I am seriously kicking myself for going with mingle in the first place, I am kicking my self even more for going from mingle to bbpress instead of straight to SP. We had thought of paying to do a bbpress to vbulletin conversion which would have been 250 dollars, plus the vbulletin purchase on top of that for 250 dollars. From what I have seen, simple press offers just as well if not better of a product as vbulletin does.
I think I have my site set the way I want, so I decided to figure out why I didn’t go with SP in the first place.
Here is some constructive feed back, this is not a attack, this is just feedback from a paying consumer that wants to see you do well if not better.
So I stood back and looked at it as from someone who is looking for a forum plugin who is a newb to wordpress as I was when I first started the site. I had googled wordpress forum and the big hits were mingle, bbpress, simple press.
So after seeing that, I started checking out the different solutions sites,
bbpress, I thought looked horrible, it didn’t even look like a forum, it looked like a running comment
Mingle didn’t look to bad, I saw some examples and saw they had a bunch of different skins available.
Simple press, this is what I saw and still see on chrome and firefox, I’m not sure if there is a conflict with the browsers and your theme, or it’s just my pc, but this is what I see when ever I try to view it half the page is blank. It came across as bush league to me at the time.
chrome
Firfox
the other thing that bothered me with simple press initially was that it was not available from wordpress, it had to be downloaded directly. As a new person to wordpress this concerned me, I know nothing besides what I read through google and it tells me that plug ins outside of the wordpress repository is bad. I personally know nothing about what it requires to be on the repository, but again, I am just conveying my experience as a new wordpress user.
So I decided to check out the support forums to see what benefits or issues there were available for simple press.
Every time I clicked on a thread, it directed me a page asking to join a membership.
To me this threw out a red flag. Why can I not see what is happening with simple press?
Because of that, I decided not to go with simple press and went with mingle instead.
Big mistake.
Not going to rehash here the issues, but anyone who has been paying attention, knows what happened with the mingle forum plug in.
So we needed to get out and get out fast, our site was growing, around 800 members, 30,000 posts, I googled mingle forum import and the top 6 hits were for importing to bbpress, the only hit I had even seen for simple press was from someone asking about it on the wordpress forums and someone made the comment, don’t bother.
So we proceeded to import to bbpress.
I’m not going to bash bbpress, but it is not for me, I am not a css, php kind of guy, and you need to be pretty sharp in all that to get a working, functional forum with like 30 plug ins and 4000 mods to your themes css.
Serious, why do you need a plug in for a quote function?!?
The other issue with bbpress is the core function. Every time a post is made it queries every other post in the forum for some reason. Here is what happens when someone makes a post.
I made a thread on the bbpress forums and heard back from JJJ a week later, he said it was a core issue and they were working on it, I’m not an idiot and after a quick googling found the codextrac for it that is almost a year and a half old. Time to move again.
So I started googling some more and found like 5 pages deep that mingle and bbpress could import into simple press.
Simple press? The plugin that I can’t see anything and they want money just to look at the forums?
At this point I was desperate though, mingle was dead and bbpress was killing my database with queries, so I took the chance last friday, signed up, dowloaded the plugin and spent all weekend testing it, importing, posting, deleting, deleting plug in, importing, posting, deleting, deleting plug in,ect.
I posted several threads over the weekend asking for direction and clarification and they were always responded to in 12 hours. I can say that is much better than the other two options.
So we went live with it sunday, there is still some tweaking to do to get what we want, the members seem pretty happy with it so far. I sent a e-mail through the contact form asking about a custom theme, I know you guys are busy with the wordpress upgrade, when ever you guys have a chance, shoot me a e-mail.
So here is my negatives so far with simple press.
The paid membership just to see the forum. I understand the business model you guys are running, but imo, it is turning away more customers than it is attracting.
Is there any way to have a public forums and a private vip forum for paid members for developers support? Public would only be for general questions and feedback and not specific help with the plug in.
Think about this for a second, no one outside of paid members will even see this thread. To be honest, I will probably let my membership run out once it does.I would love to come and keep tabs and offer suggestions with things that have worked for us, but I’m not going to pay to do that. That’s what the community side of it is about.
Second is the tone of the feedback that is given in some instances. I understand you are dealing with the same questions, day after day, year after year. With the business model you are running, I would be surprised if the membership is 95 percent silver with maybe 5 percent renewal. People come and get the questions they need answered and just never come back until there is a upgrade or a issue. So it makes sense the exact same questions are being asked over, and over and over again from new people who subscribed. I can understand the frustration, but look at it from a new user of your software.
We own a small restaurant, I have been in the business almost 25 years, my wife just 8 since we started our own, she get’s frustrated when she has to say the same thing over and over, be on time, be on time, be on time.
I have to pull her aside and say hun, those are not the same people you are saying it to, these are totally different people than we had hired 5 years ago.
Do you understand what I am saying?
I’m just saying from a new user, the responses can be a little short at times, I’m not expecting puppy dogs and roses, but just realize, because you answered that question 8000 times in the last 8 years, it’s totally new to the person that is asking the question and the first time they have had interaction with the person they gave money to so they could ask that question.
My only last comment is the codex, it can be very confusing, and this is from some one that tried working through the bbpress codex, I think you need a phd for that to be honest.
I saw a bunch of the codex were labeled work in progress, anyway the community could help would be awesome.
I just wanted to give my feedback and if someone could contact me about the custom theme at some point that would be sweet.
Again, this is not a attack, I just think you have a great product that blows everyone else out of the water as far as wordpress and just wanted to give my thoughts.
but we plan to be here…
