What Do You Do When Good Plugin Behaves Badly?
Since upgrading to WordPress 2.7.1 I have discovered that my home page was loading extremely slow. Doing the most obvious I have discovered that one of my more useful plugins decided to go bad and start throwing errors in numbers that were quickly filling the error log.
A Classic Case of Good Plugin Going Bad due to the lack of support and updates from original author. Popularity Contest plugin by Alex King was one of the must have plugins on my blog but author stopped supporting it since WordPress 2.5
So the question is – how would you address it?
In my case I made every attempt to address the issue but my rather basic understanding of the PHP didn’t help here. I could hire someone to address the issue or search for a solution on the web.
Last time community came up with work around of the issue of Popularity Contest been incompatible with WordPress 2.5. Perhaps this time issue can be addressed in similar matter but I have seen it as opportunity to reevaluate how my blog uses its functionality.
I have decided to get rid of the plugin that is already proven to be unreliable and since not supported – will continue to contribute to issues.
A Decision To Drop it like a Rock!
Work arounds are fine and dandy but when peice of code on your blog has potetnial to be incompatible or even worse – already shows issues and it is no longer developed by author – it is the mostsensible action.
Because WordPress and majority of the plugins and themes are released under GPL, it is an issue we can expect to come up time and time again. Luckily we have seen how some other widely used plugins, such as “All In One SEO Pack” were taken over by different developers, when original author decided he couldn’t support it any longer.
But when it didn’t happen – your best option is to drop it from usage. Avoid any future possible issues!
Side effect of this action for me was evaluation of all the places that functionality of the plugin was used. Mainly the Tabs in sidebar. I have used it to pull the information on most read posts on my blog and with functionality been gone – I actually had to reevaluate it.
I was able to replace the “All Time Popular Posts” presentation by using comment counts but still in search of the function to be able to display “Most read Posts In Previous Month”. Also I have discovered some duplication in manual links provided by me and will be working on addresing it in next few days.
A Broken Popularity Contest Plugin in my case created a domino effect that forced me examine more closely some of the most clicked on links on my blog and opportunity to present even more relevant content! A Win-Win situation that goes to show that in every bad situation there is a good outcome!
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About The Blog Author
Alex Sysoef is an IT Consultant, Internet Marketer and ProBlogger who shares his passion and knowledge of WordPress, SEO, Social Media and traffic strategies on his blog WordPress Howto Spotter. Connect on Twitter or Facebook
>A Win-Win situation that goes to show that in every bad situation there is a good outcome!
Good attitude and one that is needed when dealing with the problems that pop up from time to time with a WordPress site. Right now I have to figure out what WordPress plugins are causing my CPU usage troubles.
Joni Soliss last blog post..Manure Management and Composting Programs
Yes it is sometimes a plus to have a problem with a plugin and to remove those that are not supported. It is one of the bigger questions I get. It is also prevalent in conflicts between plugins on occasion too.
Seems it is always a constant dance of trying to get the features we like and the performance we need.
Mike Paetzolds last blog post..Gravatar, branding and you
I hate when my favorite plug-ins cease to maintain compatibility because I find them pretty useful.
With a few exceptions, most of my themes have been customized and I seem to have more problems with plug-ins because of it.
Recently, I upgraded and found my sidebar appearing at the bottom of the main page–but not on the individual ones–I had upgraded to 2.7 and that blew it for that particular plug-in.
Although I like the popularity plug-in I will be deactivating it during the next upgrade and am using Yet Another Popular Post instead.
Flexibility is the key–until I learn PHP–which is not something I wanted to do.
Edge Girls last blog post..Client Website Ranks #1 for Keyword
I had same problem. And i used same solution
It is sad to see that lots of great plug-ins lack on updates.
I really hope that some good developer will put his hands on this one like Manuel Grabowski started to work on StatPress, my favorite plug-in, after creator of that plug-in stopped updating it. It is now called StatPress Reloaded , and it is way bether than original! I hope something similiar will happen to this plug-in too.
Zibazs last blog post..Welcome to the Internet.
Yes, this is the reason why I don’t like to upgrade and I’m using and old version of wordpress in my blog.
I’m bookmarking this blog cause I have found some good articles here! Good job!
Jimmys last blog post..Life insurance for your children