Support Forum

I am not going to flame you. I am content in most respects to know that at the end of the day the positive comments we get far, far outnumber those like yours and that we have users who have been with us for several years and work with us repeatedly to help improve and grow the plugin.

I also know from my own experience that it is easy to get frustrated and angry over an issue that seems big and important and hard to resolve. I, personally, have had a similar experience over the last week in fact with PayPal and have been forced to phone their support line three times because I was unable to complete simple every day tasks. And did I get an explanation or an apology? Forget it. And would I use them if there was a viable alternative. Absolutely not. Yet thousands of people use them every day with no such issue.

You clearly have been unfortunate in finding one or two issues that seem unique to you. I mean using BuddyPress without Notifications turned on? Would you not call that pretty unique? (And we have yet to determine of this was even an issue of course).

As to me being 'rude' and 'defensive' then I guess I know what thread you are referring to and I totally refute that I was either. I do not mind criticism in the slightest and try and learn from it but please do make it valid.

I do hope you find what you need and are looking for.

You know there is a fine balance between a satisfied and not satisfied customer. For some it only takes one issue and things immediately become negative. For others getting past issues to end up with what they want is all part and parcel with the task of actually running a website - a job that so many people believe is simple and takes care of itself!

There ids also a fine balance between what a member might see as a major issue which to others is totally unimportant. Our job is to try and understand this! Prior to Version 5 of Simple:Press everything was set up as options to turn on, off or set. And the main two criticisms of users was that it was very hard to customise and there were too many options. With V5 we introduced themes and plugins making it easy to customise and allowing us the opportunity to probably halve the options. And then some users asked for more options instead of customisation! In other words you can't please all of the people all of the time.

It is also not really fair to make comparisons between SP or anything else. They are all different beasts. The main problem is that we are a very small team - just two people producing the code. We do not really make any money at it yet I am here at 7 on a Sunday morning answering support questions just like I was at midnight last (Saturday) night. I take that responsibility seriously and we do our very best to ensure things work as they should and that our users get what they need. And when, every now and then we are wrong, we fix it as best and as quickly as we can.

Whether it is 'simple' or not is another matter. As I say on my small bio - it started out that way and only became complex because users kept asking for new features. That is just a straight fact! But I am actually truly amazed that every now and then - although quite regularly - I encounter a website with a Simple:Press forum installed and realise that it is a website whose owner has never asked us a support question yet clearly had no problem setting it up and using it and - in many cases - adding their own customisations.

As a user who, over the years, has helped set up and operate web sites with forums, galleries and often some sophisticated processing then all I can say is that I have yet to find that magic application that just works, never lets me down and never requires looking after from day to day.

Enough or before I know it I will be writing an autobiography and nobody wants that!

Thank you. We appreciate it.