give the author time to respond. We provide free support for our plugins…all you have to do is submit a support request at the WP-SpamShield Support Page. We provide some of the best support out there.

You might want to take a moment to check out these two posts:

• There’s a wrong way to give plugin feedback on www.ads-software.com
• How to Leave a Good Bad Review

I would ask that you reconsider your rating, as it simply isn’t accurate or fair. Reviews like this simply do not help the global WordPress community.

— Scott

Hi Scott,

I will not reconsider my review. It is not unfair, but entirely accurate. I went through the support process and never want to spend another Sunday of my life like that again. How dare you call that “without making any reasonable effort to receive support?” What’s reasonable to you guys? Clearly not 1 hour or 3 hours or six. Should I spend a week on trying to find a solution with you guys? A year? Is it *never* fair to leave a bad review?

Oh, wait. I know. That *is* the answer. In fact, the tech support person I worked with told me I shouldn’t leave a bad review because Spamshield is “free” and it’s not fair to leave negative feedback on something that’s “free.”

Well, Spamshield certainly isn’t “free” when I consider all the time I’ve put into it. And honestly, if you guys provided what you promised and offered support that didn’t include “don’t leave a bad review” in almost every interaction, I would happily pay.

And if no one ever left negative feedback on plugins that are “free”, there would be no way to inform the WordPress community of any problem with any WordPress plugin available on www.ads-software.com. The review system would be useless.

My consistent experience with the support staff at Spamshield is that you guys all want to blame someone else for problems with your plugin. It’s the user’s fault, or the admin’s fault, or some other plugin. If you guys had been willing to work with me to identify an actual plugin conflict, I might have bought it. But it was just a lot of “follow the instructions you already followed on our help pages” and “I don’t believe you when you tell me that you already did that troubleshooting step twice, you have to do it again with me tracking the action on your computer or I won’t continue to provide help” and “don’t leave us a bad review, it’s not our fault” — both here and in your emails.

Also, I’ve updated my review above to include bad experiences with Spamshield from the UX side. Please don’t tell me again that my review is unfair, that it’s really the site admin’s fault for doing this or this or this. Users have a right to know that Spamshield in no way guarantees a good UX, especially because that is your chief selling point.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by dalecameronlowry.

Hi Dale,

I’m sorry to disagree with you, but your statements simply are not accurate.

It is not unfair, but entirely accurate. I went through the support process and never want to spend another Sunday of my life like that again. How dare you call that “without making any reasonable effort to receive support?”

That’s not an accurate statement. You didn’t go through the support process at all. The Troubleshooting Guide and FAQs take no more than 15-20 minutes to complete. If a user has issues with these, they are welcome to submit support request. As part of the validation our support form did a very basic check to make sure users had at least done some of the basic Troubleshooting checks. Since you had skipped most of them, the support form gave you a validation error. Instead of following through, you went straight to negative reviews.

Our support team reached out to you after the negative review to offer help. (Our support system logs the raw data from incomplete support requests, so we were able to get your email address from that.) After our support tech contacted you, you declined support altogether.

My consistent experience with the support staff at Spamshield is that you guys all want to blame someone else for problems with your plugin.

There is no “consistent experience” with our support staff. There was only a short email exchange, where you completely declined support, and admitted (in your own words) that you were “lazy”. (Again your words, not ours.) I’ll be happy to provide you with a copy of the email thread if you don’t remember.

So, please, stop this. Your statements are patently false, and this simply amounts to trolling.

– Scott