
Show HN: I Write In-Depth Wordpress Plugin Reviews - shash7
https://wpplugincheck.com/
======
scarecrowbob
Hey, I like your idea.

I'm not accepting clients, so this is not a plug, I'm just saying this to
frame where I am coming from. I do audits and WordPress code reviews for folks
like junior college districts and largish content marketing sites; these range
from load-testing and auditing the servers to examining the code quality of
custom plugins and themes. I also do a lot of one-off and custom WP work for
similar levels of clients.

Here's one element that you might find useful that I wasn't seeing in your
reviews and that I don't see in a lot of reviews (because it's a pain in the
butt to do the work to uncover):

looking at the hooks/ expandability of the plugin.

Like, you might audit the actual code quality and see how easy you think it
might be to accomplish various customizations without, say, forking the plug.

I'm always surprised at the variability on this point among various plugins.
Some plugins are filtering all kinds of things, some don't filter much at all.
Some have really flexible and easy to modify CPTs, some have a ton of
functionality hard coded. Some things have really baroque systems that would
be easy to expand, but they are written using some crazy complicated
architecture and you have to do hours of reading code to understand what you'd
want to do.

A second thing that you might look at is the nature of "paid-ness" of the
plugins. There is one business listing plugin (which I hate writing extensions
for) that basically breaks the site if you don't re-up the subscription every
year. There are other plugins that play nice-- you buy them once, and they
work everywhere just fine and if they release a new major version you can buy
it again. I don't like paid-for commercial stuff in GPL, but that's at least
reasonable. What isn't reasonable are licensing schemes that do things like
break local/staging/test/prod environments because the license is tied to some
crazy thing like the URL.

Anyhow, it's a pretty site, so I wish you well.

~~~
shash7
Hey thanks for the writeup!

Code review/table structure, etc are highly requested featured right now. I'm
working on it but I don't want to rush and put something wrong out there.

I don't understand your second point. Can you point me to the plugin which
keeps breaking after the license expires.

~~~
scarecrowbob
"I don't understand your second point. Can you point me to the plugin which
keeps breaking after the license expires."

Well, that, once again, is a pain in the ass to find.

For instance, there is this business listings plugin:

[https://businessdirectoryplugin.com/](https://businessdirectoryplugin.com/)

Personally, I found it a massive pain in the ass to use, but on top of that
the add-on plugins are setup to work only with the specific version of the
main plugin. So you can't update just one, you have to update them all, and
you have to pay for them all each update== regardless of if there is an actual
change to the software.

IMO, that's BS. The WordPress community, in general, disagrees with me, but
whatever :D

Another example is that ACF used to (and maybe still does, I have an unlimited
license and this doesn't seem to be a problem) set its license based on the
URL of the site, so if I clone the site to another URL (like for staging on
WPEngine) then the key is no longer functional and the plugin breaks.

~~~
shash7
I'm not sure about the businessdirectory plugin but I can vouch for ACF. The
plugin doesn't break if you remove the license key. In fact, you can actually
give someone the pro version's plugin folder and they can use it for free(it
just won't be able to update that's all)

Perhaps this used to happen in the past but not anymore.

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sareiodata
Plugin developer here. Just had a look at some of the review... they are in no
way in-depth.

I would call them plugin descriptions at best, but not reviews. Each of the
bigger plugins like Gravity Forms or Advanced Custom Fields has so much
functionality under the hood that I feel you're not even touching the surface.

Again, good and possibly useful description of each plugin, but they are not
in-depth reviews.

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shash7
Hey folks I write in-depth Wordpress Plugin reviews. So if you're on the ledge
about buying or installing a particular plugin you can check out my reviews.

I keep this in mind while reviewing plugins:

\- Functionality of the plugin

\- Any security issue the plugin has

\- Support offered by the devs as well as the pricing

\- Any weird gotchas or unexpected behavior with other plugins

Recently I posted an in-depth review of Carbon Fields and ACF.

Let me know what you think about it!

~~~
sleavey
The TinyMCE review, at least, has a bunch of spelling mistakes and duplicate
words / broken sentences. Would be worth doing a once-over of the article.

~~~
shash7
Yeah I kinda pushed it today. Gonna spellcheck it tonight.

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freshyill
This is great. One piece of feedback, about the reviews themselves: Every time
you use parentheses, there’s no space between the preceding word and the
opening paren(like this).

I only read through the ACF review, but I saw it a number of times there.

~~~
shash7
Hmm I though there's no space traditionally. I'll check it out.

~~~
aorth
I think the custom is different depending on where you're from. I'm American
and I have always used a space between the text and the opening paren. On that
note, another American thing is to put two spaces after a period (something
I've long stopped doing).

~~~
freshyill
I think two spaces after a period is more of a typewriter bad habit than
American thing. Back when you had a single monospace typeface, I think it just
made things more legible. People who learned it then passed it on to
generations who never used a typewriter.

~~~
xyclos
anecdotal, but when I was in grade school (in the US) I was taught that it was
a MLA rule to use two spaces after a period. I had teachers that deducted
points from a paper if the extra spaces were missing.

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themodelplumber
Good on you for this contribution. Plugins can be a liability in so many ways.
I remember almost a decade ago, a favorite plugin of my clients' was sold by
the original dev to a third party. From that day on the quality of support and
release schedule both took a dive, and soon after we started receiving
telecommunications product spam from the new vendor. Like telephony solutions,
which were completely unrelated to the plugin.

After having spent hundreds of hours customizing that plugin, this was a
devastating experience. I'm still leery of plugins and rarely install anything
that could leave me stranded if it went unsupported one day.

~~~
shash7
Yeah they can be downright dangerous. Some time ago, hackers got access to a
plugin on wordpress.org and injected it with malicious code. Nobody even knew
until Sucuri released a blog post about it.

At wpplugincheck we verify the plugin is clean by checking for any issues at
wpvulndb. I'm also looking at automating plugin code testing.

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sleavey
Cool site! I recently made a plugin to turn WordPress into an academic labbook
and found that the ecosystem is so, so full of absolute rubbish. If a plugin
isn't immediately and continuously bugging you to buy the pro version, it's
modifying core WordPress look and feel (either admin or public facing pages,
or both) in such a fundamental way that it is an eyesore. No, I don't want
your crappy little plugin with grammar and spelling mistakes to have its own
top level menu on the admin dashboard.

In my plugin therefore tried to do things properly and avoid changing too much
core functionality. It would be great if your site could review plugins on
that sort of criteria.

My plugin (basically finished but not fully tested)) for anyone that's
interested: [https://github.com/SeanDS/alp](https://github.com/SeanDS/alp)

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mathattack
Very useful. It may help to be explicit about relationships with the makers.
Something like a blanket statement of “I don’t get paid for writing reviews
and don’t accet sponsorships” or “I review on request if the makers but don’t
charge them for it.”

It could also help to know the spread. Why % are 4 stars? 5?

~~~
shash7
Yeah that's true. I'm redesigning the site currently and all these notices
will be in new site.

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CM30
Looks good for the most part. That said, I do feel like you should maybe go
into a bit more depth about certain things, like how quick/detailed support
responses are (if possible), the quality of the code itself, the viability of
the pricing schemes, etc.

But that's just my opinion here.

~~~
shash7
I agree. These reviews were pretty light on content few months ago but they
are constantly being updated. In fact I just updated Updraft's review today
based on a user's feedback.

Reviewing the quality of code is not exactly straightforward. Right now, I'm
looking at how to address code review/table structure/api access of plugins
while keeping the review concise enough so that non-techy Wordpress users can
understand.

~~~
CM30
Maybe another page for the tech side, so those interested can read it and
those aren't can skip it?

If that fails, a (hidden by default) box with the content could work. Have it
open when they click some button or what not.

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austinhutch
If you're anything like me this may have been inspired by some plugins you
absolutely hate. My advice would be to get a couple of 1 star reviews up,
knowing which to avoid is maybe more powerful than the plugins to install!
Keep up the good work :)

~~~
shash7
Yeah true. I'm gonna review Visual Composer in the near future :P

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phoenix24
stupid question but, what is the business model with plugin reviews?

~~~
shash7
Nothing stupid about it. The plan is to support the business with affiliate
links to the plugins and get some sponsorship on the side.

