Install got me banned from a free hosting website

If you’re using a free webhosting service, they may be creating restrictions that disallow you from creating new database tables which could result in the error you are getting. I wouldn’t recommend using WordPress for any reason on a free service that doesn’t allow you to create your own database. The requirements for the plugin are listed here: https://eventespresso.com/requirements/

Who is the host you are trying to use?

Anti apam plugin I installed created tables fine.

Host was 000webhost.com

I’ve created an account on 000webhost and did some testing. I was able to reproduce the experience you got with the initial install, so I tried several other plugins to see if I could reproduce the same experience with those.

Comparing Event Espresso to an antispam plugin (I’m guessing you’re talking about Akismet, but even if you aren’t, this still applies) isn’t really fair. Akismet doesn’t create any new database tables. Event Espresso creates around 20. While this can and should be optimized, there’s a significant difference in both what the plugin is doing (one scans messages to identify as spam, Event Espresso is a complete event registration system that allows you to accept registrations, take payment, automatically send information and notifications to your attendees, and stores all that information in the database along with attendee and event metadata, custom questions, prices, amounts paid/owed, etc, etc, etc) and how they are built.

So I tested with several other plugins that I know create a lot of database tables (namely BuddyPress and Cart66. Neither gave me that message.

However, I went back and re-activated Event Espresso and everything appears to work fine and I have an event up here: https://espressotest.site11.com/event-registration?ee=1

Here’s some things I gleaned from messing around with 000webhost:

• The script timeout is 10 seconds. 10 seconds! Most hosts set the timeout to 30 or 60. That means if you have a process that takes longer than 10 seconds to finish will get cut off by the server. This led to me having to go through the process of installing and/or activating other WordPress plugins several times. Many attempts to install and/or activate other WordPress plugins failed, got an error, or simply didn’t install anything forcing me to retry the process. (For the record, I tested Yet Another Posts Plugin, BuddyPress, Cart66, WordPress SEO by Yoast and The Events Calendar.)
• The maximum file upload size is 2mb. This would be too small for Event Espresso if you were trying to upload the zip file manually from the backend because the Event Espresso plugin is just under 3mb. It’s also likely to be too small for other bigger plugins.
• Once Event Espresso was installed, everything worked fine, so it appears that the issue is specifically tied to the install process.
• After talking to some members of the dev team, it turns out that this is all tied to a query that is looking for a deprecated table that is no longer used by the plugin.

While we would have appreciated it if you had posted this in the support forums rather than posting a negative review of the plugin because of a support issue, this has at least alerted us to a bug we would not have found otherwise since none of our customers has ever received that specific message from their host on activation of the plugin. It’s likely due to the fact that 000webhost has much tighter restrictions on how much server resources each site is allowed than other web hosting services that, you know, you pay for.

For reference, here is a link to Event Espresso running on my test site on 000webhost: https://espressotest.site11.com/event-registration?ee=1

Also, though I received several duplicate emails about a slow query on Event Espresso activation, my test site was never “banned”. And since that particular query would only run once (unless, I suppose, you deleted the plugin and reinstalled), my scenario shouldn’t be that much different than yours. But if you did deactivate and delete the plugin, I can see your site being deactivated as a “repeat offender”.

I’ll never understand why people believe free things are suppose to work like the best of category.

It is quite obvious the real problem here is the “free” hosting; which hasn’t really worked out to be ‘free’ because someone else had to spend significant amounts of time discovering that the problem wasn’t actually a problem.

Please, stop the lunacy.

This is helpful information. It implies that the free product can’t be tested on some host systems without incurring the ire of host admins. I’m not sure why this product would create more of a strain than, e.g. installing WordPress which also creates a similar number of tables.