update issues from v1 to v2

Hey Bill,

I’m sorry that you’ve had issues with the move over to version 2.0 of the plugin. We sent out an email before we switched over to the new version explaining what was going on. We moved from a single paid plugin to a free core plugin with paid extensions. I apologize if there were problems receiving that.

The second point is probably the result of poor documentation on our part, rather than bad code. You can, for example, style the general error message(s) that appear at the top of the page using the div.ninja-forms-error-msg CSS selector. Moreover, you can style errors on individual elements by using the div.ninja-forms-error selector. You can style errors on a per-field basis if you want, but as you can see, it is quite easy to style multiple elements at once. Again, this is probably due to poor documentation on our part, and we hope to have more documents on the site as we go. If you have styling questions please post a support thread. We are more than willing to help out. We have also created a styling extension to make applying CSS styles even easier.

It is true that some users have had problems converting their old forms to the new version, but we have gone out of our way to help them transfer everything. We handled quite a few stubborn transfers ourselves. If you had posted a thread in our support forum, I would have gladly helped figure out what was going wrong.

I can understand the frustration and apologize again for the impression that the plugin made on you. If you are interested in sorting out any of your issues, please feel free to visit https://www.wpninjas.com/members/ and leave a support ticket.

Hey Kevin, thanks for responding. I see what you’re talking about with the error message fields under Plugin Settings ==> Labels.

There are a few things that broke when updating the plugin:

1. Form markup changed which broke previous custom css styles
2. Classes / Id’s changed breaking previous custom css styles
3. No longer supports AJAX submission (this broke the userflow I had implemented for forms in modal boxes)
4. jQuery UI css is no longer included which makes the datepicker not function properly (let me know if I’ve missed something here)
5. Updating from v1 to v2 does not migrate over all previous form settings correctly
6. Let me know if I’m missing this, but I can’t find where to add an error class to the fields which have errors
7. The error messages utilise error ID’s (unique) and therefore can’t be targeted via CSS on the whole, however you can wrap messages in a <span class=”error”> tag as a workaround from the Plugin Settings ==> Labels area.

Although I appreciate your response, having bought version one of Ninja Forms only a few weeks before version 2 was released and then having forms break across our clients’ sites after updating, it’s a frustrating experience overall. Kind of regret not buying Gravity forms instead.

Thanks for following up and hopefully this feedback can help with the plugin development moving forward.

Bill, we can understand and appreciate your frustration and could have made this transition for you as minimal as possible. This was why when we released this change we sent you an email explaining the following (and more):

• If you have any custom styling, Ninja Forms has changed html output slightly so it’s possible your CSS may need some adjustments.
• If you created and custom code dealing with pre_processing you may need to make some adjustments with it. Please check out our new documentation area for assistance. Ninja Forms Documentation
• Because Ninja Forms is a such a complicated program and there so many different server set-ups in the wild we fully expect that there could be some bugs that we didn’t think of. If you come across any please head over to the priority support forum for Ninja Forms and let us know.
• We are pushing these out right before the end of a long work day. This mean we won’t be available for support for several hours. Feel free to wait a few hours after you get this email to do all your upgrades.

While the above notices address most of your list let me address them specifically.

1. Form markup did change to make it better. We knew this would be an issue so we warned everyone in advance and of course offered support if there were any issues.
2. This is the same as above.
3. Yes, we did remove AJAX in this initial release. We will be adding it back in but because we wanted to remove bloat we wanted to release the plugin so it could operate with as little javascript as possible. I can’t imagine a workflow requiring AJAX in this case but I am certainly sorry that you were depending on that in any way. It will be back very soon.
4. jQuery UI css is very bloated and since we didn’t need all of that styling we didn’t include it. We did however include minimal styling and it is working properly on thousands of sites. You mileage may vary but again that is why we offer support so we can troubleshoot these fringe cases.
5. There have been fringe cases where the upgrade didn’t not go completely as desire. Again, there are an unlimited number of reasons this can happen and we can’t account for all of them. What I can say is that we have been able to rectify 100% of these cases when they have been presented to us.
6. All field wraps are given a class of .ninja-forms-error if the field throws an error. From a CSS standpoint this is all you need to style an error if you like. If you are needing to add the error directly to the field element for use with javascript or something that is something we could discuss as a new feature. If you are comfortable with code you can see that Ninja Forms can be altered in almost anyway to accomplish the most unique use cases.
7. You could target those messages easily with .ninja-forms-error div { } if you wanted.

You are well within your right to leave a bad review but it’s poor form to do so without once reaching out to us and giving us a chance to assist you. All of your issues could have been easily resolved and our good name wouldn’t have been sullied for no reason. Just something to consider.

Hey James, I’ve updated the review to be more objective. Fair-enough with regards to contacting support first, it’s just that we’re under-the-gun here on projects and don’t have much time to access a support thread. You’re obviously very involved with the project and that’s great.

I get the reasons behind the updates, no problems there, just trying to help out from a paid-user’s point-of-view how our update process went for us. Hope you can understand and sorry if this has frustrated the plugin team. Let me know if you’d like me to adjust the review further and I’ll update for you.

Bill, I completely appreciate the adjustment and I’m not asking you to be in any way dishonest with your perception of our plugin. I think you completely understand where we’re coming from and that’s great.

You have clients and you want to make sure they get what you promised and are satisfied. You are our client and we want exactly that same thing for you.

Ideally we would like to turn this 3 stars into 5 but not be wearing you down in a back and forth exchange but by actually delivering what we promised, a powerful and easy Form framework for WordPress and support that is second to none.

We are waiting in our forums whenever it works for you and I’m already thinking of some changes to the markup (additions not subtractions, so don’t worry) to make it even better for you. Even though this is not where I would like a conversation like this to take place I’m glad we were able to have it. We value your feedback.