To do justice to your query I’m going to provide as much of my observations as possible.
I get the impression a lot of the bad reviews/bad press you’re getting has to do with a failure in documentation.
People have a tendency to get frustrated when they don’t understand something. Frustration leads to anger which easily results in really poor reviews. Improving the documentation might fix some of this. Documentation designed to get a new user up and running in minutes, not days something in the vein of an “Encyclopedia Plugin for Dummies” might be what is needed.
Let me give you a few examples of where I hit snags.
Usually a plugin has a bit of explanatory documentation right in the plugin’s “view details” link. Look at Akismet and All In One Security & Firewall. Those and many other plugins give a good reference to how the plugin works and what it’s doing. Some plugins have screenshots but many don’t. Screenshots without explanatory text aren’t very helpful.
Nowhere in the setup or introduction does the documentation explain how Encyclopedia works. I now understand it’s widget based and doesn’t rely on short codes. I had to find that out by trying all sorts of things and doing a bit-less-than-comprehensive reading of the support forum.
Nowhere in the documentation I’ve read is there a step by step explanation (with pictures and/or examples) for what each widget does and where they can be placed for different results. This would be simple to do but very helpful for the new user.
I think your plugin is brilliant. Your documentation sucks. Right now your documentation is set for a high-end WordPress user who can easily alter the guts of WordPress themes. Most WordPress users aren’t interested in being that skilled. They want a vanity site or an off-hours income generator. They’ll cruise the themes gallery until they find something close to the layout they need, spend a couple hours tweaking colors, fonts and images via the customizer and they’re happy. They don’t want to/can’t spend days or weeks acquiring the knowledge necessary to use your plugin. There is no bridging documentation.
A simple set of “getting started” pages with pics and/or video would be awesome, something to fill the gap for the casual WordPress user not willing or able to do the grunt work/research to understand how your plugin works. There are more people without programming skills than there are developers. Those “noobs” need a starting point and a little bit of hand holding. Once they have that they could easily transition to wanting more and paying for the plugin. Without adequate documentation, there’s no bridge to “paying customer.”
Review your one star ratings. How many say “documentation”?
