mavante

Thanks very much for your help, @jarretc .

I ended up installing WP Health, and it discovered that my hosting service had not updated from PHP 7.0 to PHP 7.2. I called and got that sorted out, and apparently that handled the problem.

Thanks again.

As you said in one message to me, yes, we are in different time zones, a fact exacerbated by the fact that, as I said in another message, I am a volunteer who is only working on the site in question sporadically, when I’m able.

I have changed the star rating on my review from one star to three. I believe you genuinely want to help. I’m glad you did see that I had appealed for help, and in fact that was my second appeal.

That said, I’m going to reply to a few things you have mentioned in this thread, not to be argumentative, but as a matter of sober fact. I don’t wish to get into a protracted discussion, so I won’t be countering anything you say in response. In no particular order:

If you need my help to fix the issues you have you can contact me directly at support [at] wp-staging.com.

Thank you again for your offers to help. In my first report about our problems with the WP Staging losing its connection with the staging site, you offered to help there, but there was no explanation forthcoming of why that would have happened. The people I volunteer for didn’t want to be further involved with a plugin that could allow that to happen with no PROMINENT warning, so instructed me to use Duplicator instead.

I made a simple request in that thread to please have the staging/development site link removed from that thread. I had submitted it because it seemed to be required, and I thought it would go only to you. My request was rudely dismissed by an arrogant moderator, and when I answer I was browbeaten by an even more arrogant moderator/admin, Otto, who threatened to cancel my account. I never saw you speak up in defense of my polite request to simply remove the link, and Otto closed the thread, ridiculously marking it as “Solved.” It wasn’t solved at all.

That discussion is here:

First post about problem

Why don’t you ask first for my help?

I did. See above. I did again when the staging site created by WP Staging was non-operational after moving it to the live site with Duplicator. That, it seems now, resulted from a problem of WP Staging not honoring the SSL certificate, changing all the links in the staging site to http: instead of https:

Maybe that wasn’t WP Staging’s doing. That was a “post-mortem” phone-call assessment by a friend and colleague who does have at least some experience in these things. I don’t know, and neither does anybody here, and neither do I really care to find out. All I know is that by resolving the http: vs. https: issue, the site then worked.

That problem has now been fixed, after a good deal of down time, and the site is now live and working. It’s here, if you’d care to see it:

https://chaletbooks.com/chaletreports/

As a further, if rhetorical, response to your “Why don’t you ask first for my help” question: Why should we have to?

The entire point of our relying on plugins for many of the operations is that none of us is fluent in the kinds of coding that are the engine beneath WP sites, and none of us—being volunteers—have the time, resources, or even inclination to get schooled in a new technology career. We have other careers and demands on our time.

We generally don’t run into such catastrophic issues with plugins, and if we do, I assure you that is the quick end to any use of such plugins. We can’t go running to developers of plugins to solve our problems for us, if they are that difficult or esoteric to use. We need to get a job done efficiently, because we all are stretched very thin and have little time to devote to WP site technicalities.

You further wrote:

You told WP Staging to delete all settings when the plugin is going to be uninstalled.

No, I did not, so I’d be grateful if you would not tell me what I did. I’ve already said that I was away when the plugin was deactivated and uninstalled, but I have grilled the person who did it, also a part-time volunteer, and he swears on his mother’s grave that he never made any such setting. He didn’t make any “settings” at all: he simply deactivated the plugin.

He also swears, valuably, that there was NO WARNING AT ALL that the connection to the staging site would be lost. He is incredulous that the plugin could ever, under any circumstances, allow a user to perform such an inadvertently destructive function without a LARGE PROMINENT WARNING. Frankly, so am I. Frankly, so are the people I volunteer for—which is why they instructed me not ever to use WP Staging again, and to switch to Duplicator.

I don’t wish you any ill will, and neither does anyone associated with this public-service activity. I wish you all the best with your product and service.

I understand now fully that your business model is one of “loss-leader” (my own background is in marketing)—bringing people in with a “FREE” version, and then up-selling them to the paid version. While I understand that this is a widely used business model with WP themes and plugins, I have to question its wisdom for something as critical as a staging site—providing “free” operation that is one-way only.

To me—and this is purely my opinion—having a product that creates a staging site, but that cannot then make that staging site live, essentially makes the “staging site” it creates worthless to any but the most advanced user.

I hope that I’ve at least convinced you that no one here qualifies as any “most advanced user,” and hence the difficulty we had with your product.

I hope that my upgrade of the stars from one to three helps relieve any tensions or hard feelings. I cannot in good conscience give a higher rating for all the reasons I have described above.

I made my request, and I made my record, without the arrogance of overweening power. You’ve made your record.

I’m afraid we can’t do that.

Hi Hal,

Then you need to remove the field asking for a link, or provide FULL DISCLOSURE at that field—not buried in guidelines—that it cannot be removed.

It should be noted that the URL field is only visible to signed in users.

It should be noted that the link I provided was intended for the developer only because it’s a development staging site—which should be obvious from the context. I had no idea it would be made public. That site, as it stands, also is a material part of an unpublished work, by definition supplied here, et seq.:

Copyright Basics – US Copyright Office

You’re welcome, and in fact encouraged, to leave that link there, because it is record that you have been given ACTUAL NOTICE, along with a request to remove the earlier link at issue. At all relevant times you had CONSTRUCTIVE NOTICE and IMPLIED NOTICE, but willfully refused to act when requested.

You do what you think best.

Hi Rene,

Thanks for your quick reply and offer to help. Since I wrote, some colleagues who know more about all this than me have instructed me to use Duplicator to resolve the several issues.

I very much appreciate your willingness to help us. Could you be kind enough to remove the link I supplied in my original query? Thanks.