Within a year of releasing eShop I managed to get it onto the WordPress plugin repository. It certainly increased the number of downloads, and even brought in a little money – not that that was ever the intent. But I have become more and more frustrated ever since the Compatibility section was added to the plugins page. Why? because of the number of times that someone has marked it as Not Working – well sort of.
Let me explain. I have no problem at all with people marking it as Not Working. What I object to quite strongly is the fact that they have never, ever, said what is wrong with it. Without this crucial feedback how the hell can a plugin developer have a snows ball in hell chance of fixing it. That is assuming of course that there is anything wrong, most of the problems with eShop are due to incompatible plugins, themes, or, dare I say it, user error. Yes user error. The majority of those issues are down to the settings, and not always within eShop. Some are due to poorly configured servers. I’ve recently realised that a company selling a theme for use with eShop has released a flawed theme!
I have also long held a suspicion that someone has a grudge is is deliberately marking it as not working. Of course I cannot prove this. But things would be a lot easier if whenever someone say not working, or indeed working – the vote is only cast if they leave a message. That way their name and contact details (possibly) are left for the developer to follow up. The usefulness of this compatibility section is totally marred, not as many people will mark it as working, I think the most I have ever seen for my plugin is 10.
Now you may think why am I complaining about 1 person marking it as Not working, as that is all there is on there at this time. Well because I don’t accept the fact that the report holds any credence because it is anonymous. The latest version of eShop has been downloaded from the repository approx 12,000 times. If the stats are to be believed then that means there is approx 50,000 users of eShop. I have 3 votes for working, and 1 for not working. So how is that small a % of the actual user base any help at all. It isn’t. In no way can anyone use that as a judgement as to whether eShop works or not. But it is there on the page, and is totally and utterly useless.
So what will I do? OK I’ll probably just continue as is, but I doubt I will ever ask for more of my plugins to be hosted by the WordPress plugin repository.
{update Feb 13th} I wonder how many of the 10 people that say it isn’t working have bothered to contact us with their issue, and then change it when they realise it isn’t at fault. So far as I can tell we may have spoken to 1 maybe 2 of them…
You should explain to wordpress.org how little sense their system makes. Marking something “not working” without saying why is dumb. My sense is the WordPress folks are smart, capable people, maybe didn’t think it through enough, and are willing to change things that don’t make sense.
Another thing they do which isn’t great is they don’t say how many votes are behind the star ratings on the pages where people browse for new plug-ins. You have to click for more details before you find out how many people rated a plug-in.
but still, you get 178 rating (4 star)
eShop plugin is awesome!
best of all ecommerce plugin..
i’ll donate as soon as i get some sales
your plugin is GREAT!! i love it and it works just perfectly
I can understand you perfectly since I used to have the same concerns about WordPress directory. I hope you can continue supporting this eShop plugin in the future, it is awesome. I also plan to donate as soon as I get some sales in my niche websites… :s
I am a wordpress user and along I also use eshop for one of my website. I sometimes find it very difficult to chose which plugin to use and which not as not sufficient information on ratings and compatibility.
While choosing for a ecommerce plugin for one of my project , I chose eshop only for the good reviews about this plugin found in various other review website, as then I found it confusing about eshop’s rating with other wellknown developers ecommerce plugin for wordpress.
I am satisfied with this plugin and I still use this plugin till date. Thanks, Rich.
Please don’t remove it.
I’ll be frank here. The only problem I am having with eShop, or have ever had with eShop, is that the only merchant gateway I can use with it is the Paypal one. There are the other gateways, sure, but none of them are viable or, in the case of one, will approve my account based on numbers. I need Google checkout and wepay. A lot. But I also am smart enough to watch your development and remember when you looked into adding the Google gateway and determined it would be too costly.
Beyond that one hitch, I absolutely love my eShop. The theme works great. It looks great. Adding items is a breeze. You allow sales for downloadable products, as well as the option to give an item away for free. I’ve tried a LOT of other shop plugins, and the only other one that matched what I’m looking for charged too much a month. You don’t charge anything. You only ask for donations.
Those that can’t be bothered to tell you more than “couldn’t get it to work”? Chances are they just aren’t computer savvy to begin with. “Couldn’t get it to work” was probably all they even knew how to give you for input. It’s kind of “My bone is broken” and you’re asked “which part? The tibula or the fibula?” and you can only say “ummm… my leg… somewhere.”
I wish my shop made actual money, because I’d give you the donations your plug in deserves. I wish I had money, period. LOL. Hang in there. You’ve done a fabulous thing.
Pretty old thread, but pitching in anyway. I was just contacted by an eShop user (because I wrote some add-ons) saying that it had been removed from wordpress.org. Yes, it’s seen better days and WooCommerce has taken a huge chunk of the market, but there were still lots of people using it.
Can you shed some light into what happened? There is no mention of the removal at quirm.net, either.
Thanks,
Vinny