I’ve spent ages today playing with plugins. Most I never got working but a few coughed and spluttered into life, mostly though hacking them to bits. Not easy for me, I’m no programmer and my WP/PHP CPR is awful.
The last one I’ve dealt with is Amazon media from Denyerec. A really good and clever plugin with awful and stupid documentation. Like a LOT of WP plugins, and to be honest a lot of MT plugins too. Denyerec is full of people either asking for help or saying how they have managed to cludge the thing to get it working. Mines up and OK, needs changing a little yet, fit the style in and remove those damn bullet points.*
I’ve added a helpful post which may point a few others in the right direction. But this is a call to the WP team to sort out some standards for plugin documentation; hell, I’ll offer my help, I’m a tech author so sorting stuff like this out is normal for me.
WP is slick and easy, people are shifting across to it in droves. Want WP to get bigger? Sort your docs out, make plugins easy, the framework for the developers is already there, but if people can’t install and use them, then what’s the use?
Please track this on.
* Edit: Bullets were removed by opening amazoninfo.php, replacing < ul > < /ul > with < dt> < /dt > and < li > < /li > with < dl > < /dl >
2 responses so far ↓
1 Denyerec // Jun 1, 2004 at 8:59 PM
Hey there,
The installation for 1.2 isn’t done yet as 1.1->1.2 isn’t a major change (In wordpress terms).
I’ve not yet moved to WP1.2 and as such haven’t looked at the install procedure.
WP1.1 users had no issues with the installation ;)
I’ll be updating AMM to be 1.2 compatible soon, but as I don’t want to risk destroying my Blog with a 1.1->1.2 upgrade it will be hard for me to test.
If you’d like to help me out, please let me know.
2 Jackdaw // Jun 1, 2004 at 9:22 PM
That’s an unbelievably speedy response Denyerec. I’ll help with the docs and so on, just let me know when you are up to that stage and I’ll get involved. I need to fix those damn bullet points on the plugin, but no time right now as the Wife’s giving me weblog grief ;)