I build plugins myself and have shown my own appreciation for other WordPress plugin developers by either mentioning them or donating.
However, I am having a big issue with seeing an alarming number of plugin developers put up a Dashboard widget in the WordPress backend when I install a plugin. Frankly, I am usually tolerant of the default WordPress dashboard widgets. The extras – not so much, especially if it has nothing to do with the direct function of my website.
Some of the ones out there are kind of spammy. One plugin (not mentioning which one) has a special widget dedicated to actually asking people to donate to their plugin’s development.
While I understand the frustration of not feeling appreciated, remember – if you put it out for free, you may not see more than a few dollars roll your way, and THAT is just being lucky. And trust me, this comes from someone who has 2 PHP scripts that have had over 150,000 downloads.
I think there should be extra etiquette involved in plugin development. If you want to have your plugin put up a dashboard widget, you need to make sure it also allows a field for the plugin user to not permit it. For example, Blogplay’s Sociable plugin allows this with a simple checkbox.
The most acceptable place for a plugin developers donation askance is in the plugin’s actual settings page, where it seems less like spam and “in your face.” Same goes for news. If a user is truly interested, they will go to that page.
Are you a plugin developer? What are your thoughts on this? If you are a blogger, do you get annoyed with the extra dashboard widgets installed by each plugin you use, or do you just ignore it?
Most plugin developer do it as they get hardly any donation so it is a aggressive way.They mostly feel frustrated.
I have to agree: finding private party widgets in the main admin area is a little annoying.
Partly, it’s annoying because it would have never occurred to me to use the common area for my own convenience. Not wired that way I guess.
Donation solicitation is ok (by WordPress policy) on the admin page for the plugin or theme. I’m cool with that.
I have not been experimenting with new plugins of late – So, I did not face this issue. But you do have a point there. I feel that plugins should start charging from their users if they enable the user to make more money. There should be some way to enable that to happen.
Yoast wrote an article about his frustration with asking for donations. Guess what? When he started actually asking, he got more. People sometimes simply need to be reminded. Putting it in the admin area is a bit intrusive, if you don’t like it then simply find another plugin. I ignore it (and if I wrote a plugin that used admin screens I wouldn’t do this).
Some of them, however, seem invasive. One plugin I won’t mention actually serves ads from a third party. I wonder if they are tracking what websites are seeing the ads.
I normally write the dashboard widget out in my functions. I occasionally have guest bloggers and also show my backend to clients and other developers, so I try to make sure that it is without. However, for those not savvy code ninjas/ WP ninjas… it tends to get annoying.