A good news story on plugin and theme support

My experience yesterday debugging the installation of scribu's Front-end Editor plugin is a good lesson on the way WordPress can work. While I was disappointed that I can't use the plugin until I upgrade to 3.0, that is just around the corner and the experience has been encouraging.

This plugin enables posts and pages to be edited directly instead of using the builtin editor and is ideal for small changes such as content updates, fixing a link or spelling mistakes.

While the plugin didn’t work, I was pleased to note that it failed without causing any problems and only needed to be deactivated. After describing the steps I took, I set out five recommendations for debugging plugin installation problems.

Before activating the plugin, I had browsed the plugin's documentation and now returned and found quickly a short troubleshooting guide. Initially, I was a bit intimidated because I'm not a PHP coder but I persevered because this is a way to learn and, eventually, resolve this kind of issue myself. I checked the issues described and found that a couple applied to the theme I had chosen.

In a forum post, scribu recommended checking for JavaScript errors, something I hadn't done before but which is built into the Firefox browser (Ctrl + Shift + J in Firefox). One of the errors referred to a plugin file. Oh, oh, I thought.

I fired off a WordPress.org support forum post which, happily, happened to be the forum which the plugin's developer has designated as the one for his plugin; see Front-end Editor: JavaScript Error: $.proxy is not a function.

Then I thought to do the same for the theme. I started a thread in the Tarski forum, Plugins: Front-end Editor (scribu) plugin: use of the_title_attribute() instead of the_title() (truncated after use of) in order to resolve one of the reasons why the Front-end Editor plugin wasn't working. See the details in Support request produces a theme revision.

In both cases, I was at the limit of what I understood of the problem.

When I posted, I thought of them as a shot in the dark and didn't have any expectations.

Within hours, I had responses from the plugin and theme developers themselves. I was impressed.

Both were admirably concise and clear.

In scribu's case, he pointed out that the JavaScript used required WordPress 3.0. In other words, I wasn't using the recently released version and, until I upgraded, the plugin wouldn't work. I don't recall having seen that critical information in the documentation which was otherwise well documented. I'll check back to see if scribu updates his documentation in this regard. He didn't mention whether an earlier version would work.

In the case of the Tarski theme, Ben Eastaugh also responded within hours and explained that the theme didn't use a recently introduced function but that he would consider making a change in the next version of the theme. He returned shortly afterwards to add that he had made the change required with a link to the revised file in the theme's repository. When I checked the change, I saw that he had given me credit for having brought this to his attention.

I haven't used the theme's Git repository but it seems to be an excellent way to maintain the code. I don't know yet if I can simply replace the file in question with the revised one and if that one is dependent on other changes made.

The end result was that I would have to wait for the upgrade to 3.0 but that I would be able to use the plugin.

This is a good example of how well open source can work and a positive experience as a user.

Both the plugin and theme in question are popular and well documented and I determine from that that their work is good quality and worth trying out given that it is so easy to reverse out of the steps involved in using them. In other words, if they don't work, they fail gracefully and without affecting the blog itself. That's very encouraging.

Contrast that with the experiences typical of commercial software.

While developers have to cope with some pretty dumb questions some of which are from people too lazy to do their homework, this pair were respectful of my limited knowledge and I appreciate that.

The take aways?

First, be adventurous and try out plugins and themes. WordPress is designed to facilitate doing so and the risks are minimal if basic precautions are taken.

Second, chose plugins and themes with the quality of the documentation and support in mind.

Third, use the forums after doing your homework. This is a large and diverse community and there are lots of people willing to help.

Fourth, spread the word when the result is noteworthy because this encourages other bloggers and developers. Give credit when it is due. I appreciate Ben Eastaugh's mention of my little contribution. I return the favour in this post and have updated both threads with a link to this post.

I have delayed upgrading to WordPress 3.0 until either the Tarski theme developer blesses it or releases his next version, 2.7.

I have had some not so positive experiences with support requests; for example, see Permalink custom structure: how to get rid of path to blog string?.