Works for my needs

I just needed a basic events manager for a nonprofit genealogical society site which I am volunteering my time and server space for my community. They are older and not tech savvy and the WP backend needs to be as straight forward as possible for them. They also do not have money to spend on a bunch of plugins. Thank you to the developer for not crippling this plugin to where it is totally non-functional.

I’ve built their site from the ground up with just what WP provides so they are not dependent upon themes and plugins full of bloat and confused/frustrated by nag-ware ads. Sometimes simple is best.

They hold a lot of community events, mostly just to get together and talk about family history and have guest speakers talk about the area history. Even though this plugin has an elaborate system, I did not need anything this elaborate and could have simply used WP posts and built the front end to display them. I am really trying to keep their site as simple as possible so the next person behind me is not overwhelmed with a bunch of fluff and bloated plugins.

I began looking at event managers just in case they did start selling tickets in the future to events. With that in mind, I needed an event manager that was usable, had the basics, and could grow with them at a later date. They could decide later if they wanted to pay for bells and whistles. While looling I found a bunch of crippleware crap and a lot of plugins that were just overkill for what I needed. The base needed to be simple with a logical workflow that would not overwhelm a back-end editor who was not tech savvy.

Many of the plugins I tried were trying to be everything to everyone and the layouts of some of them were just overkill and extremely confusing. Most were just useless on the front-end and were forcing to pay for plugins to make the front end look correct. Some of these programs were just rehashed old github code torn apart and made into crippleware. This seems to be the trend now, lazy hacks trying to monetize on unsuspecting WP newbies.

I tried many event plugins and kept coming back to this plugin because it was the easiest to format on the front end via CSS. On the back end the Categories, Tags, & Custom Taxonomies are laid out logically that fits nicely within the WP universe and not broken up and nested within the WP tools and settings sub-menus. This makes it easier for non tech editors to access and use with very little learning curve.

What I am finding out about most plugins that have logical workflows like this plugin, it started as a necessity for an individual and then bells and whistles were added as time went on. These make the best programs. I have not delved into the code yet to see how well it is documented. I will get into that shortly to dismiss the nag-ad that keeps asking me to give a review ??

I did install the full calendar plugin. That’s another review.

Again, thank you for not making this total crippleware. Keep up the good work.

• This topic was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by jlc1964.