Donate

No more donate.

I am stopping support for this plugin in a month or two, so I don’t want to take anyone’s money.

Keith

Very unfortunate to hear this, I was just questioning the promotion of ‘Limit Login Attempts’ by WordPress. It is unfortunate there is no market for these fine plugins that fall off the interest scale. There has to be some value in them.

Wow, serious bummer. No interest in making it a premium plugin?

Nobody pays for this stuff. I don’t have time for a pay version either.

Keith

Well thank you for your efforts in making one of my most useful plugins and the great support you provided. I wish you all the best in your future endeavors.

??

Damn. What’s now? This plugin really does its job. It’s a shame to waste it.

Hi Keith,

This great stuff shouldn’t die.

Even donating a singe doller from each can be a great help to keep this great job live.

Please keep the donation link active for all guys out here to support such an amazing work.

Regards,
Harsh

The plugin is free. I never expected any money. I am giving up on the plugin because the methods used too often keep people out of their own site. I don’t want to be responsible for this, even if it is not my fault.

The plugin is very aggressive and too often blocks legitimate users.

I will continue to use it and add features for myself for my own websites but I will not be updating the WordPress repository.

I’ve thought about making “Stop Spammers Lite”. I’ve also thought about making a pay version that I could sell on one of the pay plugin sites, but these are not very attractive ideas, so for now I will not be doing either.

The current version that I use on my websites will always be available at BlogsEye.com for the adventurous.

Keith

Result:
It gives WordPress a bad name and puts me off ever using the donate button for those developers that deserve it (you)… For example, I often donate $20 for a good plugin. The Stop Spammers one is on my list (honest). But why bother when there is no commitment from it at the other end?

Advice to WP plugin developers:
Simply charge for your work, support it and make a good living. Surely there is a business model for this with so many downloads (200k in this example) and so many rave reviews (90% 4 or 5 stars).?

I have not stopped working on Stop Spammers. I am not walking away.

What I cannot do is support 100,000 people. After the last few releases I was answering emails and answering questions for a couple of hours a day. It was getting in the way of my real job and my personal life. I released the plugin as something I had made for myself, found useful, and hoped that others would find it useful. It was never intended to be a “product”. It was a hobby that I shared with others.

People started treating the plugin as a product and expected me be behave like a software developer. I am just a guy who codes a little on his lunch break to keep spammers out of his blog. I am not a company or a service or a professional plugin developer.

You can keep downloading versions of the plugin at blogseye.com. I have made exciting and interesting changes to the code, as well as making an add-on plugin that reports spammers to the networks where the spammer hosts reside. I will not be releasing anything to the WordPress repository, though. I can’t deal with the shouting from users who have problems with it.

Rather than having 100,000 users with problems, I hope to have a hundred users who know what they are doing and contribute intelligently to the future of the plugin. Almost all the features and big fixes come from a very small number of users. These are the only people to whom I owe anything. I don’t owe anything to users who download 100 plugins at a time, fiddle with settings without knowing what they are doing and then threaten to sue me because they can’t log into their blogs.

If you want to pay for the plugin, go to my site, donate $5 and download the free plugin. I could install some buggy software to accept PayPal, issue a license, and control downloads, but it would take me too long to write it. I would be better if you helped me improve the software and did not send the money.

Keith P. Graham

Hi Keith,

Happy to see your post. ??

Please make the donation link available.

Regards,
Harsh

I completely understand why you took the Donation button away. The problem taking money from someone, is that the person contributing the money then has a felling of entitlement. They feel they have rights that may far exceed the measly money they actually contributed. In my business I can refuse to do business with those I do not trust, or who do not appear to respect my time. You will apparently will have that control if you go the way of blogseye.com
This is your time. Do what you like, enjoy your life, good luck!

I’d just like to say Keith, that I appreciate all the hard work you put into your plugin. I also understand your decision to no longer support it through the WP Repository.

What you’re describing about your plugin support getting in the way of your life, is similar to the way I feel about my website. It turns out I opened a Pandora’s box when my site became as popular as it has. I could spend my days answering nothing but emails and comments from people about their saxophones. I don’t charge for my time, and as you know, people expect stuff on the ‘Net to be free. My Donate button is the one least clicked on. I think I can count on 2 hands the number of donations I’ve received over the years.

I have never had a problem with being locked out of my site, and have seen literally seen hundreds of thousands of spam comments blocked on my site over the years that I’ve used your plugin.

I will gladly give you some money through your website as a way of saying “thanks” for all that you have done. I’m glad to know that a version of this will still be available.

Take care, and enjoy your life. It’s too short to be yelled at, or cursed at by anonymous people who are frustrated, and know they can act out with impunity through their keyboards.

Be well…helen

That is too bad Keith.
I do understand your point on users bothering you when they don’t know how to install the plugin, but on the other hand, this is one of the best tools to keep spammers of the site I ever use.
I hope you can reconsider it and instead of taking off the plugin, just put a big WARNING on the download page telling you assume no responsability, bla bla bla.

I download the beta version from your web site and I’m trying it now.
Keep up with the good work!