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I'm Leaving Oxwall | Forum

Jobee Bendijo
Jobee Bendijo Aug 3 '16
Oxwall has been a very good little community for me for the past 4 years. But unfortunately, fact of the matter is, I have spent countless hours with 500 Errors, and other little conflicts between plugins I pay for but can't use because they conflict with other plugins....etc... and having to spend hours on forums seeking solutions for this and for that. 


I get it. It's free, and its funded by donations and volunteers.


But they have never really gotten a grip on compatibility between third party devs and the platform, and each other. And after 4 years, it's time for me to move on to professional software. 


yeah, it was costly. But damn, everything runs so well, and updates are easy and take seconds rather than a half hour of nervousness hoping I don't go 500 Error as I go down the enormous list of steps to do a simple upgrade.


Plugins developed by the core developers, nothing conflicts, every plugin works with the other....it's wonderful!


So thank you Oxwall for serving me reasonably well for 4 years. 

It's now time for better.

 


The Forum post is edited by Jobee Bendijo Aug 3 '16
OW-Ghost
OW-Ghost Aug 4 '16
I agree a main problems is that third party developers and oxwall team are not always go hand in hand and that make the site slow and get errors that is not always oxwall teams fault.


The TEAM need to work as a open Community with other third part developers not as 1 closed TEAM that not care what other third party developers create and sell at oxwall that later make they oxwall software looks very bad and working very bad 


This because of some third party developers that not good at make code correct or have little guides how to coding correct. I can not go deeper in this because i not a developer here at oxwall but i can understand it is a problem with low quality plugins.


It is sad that another member are leaving us...


Please send me a PM what "proffesional software" you use before leaving us i would happy :)


Wish you all the best..

The Forum post is edited by OW-Ghost Aug 4 '16
dave Leader
dave Aug 4 '16
So sorry to see you go Jobee it has been an honor knowing you both as a Oxwall user and as a personal plugin customer of mine.   Best of luck in your new endeavor, if things dont work out your always welcome back here with open arms and smiles.. :)
Jobee Bendijo
Jobee Bendijo Aug 5 '16
Thank you dave,

I will be keeping an eye on Oxwall. I should say I've stopped using Oxwall. I do intend on remaining a member here. I will keep an eye on Oxwall. Who knows, maybe they'll get organized and develop some standards of compatibility among third party developments someday, OR AT LEAST force them to give refunds if there is an incompatibility. Nobody should have to pay for something they CANNOT USE. PERIOD, PERIOD, AND PERIOD. END OF STORY, NOT UP FOR DISCUSSION. 


People should simply do what's right...Dave should be a model for other third party devs. Dave always does what's right. At least that has been my experience with him.


If all third party devs were like Dave, I probably would stick around here.


Ultimately the Oxwall Team IS to blame. They approve plugins and allow them to be sold here. Third party devs run a muck cranking out plugins (hi aron! how are you by the way?) that are pure crap, and a complete rip off, and if they can't get it working for you, they uphold their lame disclaimer. 


How the hell are you supposed to know if it will work or not with your current plugins if you can't download it and see? NOPE! You're forced to buy it, and if it doesn't work, tough titty for you. They fall back on their stupid disclaimer. So what happens? You have a plugin you can't use, and the dev has your money based on their disclaimer. Lame lame lame.


Oxwall Team allows this. Ultimately, yes, it's Oxwall's fault. 


I am just tired of Oxwall not putting much urgency in correcting their screw ups (like the big issue with messages plugin a while back) which ROYALLY SCREWED our sites for a LONG DAMN TIME. I do understand their constraints. But when you f**k up, you really should correct it immediately especially when your f**k up severely affects many. 


They seem to think it's ok to just say, "oh we'll fix it in the next version update" which comes many weeks, or months later while your site suffers. 


Nope, can't deal with that anymore. Neither can my members. 


Again, I understand it's free software. And well....YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR in this world. 


I went with mooSocial. It's different, it currently only has a hand full of plugins. BUT THEY ALL WORK PERFECTLY WITH EACH OTHER and integrate perfectly with the core. And more continue to be published. They offer a 7 day UNCONDITIONAL, "no questions asked" refund within 7 days. Also a guarantee that if they cannot get the plugin to work properly, you get your money back...Period, Period, and Period. You don't get some kind of lame-ass disclaimer that they "don't guarantee compatibility with other plugins/themes". 


Gosh! How do they do that? (sarcasm).



The Forum post is edited by Jobee Bendijo Aug 5 '16
dave Leader
dave Aug 5 '16
Thank you very much for those nice words, to me it just comes natural to do the right thing and take pride in what i do and how i treat customers.  Yes please keep an eye out as i may not get paid to do this as a volunteer, but i promise i have taken on the mission to do what i can to trim away the bad developers and get good ones to replace them. I am already using my personal connections to try to get more great developers here. 


We need to get the store turned back in the right direction to bring back consumer confidence and it will take good developers who care about their product, their professionalism and their customers to do that.   


We already have developers who have committed to the EBP code of conduct.  And i hope they all take it seriously and always do whats right, actions speak louder than words.  Every little bit helps to turn the wheel alittle more back to the correct orientation.  You know if it were up to me i would clean house on the store right now and they would be gone.  But we have to allow Oxwall to follow process and procedure when it comes to that. 


https://developers.oxwall.com/forum/topic/48917?page=1#post-190457

  


I wish i knew how serious your 500 errors were, i did not know that. I honestly have only had one 500 error all the time i have used oxwall when doing an update, and it was my own fault.  And i dont think i did anything special to avoid that, maybe its because i dont have alot of other peoples plugins, maybe its because i have always used linux, apache, centOs, with cpanel, i dont know what we could have done to help you avoid that in the quick sense.  


I do agree that in order to get back on trak that we all (including Oxwall) need to make strides to help turn things around.  


Im glad you are at least going to come back and say hi once in a while and keep an eye out for things.  I have always said that the gears may turn slowly but they do turn. 


I wish you much success with your new site project :) 


 

Jobee Bendijo
Jobee Bendijo Aug 5 '16
Thank you dave.


I have praised Oxwall for great improvement, and I have to still say, it is the best FREE social community software out there. 


I guess I just feel I need a change, so much so that I'm willing to pay for it. And again, tired of paying for things I can't use and not getting a refund for it.


I guess when you have the "loop hole" of "it's free, so deal with the problems and inconveniences", you tend to allow that as an excuse to not have higher standards. That's your way out for common sense failures. It's like a permission to ignore things that need changing. Which Oxwall has done way too long in the area of third party devs running a muck in the store. 


I have a community that demands and requires many functions and features. I can't really have that with Oxwall. I'm tired of being the Admin who says "no, sorry, it won't work, unless I disable this plugin or that plugin". 


compatibility can be done. A standard of community and inter-compatibility can be established between Oxwall and it's third parties. But for the 4 years I've been with them, I've seen ABSOLUTELY no progress in that area. And unfortunately, I'm no longer willing to wait until they decide to stop blatantly, completely, almost obnoxiously ignoring this VERY critical flaw. At this point, I almost want to say incompetence. But I won't, even though I just did.  

The Forum post is edited by Jobee Bendijo Aug 5 '16
dave Leader
dave Aug 5 '16
I still feel that not only do things need to get tougher during the approval process but also that all plugins should be reviewed annually and if they dont work take them off the market.   That is one of the big issues is that after the first audit, thats it there are no other checks.  


Now that takes manpower of which they dont have so my suggestion is let devs such as myself and even SD or others who are dedicated to the cause, help them do annual audits.   Give us a copy of the plugin, we run it on standard oxwall, if it meets standards great, if not then we notify Oxwall and they take it down until its fixed.


To do that you have to have volunteers like myself and Darryl and SD (im sure there are others) who are very ethical and not biased in any way.  Or that would deny a plugin because it competes with them. I dont believe that any of us 3 would ever do that sort of thing.  If oxwall needs a hand im sure we would be glad to help them tow the load.  But they need to set up a program with rules to do that so that the process is fair, unbiased, and does not end up overloading them in other areas. 


Also regarding compatibility, as long as the developer uses known oxwall methods and does not venture out on their own doing things outside that arena then most of them should be compatible.  But what happens is that some devs dont stay within that method circle and so it creates a conflict. 

The Forum post is edited by dave Aug 5 '16
Jobee Bendijo
Jobee Bendijo Aug 5 '16
Dave, as far as the 500 errors, one that behooves me is, there are times when I don't do any additions or subtractions from the site for months (I get busy with other things). It's moving along smoothly...and sometimes I don't even get to open the site for days. Then I get an email from one of my mods saying, "Hey are you aware the site has been 500 error for 3 days in a row?"


I did nothing to the site for weeks! It's been running wonderfully for weeks! Then out of the blue...500 error, site down for 3 days. 


Because I'm not a programmer or much of a coder, nor do I have much of a clue what the debug notice is trying to say. It's off to the forum to spend an hour searching for the same issue so Ross won't beat me down for not spending a damn hour searching the forum for my issue.


 Ah, I have to truncate a database table. And it makes me recall this tends to happen every couple months or so. And then it makes me ask, "well if this is a known problem that happens to others, and they know about it, and have known for the past 4 core updates, WHY THE *%$@# HAVEN'T THEY FIXED IT??? 


So I guess I'm just not willing to sit by my site and monitor it every bleepin' day waiting for it to go 500 on me so I can go truncate the database table. 



dave Leader
dave Aug 5 '16
Do you happen to remember what table it was ?
Jobee Bendijo
Jobee Bendijo Aug 5 '16
newsfeed I think...
Jobee Bendijo
Jobee Bendijo Aug 5 '16
yes, because if I disabled the newsfeed, the site comes back. Only after truncating the table can you activate newsfeed and the site is fixed. 


But again, I remember this happening 3 or 4 times throughout my 4 years at Oxwall. And how many core updates have there been in the past 4 years??? Yet this continues?


Free is great, but if it's such a pain in the ass to deal with, people are not going to use it even if you paid them to. 


Dog poop is free. That doesn't mean I want to use it for anything. It stinks and is unsightly. 

dave Leader
dave Aug 6 '16
Maybe there needs to be a automated cron job that clears out records older than such a date or maybe anything more than 100 records. I mean who is going to take the time to scroll back 100 records to find something, prob noone or very few. 


I am sure you have brought this up before but its good that you do so now again, im glad you mentioned it, that is something that really needs to get fixed if not fixed already.  Sites should never ever just go down because of too many records, at least not with the size of DB Oxwall sites have.  

The Forum post is edited by dave Aug 6 '16
Jobee Bendijo
Jobee Bendijo Aug 6 '16
well the last time this happened was about a week ago or so. And that was my last straw. My site was down 500 error for 4 *&%$#ING DAYS and I didn't even know it, because I was sick with the flu. 


And in my upset, I put the site in debug mode, got the error message and immediately copied and pasted it and asked for some help on what to do. 


I don't know how to diagnose those error debug notes. Bad enough it happened again in the first place, then I get scolded by Ross to search the forum first, yada yada yada. 


So not only is it Oxwall's ignorance of a long known issue, but now I have to also spend all kinds of time trying to search forums and hope I find the proper solution. 


It's just a kookie damn system in disarray, loaded with a whole lot of complaints and the people who can do something about the complaints...aren't. 


Oxwall screws up and I get scolded. 


F&%K that SH&T. 


Hasta Lavista Oxwall.  

dave Leader
dave Aug 6 '16
On behalf of everyone i do apologize for your inconvenience.  But i also know that your probably tired of hearing excuses.  It is a domino effect for sure, when one gear is not lubed then all the gears suffer.  Hopefully in the near furture a fix will be added to the roadmap and that issue will be resolved.  Just dont hate jobee, your a good person with a good heart and hate is benieth you my friend.  :)
OW-Ghost
OW-Ghost Aug 6 '16
About the plugins. Stop make oxwall team controll the reviews. and moderate the reviews. let people moderate the reviews totally. if there is a review that is very crazy or not proper to have in public. then let people in this community report that review. that will save oxwall time and that will make the review system for plugin bee more natural and more trust worthy if it is the people who decide what reviews will pass and not pass. 


And let peoples POST bee more visible...now there is only 3 post visible and many developers are make this 3 visible as sticky post so they cover all bad post about the plugin.


I remember first time i was use oxwall i did not know there was more post about plugins i think it was only this 3 post at plugin main page no more post but after 6-12 month i did understand some really interesting post about this plugins was hide behind this sticky post that some developers with all they effort try to hide with sticky post at main page.


i suggest delete the review system totally and have like 10 recently post about the plugin visible on the plugin main page much better


Let people see that this plugin have seriously problem and avoid people buy it. 10 post visible and no sticky post at main plugin page will at least avoid people from buy that plugin


what i saying is redesign the plugin main page remove the old review system Let the page bee open for issues visible to ALL

The Forum post is edited by OW-Ghost Aug 6 '16
bobbi
bobbi Aug 6 '16
I agree with jobee about being scolded for not doing the search, the attitude of a certain team member is driving people away yes I know Oxwall is free open source I get that so he thinks everyone should be a expert well guess what not everyone is, platform updates are a nightmare with no help when things go wrong, even if it is done by the book, things still go wrong like the update not completing properly, I suggest a donation option for team members to do it for you and get sarcasm so I will never get my site updated again never ever, Oxwall could be the best there is but without proper support and help for all aspects of the software, updates, errors etc etc, you may as well close Oxwall down for good,

Good luck jobee and please what is your new software you are using now
OW-Ghost
OW-Ghost Aug 6 '16
Dave i not agree you on many things in other topics here at oxwall sometimes, but you should have credits for always discuss things that are about the "TEAM" some "leaders" and "team members" just stick they head in the sand and never reply on topics like this because they scare get in trouble with other team members and they boss.

More respond from the REAL leaders to people that are leaving oxwall would show they not ignore people and look like they really care they clients that have been here for a long time like 4 years


Dave at least you care what is going on and why people leaving and that is good....then people can always have different opinions ....that is another thing..so sometimes i like you dave, sometimes i not like you :-) hehe no hard feelings :-)


i think it was SD that told that FEEDBACK is very importen for big companys like microsoft 

I agree about that and smaller companys i think is much more importen like oxwall and should been taken seriously and not with ignorance ...


I have installed a plugin that can make my members fill in why they leave my website a VERY importen plugin for me and my business i have make my business better and better with this plugin thanks sergey for that plugin we need it!


Issues and feedback need to bee open and never closed or ignored!

The Forum post is edited by OW-Ghost Aug 6 '16
Senior Developer Leader
Senior Developer Aug 6 '16

Jobee Bendijo, I really hope that you get what you really need in that other software, I wish you good luck!


I have to say that when I developed my first plugin, I wanted to run a compatibility test with all the other third party plugins... this cannot be done right now and that is a huge problem, because I have to buy a plugin only to see if it is going to be compatible with my plugin.


If all developers could in some way run a compatibility plugins/themes test in a demo website or something like that, this would be awesome. And the clients would get a fully tested plugin.


There is a golden rule in website's, you never ever ever run an update in your production website without update first a test website. The software is working really great in servers that meets all the requeriments and have a good configuration in php limits, if php limits are too low, then the update fails. That's why all the ones that had this update problem in the past and increased the php limits, did update now without a single problem.


And for the core "problems", you can always get premium support so you don't have to waste hours trying to find a solution.


Another point is, I always read about customers trying to get support from developers for their plugins that they bougth 5(+-) years ago?, while with other softwares you get only 12 months of free updates and 6 months of free support.

Oxwall currently doesn't have a support policy from all devs like other stores, you buy it only once and you get life time updates and "support" in the forum. That is bad for customers and developers, because if a developer have a lot of plugins it is hard to give support to all of them clients and keep updating at the same time without having more money to pay the bills.


I have been running a Oxwall Website and I have not seen an 500 error in my website ever. I'm not saying that there is no 500 errors, I'm saying that if your server meets the full requeriments and is almost 99% up, you are going to get an awesome website, that's why I encourage to people that want to make real serious business to get a VPS or a Dedicated Server.


I think that was Ross or another team member who said that there is still a paid support service for updating your software.


People... Money moves the world, not wishes.

The Forum post is edited by Senior Developer Aug 6 '16
OW-Ghost
OW-Ghost Aug 6 '16
>>> If all developers could in some way run a compatibility plugins/themes test in a demo website or something like that, this would be awesome. And the clients would get a fully tested plugin. <<<


Great idea ! I hope they could fix a demo site like that ...and oxwall team could test plugins there to before they approve the plugins



>>> Another point is, I always read about customers trying to get support from developers for their plugins that they bougth 5(+-) years ago?, while with other softwares you get only 12 months of free updates and 6 months of free support.

Oxwall currently doesn't have a support policy from all devs like other stores, you buy it only once and you get life time updates and "support" in the forum. That is bad for customers and developers, because if a developer have a lot of plugins it is hard to give support to all of them clients and keep updating at the same time without having more money to pay the bills. <<<


Agree totally, there should bee a support policy. Best for both parts. I can pay some money for some plugins that are 3 to 5 years old bee updated. I have no issue with that. but there should bee some good support policy about it that give benefits to both parts. Maybe there is some support policy they can copy from another store


And if the TEAM find a support policy that could working then post it in public and let developers and buyers tell if they happy with the policy or not. Because it is about make better for both parts here not one part.

The Forum post is edited by OW-Ghost Aug 6 '16
bobbi
bobbi Aug 6 '16
@ senior devolper there is no service for updating software anymore, Margareth from Oxwall confirmed this in email to me, so no the only option is to run a update and hope it won't stuff up and If it does then tough luck lol
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