WordPress Plugins – Caveats for Emptors

Here’s a list of WordPress plugins that didn’t work out for me and why. Keep in mind that these plugins may have been updated since this writing and the very issues presented here may since have been fixed. Also remember that sometimes a plugin doesn’t work because of a conflict with another plugin, so these things might not happen to you…

Event Calendar 3 by Alex Tingle – This plugin was putting all event posts into the Uncategorized category by default. The category checkbox was grayed out and could not be unchecked.

Registered Users Only by Viper007Bond – This plugin caused users who had already logged in (including myself) to get kicked back to the login screen when clicking links within the site. Also, a user who I have never met said that he went to my login screen and my user name was pre-filled in the dialog box. He couldn’t have made this up because my user name is not even a real word, yet he knew what it was.

Role Manager – This a great plugin that works perfectly. Just be aware that changing the roles and capabilities may cause conflicts with other plugins that reference the roles. Also keep in mind that deactivating this plugin does not undo whatever changes you’ve made with it, and some changes can’t be undone. Use with extreme caution.

Weasel’s Login Redirect by Andy Moore – This plugin requires the Role Manager plugin (see above) or it will not work. Modifying the roles can cause conflicts with other plugins that reference the roles such as WordPress Users, Profiler, and Subscribe 2. Therefore I do not recomment using it. Instead, I highly recommend Peter’s Login Redirect, as it does not require any other plugins to work, does not require modifying any roles, and lets you assign multiple redirects (i.e. by Username, Role, Specific Admin capability, or by All Other Users who do not meet the aforementioned criteria).

WordPress Users by Jonathan Kemp – This a great plugin that works perfectly. Just be aware that you may have to add a class to your CSS to get the user listing to display the way you want it to.

WP Hashcash by ecb29, donncha – As far as I (and apparently other people as well) can tell, this plugin marks every comment as spam, thus defeating its own purpose.

This will be a cumulative list. I will update it as things come up. Hopefully it will not turn out to be a long list.

This article copyright © John Nasta 2009 – All Rights Reserved

Be Sociable, Share!

•