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Please review the plugin here… I will follow this thread
Please understand that my post was not and is not intended to be anything more than just one person’s experience with the plugin after ONLY a few hours using it. It would not be accurate for anyone to make a buy/no-buy assessment based on my short use of the product. First of all, you don’t know if I have any credibility here at all, much less with WP or programming. Second, you don’t know if I can walk and chew gum at the same time.
To base an opinion of anything on the ramblings of just one anonymous person is at best foolish and at worst, wrong. (I don’t believe people should “review” products from the darkness. The producers of the product should know who “their accusers” are and that is why I put a link to me and our company in the post. I don’t know if “sigs” are allowed here as I’m fairly new to Gen-world.”)
When I have more experience with the plugin I will contribute more to the analysis of it. I hope others will also.
As for spending money, and while this might sound like a “knock” on open-source products, where my business is concerned I would rather use so-called “premium” software… where there is a person or a company who has their reputation on the line and who has a vested interest in making it work and solving problems.
People can get websites for free… but they come to us and pay us to do it “right” (which we do most of the time!
)”Community support” is often very good, but often very bad. If I have a serious issue, I like knowing I can submit a “help ticket” to Genesis (and Catalyst) and get a reply from someone who is (should be!) intimately familiar with the (their) product. To me, that is what I’m paying for… not the framework or the plugin.So much of open-source software is the proverbial “camel,” which as we all know is a horse designed by a committee!
I agree with you that perhaps Catalyst could have put out a plugin with a sub-set of its features… or maybe a time-limited product (like how the Mac editor Coda does… seven day trial and then it locks.)
More to come as I find the time. I think the Catalyst people would be well served to give a free copy of Extender to credible writers/bloggers in Gen-world to review it. I am NOT in that refined group of software engineers… but maybe I’m closer to it than others. As for the price, well nothing is really free. I can’t tell you how much Pepto I’ve had to buy over the years working with free WP themes, free CRM systems, free editors, etc. Of course, YMMV.
Yea, I am not going to purchase the plugin, but not because of your review. I really appreciate the review though. I wasn’t sure what all functionality the plugin offered. I personally use DreamWeaver, so I have live css coding already. I also don’t think the front end widget builder is worth $40. Though I really like the idea
After you get used to it, continue the review. I have to admit, if I could see this front page builder used a little more, I might be interested. Some sites I build have a custom page on 10-15 pages. It would be nice to dramatically lower the price of theme development by speeding that up…Does the theme have to stay plugged in? Can you build the front pages then disconnect it?
Thank you Dev, for looking at the plugin and reviewing it a little…
What other plugins are out there for Genesis that are supported by large companies? I am like you Dev, I don’t do anything except *PREMIUM* on clients sites. I might suggest to you WPMU.ORG. They have a huge array of premium plugins. Their forums are about 10x more active then Studio Press. Their support is unrivaled as they have programmers (paid) to be on the forums all day.
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