Update fatigue

  • Hi Michael,

    This plugin has been getting a lot of updates recently. I’m reminded of Ipstenu’s post titled “Update Fatigue” in which she makes some really good points applicable to this situation: https://halfelf.org/2015/update-fatigue/ . Maybe it’s time to split up this plugin into a core plugin and individual plugins for each email form? After all, who uses more than one or two favorite email form plugins that they know how to configure? It’s extra work for no benefit (and maybe a regression) to have to update and test a plugin that got updated for something you don’t even use.

    Cheers,
    -Brett

    https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/contact-form-7-to-database-extension/

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Plugin Author Michael Simpson

    (@msimpson)

    It would be nice if WP offered a way to subscribe to major plugin updates vs minor ones. Recently I’ve added a new feature that only a handful of people requested, and fixed a problem that only seems to affect a small number of sites. I have to put those out somewhere. And it would be time consuming for me to test and manage a bunch of plugins and every combination of subsets of them installed.

    Practically speaking, it might be easiest to update just once a quarter or something like that unless the changelog indicated a major issue was fixed.

    Thread Starter thenightrider

    (@thenightrider)

    It would be nice, but for those of us who run many sites, a better subscription method would be separate security updates and functionality updates. Functionality updates often break things, so we have to first test on a dev site or revert a live site if things break. Security updates usually fix without breaking, but we still have to first test on a dev site or prepare to revert or delete.

    Much as everyone loves the WordPress ecosystem and the fine work that many developers produce, developers can forget that their plugin might be used on 100 sites, each of which might have 10 or 15 or more plugins. So tons of updates means tons of tests and tons of work. Except when absolutely required on a site, unfortunately but out of necessity the usual fate for plugins that require too much work is deletion. This is just the time-limited world we live in.

    Keep up the good work.

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