Free version should have different name/dir from paid versions

Hi @rklrkl thanks for getting in touch. This sounds frustrating, I’ll try to share some of our thinking and also possible approaches for improving the situation you’re in with updates.

We originally decided to keep the same plugin directory name so that users could easily upgrade/downgrade between editions without the directory name changing or having the risk of multiple editions installed alongside each other. We don’t have the free core + add-on model, so if you install SSA Plus, you shouldn’t have SSA Free installed. Also, if a user upgrades from SSA Plus to SSA Pro, an in-dashboard update has to keep the same plugin directory, otherwise the plugin will be deactivated after update.

Bottom line, we aren’t able to change the directory name now (for any reason), because doing so would disable the plugin for all users after an update. For example, if we did as you proposed and changed simply-schedule-appointments to simply-schedule-appointments-plus, the next time someone updated, the directory would change to simply-schedule-appointments-plus *but* WP doesn’t have that slug in the list of active plugins so it would be deactivated. So unfortunately, whether our thinking was right or wrong 5 years ago (there’s plenty I would change given a time machine), we can’t change it now ??

All that said, SSA paid editions *should* be compatible with wp-cli updates as long as a valid license key is active. We are supposed to be handling paid support off of these forums, so please email us [email protected] and we can continue looking into that with you (since it sounds like it isn’t happening as expected)

Thanks,
Nathan

We deal with a large number of commercial WordPress plugins (and their free equivalents) and your plugin may be the only one we’ve seen that has the same name/install dir for its free vs. paid plugins, so the de facto standard for this appears to be to have separate names/install dirs, which you unfortunately ignored when you launched your paid plugins.

I can understand your reticence to change the paid plugin names for fear of deactivating the plugin, but couldn’t you release an interim version with the original paid plugin name first that looks for a deactivated renamed paid plugin and if it finds one, deactivates the originally named paid plugin (i.e. the one running this checking code) and activates the renamed paid plugin, then exits the code (not sure if a plugin is allowed to do this in WordPress though – might be considered a privileged operation that could be used to sabotage other plugins…).

Note that one of the sites we have the Plus paid plugin installed on has got itself “stuck” on 2.6.5.12 despite having a valid license key and the “SUPPORT” section of the plugin claiming (today) that 2.6.5.12 is “up-to-date” (it clearly isn’t – 2.6.5.28 was out recently). I suspect you had a bug in that 2.6.5.12 release w.r.t. version checking – you can’t update it either from anywhere in the WP admin interface or WP-CLI.

@rklrkl there would be some security/reliability issues with changing the directory name as you describe. I’m afraid we’re likely stuck with the directory, but I will do some investigation on our side to see what’s possible.

In your case, it sounds like there’s some issue affecting the SSA updates in general and WP-CLI is just reflecting the same behavior that WP Admin is. I’d recommend manually updating with the zip file this once and see if it is something that just affects that 2.6.5.12 version. If you don’t have direct access to your client’s account, please email us and reference this thread. Our team can help you get it sorted out.

Thanks,
Nathan