omigosh

Where are the options to choose the two different themes you offer, according to the documentation that comes from your website.

How do you get the slideshow to actually work? You seem to refer to all kinds of things that aren’t in available in the theme options.

I have to admit that was unfair of me and I’d remove that review if I could. I made that comment after searching for several hours for a plug-in that would do what I wanted. I finally had to make my own.

Having the same problem, using the theme Magazine Basic. On another site, using the theme WP-Startup Pro, the Foo Gallery works great.

Just went back to your website and saw a lot of documentation that wasn’t there last time. When I first tried your plugin, it simply didn’t work and there was no documentation at all. When I visited the forum, there were several questions unanswered including one very similar to mine. I didn’t see the point of reiterating the original question. I don’t think my comment was any more negative than your plugin.

I spend several hours trying to find a slide show utility that offered a masonry view. None of the plugins were suitable. This plugin wasn’t usable. Yes I did read the documentation, clicked the website link and found, in the forum, that another user had complained of exactly the same problem and his query wasn’t answered. I found another plug-in that works better. I don’t have time to waste trying to figure out how a plug-in works when it should be self-explanatory and logical. Many of the free plug-ins in WordPress seem to be entry points for paid “pro” versions. The quality of plug-ins is deteriorating partly because of this. Even Woo Commerce has criticized the quality of WordPress plugins.

As a web developer I’ve found WordPress inadequate for most jobs I do. When I do a site in WordPress I wind up fighting with the prebuilt scripts and themes all the way through, and putting up with WordPress’s extremely slow processing.

Except for the ability to change the menu and make comments, WordPress doesn’t offer much that I can’t easily create in PHP. In fact I’ve built masonry-view galleries for other clients with my own content management web interface.

That makes your gallery absolutely useless!

What theme did you switch to?

Yeah, working now. I guess I wasn’t patient enough. Cool app!

you can’t ask volunteers to evaluate the documentation submitted with new plugins

Would you be willing to take this on (serious question)?

Yes, I’d be glad to review documentation and cajole developers into providing better explanations where they seem to be needed. I’ve had a look at the Get Involved section but I’m not sure how to proceed.

Suggestions?

So the result of all this discussion is nothing gets done.

What I’m asking for (and volunteering to help with) is better organization and better evaluation of plug-ins and themes. This seems like a very reasonable request but you say it can’t be done. You can’t test drive new plug-ins to see if they work, you can’t ask volunteers to evaluate the documentation submitted with new plugins and you can’t write your own search queries.

I’m sure you’re a hard-working volunteer but that “can’t do” attitude is no help to your organization.

So, query the forum for “remove footer” and see which dates come out on top: the oldest ones.

As for evaluating tools that are submitted, do you mean you actually don’t try them out? How else can you evaluate something?

I sense you are getting defensive because I’m criticizing WordPress. I have seen you on the forums before and have respect for the time and effort it takes. I also think WordPress is a terrific tool but there is a tendency among programmers to talk to themselves, explaining things to people at their level if they explain them at all.

I think most people who use WordPress are not skilled in this area and the lack of documentation can be discouraging.

There are two things I personally would like www.ads-software.com to do.

Change the order of answers to forum queries so that they are ordered by date in descending order so recent discussions are at the top. that way you won’t wind up with five-year-old discussions which are often useless.

Second, when new plugins and themes are submitted, assess them for the detail and level of instructions provided and give them ratings, expressed graphically or with a short blurb.

This would not be hard to do and I’m willing to volunteer or serve on a committee or whatever it takes.

I’m not a complete newbie. I find it easier to produce websites on my own using my skills with HTML5 CSS3 and PHP. WordPress is a terrific platform but the lack of organization and documentation of plugins and themes is frustrating and discourages the use of the platform.

Has anyone ever surveyed the users of WordPress to see if they’re happy? I am not happy and I imagine there are lots of people at my level who aren’t happy either. The solutions are very easy. Is anyone out there listening or are you just going to tell me to talk to the nonresponsive developers again?

Does anyone approve plug-ins or themes, or can develoeprs just add whatever they like to plug in and theme directories? If there is an approval process, it would seem that proper documentation, written to the level of an ordinary users, would be a criterion for being accepted.

Also, I notice that there is no tab heading in the details section of the plug-in popup that leads to a manual or how-to-use instructions. We can see tabs for reviews, developer info and how to install, but not how it works.

Simply saying I should write to the developer is unhelpful since most developers don’t respond. There are dozens of sites I can list where the developers pages don’t exist or where freebie users can’t get access.

Really? There are almost no themes or plugins at I’d call well documentated. Take the theme twenty fourteen for example. There is about a page of documentation in the codex and a support forum where people are asking the most basic questions, like how the built-in slider works, which should have been covered by documentation. There are hundreds of plugins with literally no documentation such as Accordion. Many plug ins in WordPress are useful and some themes are inspirational in their design but after spending hours trying to make them work, I’ve had to look for alternatives. WordPress is supposed to be easy and quick, but I find it frustrating and slow. It’s easier to build a straight HTML site in Dreamweaver and add PHP and Jquery where needed. That is regrettable however because you lose the other advantages of WordPress.