For the benefit of others I would like to clarify my post with a more expansive review, as most of the discussions with support have been technical and in private.
I have been evaluating this product as to it’s suitablity to create an online store selling photos from a variety of photographers. Kinda like shutterstock.
This code will do this no problem. It is an amazing well-featured plugin, though I think you need more than *just* the download manager code to run a proper online store. IMHO download-manager, premium-packages, category-manager & custom-access-level (if more than one seller) are the bare minimum, so I can’t really comment if you are using just WPDM or the FREE version.
Is it perfect? Of course not.
When I write code I’m never perfect, so I don’t expect others to be. There are thousands & thousands of lines of code here and this isn’t Apple or Microsoft with thousands & thousands of employees. IMHO this is not *yet* a plugin for the novice developer/installer, I think your experience in WP, plugins and understanding of e-commerce needs to be at least 7/10. IMHO if you are doing *anything* in e-commerce I think you need a *minimum* experience level of 7/10 anyway.
I say *yet* because I do think the complexity rating for this plugin will reduce over time. ๐
This complexity rating is reflected in the online documentation regarding installation and set-up which is adequate, but could definitely be improved & updated more regularly. 6/10. Better documentation = reduced complexity, I do know this is on their to-do-list.
But as a developer looking to use this product commercially, the greatest strength of this product is simple – it has exemplary technical support. 9/10. Really. I know, I know…..but I’m not kidding.
Whenever I identify a minor glitch – they send me a fix. After my initial review I determined that I needed a slightly different data handling process. Jumping in and modifying the code myself is always tricky so only ever a last resort, instead I identified the functions & *.php files I thought needed to change & requested some custom code. Not only did they just sent it through but they added that they would implement this feature in the next release.
From my perspective it just doesn’t get any better than that. These folks clearly want to support their customers AND want to continually improve their product.
SUMMARY – BUY THEIR PLUGINS!
These guys have been a breath of fresh air and are the rare breed of developers that restore my faith in WP theme & plugin support – as many of you would know decent support is often a rare thing.
So support these folks and they will support you, and I personally wish them all the best.
