Guides and Stats

The new support forum appears to be working and I think (so far) it is saving me time – time will tell if this trend continues. But something that may help further is a comprehensive guide to Subscribe2 produced independently by the iAssistant.

The guide is 40+ pages long and it provides an in depth set of instructions and descriptions of Subscribe2 features. I have had a very small part in the production of this guide (mainly pointing out additional areas of functionality and clarifying how some things work). It has been written in an easily understood manner that the novice will comprehend. I hope you will consider using this guide if you are struggling to start using Subscribe2.

And since the release of version 5.1 has bumped the download counter past the 200,000 mark and there have now been more than half a million visits to this site I guess there are quite a few of you who will find this guide worth every penny!

Subscribe2 v5.1

Version 5.1 of the Plugin is now available for download. This version has been tested on WordPress 2.8.4.

Versiom 5.1 contains the bug fixes and requested feature improvements listed below.

Obtaining Support:

Version 5.0 introduced a new support model for the plugin. Previous posts explain the issues and my proposed solution. To seek support read the support forum. If you have a bug, please report it on the forum.

If you have an issue that you can’t find an answer for then by all means post your question BUT if you get no response it is because the answer is already available or the problem is pretty unique to your install. In these cases be prepared to pay for assistance – ONLY the plugin is free!

If you use this plugin consider making a donation to support future development!

Subscribe2 v5.0 [u]

Version 5.0 5.0.1 of the Plugin is now available for download. This version has been tested on WordPress 2.8.4.

Versiom 5.0.1 contains bug fixes for the menu system that were introduced by changes in version 5.0.

Obtaining Support:

Version 5.0 introduces a new support model for the plugin. Previous posts explain the issues and my proposed solution. To seek support read the support forum. If you have a bug, please report it on the forum.

If you have an issue that you can’t find an answer for then by all means post your question BUT if you get no response it is because the answer is already available or the problem is pretty unique to your install. In these cases be prepared to pay for assistance – ONLY the plugin is free!

If you use this plugin consider making a donation to support future development!

Support for Subscribe2 – Update

If you saw my post from about a month ago then you are already well aware of my increasing frustration with respect to supporting the Subscribe2 plugin. In my musing over what to do about this situation I stumbled across this old post from Skippy. This post announced the transfer of Subscribe2 from his stewardship to mine and he makes the following comment:

As an aside: useless bug reports — those reporting “It doesn’t work!” with no other details — contributed greatly to my abandonment of subscribe2. Please don’t wear Matt down with the same.

Well, this got me thinking, you see I gave Skippy (Scott) my word that I’d support the plugin and I have always hope I’ve been principled enough to keep my word. So, support will continue BUT it will no longer be free. I’m hoping that demanding a fee to provide support will encourage people to read the documentation provided and spend more time searching for an answer to their question.

I’m still astonished that so many people apparently have virtually no understanding the free software does not also mean free support, free customisation or free fix-my-problems.

So, the next release of Subscribe2 (Version 5.0) will be available shortly. At that time this site will become an announcement site only, comments will be disabled. A support forum is already online and I will be monitoring it to populate it with more questions and answers and this will also be the place to report bugs.

Support for Subscribe2

Many users of Subscribe2 post comments commending the outstanding support that is offered on the plugin and ruing the fact that this does not happen more. The sad fact is that a great number of the comments posted are either issues that have already been discussed many times over and the answers are already available, or they are requests for custom changes from the default plugin for an individuals benefit.

Recently, the folks at WordPress have reviewed their software licence and introduced Commercially Supported Themes on the main WordPress.org site. They have also introduced enterprise-level support for large-scale users of WordPress.

So, that leaves me wondering how to handle the continued support of Subscribe2. You see, much as though I think I should support my plugin and help people to use it as best they can I am often left bewildered that it seems to be overlooked that both the plugin and the support are currently FREE. And yet the level of functionality and support seem to be more consistent with that of software that has been bought!

Perhaps I should start acting more like other plugin authors and provide little to no support. Maybe I should direct everyone to the ReadMe and FAQ section of the website. Perhaps I should start charging for my assistance.

I really don’t know for sure what will happen next. I think I have decided already to start directing queries to the FAQ and ReadMe more however when I’ve done this in the past it really doesn’t save me any time – I still have to make the comment and I still usually get a follow up reply.

So, what would you do if you were me?

Subscribe2 4.18

Version 4.18 of the Plugin is now available for download.

If you use this plugin consider making a donation to support future development!

Version 4.18 is for 2.6.x, 2.7.x and 2.8.x users. (Although it should work with WordPress 2.5 too!) This version has been tested on WordPress 2.8 and 2.8.2.

Users of WordPress 2.0.x should download Version 2.22 of Subscribe2. Users of WordPress 2.1.x and 2.2.x should download Version 3.8.

Subscribe2 4.17

Version 4.17 of the Plugin is now available for download.

If you use this plugin consider making a donation to support future development!

Version 4.17 is for 2.6.x, 2.7.x and 2.8.x users. (Although it should work with WordPress 2.5 too!) This version has been tested on WordPress 2.8 and 2.8.1beta2.

Users of WordPress 2.0.x should download Version 2.22 of Subscribe2. Users of WordPress 2.1.x and 2.2.x should download Version 3.8.

Error Messages

Subscribe2 attempts to check that emails have been successfully sent by reporting the callback returned by the WordPress wp_mail() function.

In your server or WordPress install are not correctly configured this can result in error message despite successful sending of emails.

To overcome these issues access the PHPMailer files directly, locate a language error file and uploaded to your WordPress site (wp-content/languages/ for example).

Next, get yourself a Mailer plugin like the one suggested here and put the following line in the code.

$phpmailer->setLanguage( 'en', '../wp-content/languages/' );

This will ensure that you don’t get:

Language string failed to load: instantiate

Subscribe2 4.16

Version 4.16 of the Plugin is now available for download.

If you use this plugin consider making a donation to support future development!

Version 4.16 is for 2.6.x and 2.7.x users. (Although it should work with WordPress 2.5 too!) This version has been tested on WordPress 2.7.1.

Users of WordPress 2.0.x should download Version 2.22 of Subscribe2. Users of WordPress 2.1.x and 2.2.x should download Version 3.8.

Mail Debug

Ben Forchhammer has just released a new plugin called Mail Debug.

This plugin could be of great assistance in finding out why emails are not being sent when using Subscribe2. The documentation states:

This plugin when activated automatically redirects all email sent through wp_mail/phpmailer to the user currently logged in.

The redirected email contains information about where the original email would have been sent to.

Use this plugin if you want to test email-sending features without actually sending emails our to anyone but yourself. I wrote this plugin to ease debugging with subscribe2.

So, if you are having problems with Subscribe2 then give this plugin a try.