Message to Extension Coders

[TheINIC]

Please take no offense to this, but some will. I have just spent the better part of 6 hours in Extension Hell.

I only need a Contact Form that would allow for two separate 'Contact Us' people with 8 editable fields.

I am appalled at that so many use "Free Download" and the link to the "Free Download" is "Buy and Install".
Those that choose to slime us with the 'free' version verses the 'pro' version is nothing new. Just the term has changed from "crippleware" to "free".

I don't ever mind paying for good clean code that I can test, and know won't have to re-subscribe to every 6 months because of updates to Joomla and/or it's 3rd party files. I have bought software (apps I think they call it this week) and extensions to Joomla for many years. I avoid the "free" for a fee apps because if one is going to resort to those kinds of sales pitches, the rest of their stuff is just as honest.

Lastly, the many extensions I have searched through and/or purchased over the years is usually for individual sites. Today, for a client, I only need the Contact Form for one site. I don't want to spend a lot of coin for something, that most of you code for that is designed for making hundreds of contact forms on just one site!!! Duh? Consider the individual, occasional web master.

Sorry for the rant, but I am getting tired of the unsavory way many push their wares at those of that the devs think are un-aware. Your kind just make it all the harder to find good stuff among the chaff - chaff that is for Joomla "3.x" but won't install because it is too old. Yes, after so many hours of searching and testing - one becomes testy.

Think about it the next time you try to flog free-for-a-fee. Without the option of testing it, I won't spend a penny. And "free download" + buy and install is a fib. Do you think anyone would risk buying it, only to find that it won't install with the latest Joomla? And, to those that hide the $ beside C, M, and/or P = who are you kidding?

This post is absolutely free for only 4 easy installments with your purchase of a 1 term membership. Does not include installation. Installation can be purchased free for only 8 installments ..... get it?

[Vimes]

I only need a Contact Form that would allow for two separate 'Contact Us' people with 8 editable fields.

I am appalled at that so many use "Free Download" and the link to the "Free Download" is "Buy and Install".

Good post.

I'd suggest that if you come across an extension that's marked as "free" but in fact you have to pay to access it, then report it directly on the JED. It's underhand behaviour and needs to be stamped out.

Those that choose to slime us with the 'free' version verses the 'pro' version is nothing new. Just the term has changed from "crippleware" to "free".

As an extension dev myself, I have to point out that we developers have to walk a very fine line when it comes to what should be included and what should not as part of the free part of the plugin. No doubt I think I give too much away, you would think it's not enough. I can 100% guarantee that there will be people who will only be happy when the part of the code they are forced to pay for is free, even though they don't understand that it's paying for that part of the code that finances the rest of the system's development and maintenance.

I don't ever mind paying for good clean code that I can test, and know won't have to re-subscribe to every 6 months because of updates to Joomla and/or it's 3rd party files.

I'm of the opinion that more extensions should offer subscriptions, the prevallent business model where you only pay once for a product only works well with simple extensions (like the contact form you were searching for). Extensions that are consistently developed and supported should, IMO, switch to a subscription business model as it's the only model that works well for those larger extensions.

As with most things in life, nothing is ever simple.

[TheINIC]

Thanks Vimes for your input. If I may vent for a bit - - -

I think what the "devs" are doing is targeting webmasters(?) that build sites every day ergo the cheaper by the dozen subscriptions. But for some, like myself, and I know many others, only need one small script to do one small thing and to rent it on a 6 month period is stupid waste of money.

As I pointed oiut, I just need one script to use for Contact for two people on the site. Admin and Owner. The cheapest I could find is a $39.00 (Euro) with a wide variety of extras that might be usefull on a site like the fbi.gov, or Cnn.com, or huge places like that.. The "free" to download, are misleading sales pitches = scams. Useless wastes of time trying to install them only to find out then just how crippled they are.

No one needs a membership, or a 'subscription' to use it. To use it, they need to cough up money AND I have no problem paying. I buy lots of extensions. I have a drawer full of useless subscriptions and memberships and code that put food on someones table. That is a good thing. But to do it every six months should be a crime. Some 'devs' even include code so that when Joomla sighs, exhales, or takes a dump, our rental dies and we need to 'upgrade' with another subscription. Devs use to use Joomla as their flagship to show off their wares and hopefully, using it in their resume's would land a good coding job somewhere. But now it's a place for us to loose money easier than to a one-armeded bandit slot machine.

For example, I bought Formmaker a couple years ago. I renewed the 'subscription 3 times, to keep up with their promised add-on to it - which never came. Every 7 - 9 months, I had to upgrade because Joomla coughed up a googie. Recently, In order to get my Contact Form for just 2 people, I installed an older version of Joomla with all it's "We don't support this any more - you're hooped" all over the place warnings. I installed Formmaker and it will no longer run. It appears a link back has seen to that. I'm told I have to buy again. Not happening.

It's getting easier to just set up a blog with Wordmess and call it a site than it is to get inexpensive, usable extensions for Joomla that are not designed as a revolving door through the checkout.

I tried a few of the "free" downloads to test to see if it's worth spending $40.00 just for a decent contact form. None, not one, was honest enough to say their ware is crippled to being useless and the paid version, via subscription or membership, is a buy, try, wait, then cry. It has become too smarmy and scammy for me. And I go back to Internet days of 300 Baud speed, white text on a black screen, and domain registration was free. It's now about money first, product and support - they can wait. Honesty should not be wrapped up in subscriptions and memberships. Both of which are forced upon the the buyer.

I am sorry for taking up your time. I hope that something settles in and as a 'dev' you might consider making something that isn't just a check-out in disguise, but something that will be worth while for many month, not like washers and dryers that stop the moment the warranty period ends.

And now, thanks to Joomla's most recent update, I have 34 little sites that need to be updated, and a mass of subscriptions that have expired and need renewal so I can continue using the extensions. I have assumed the position. My arms are spread apart, my hands are against the wall, feet back, spread apart and my wallet is in my hip pocket - like the others, get in line for it. It is wrong. Period.

[brian]

You dont need an extension for this any more. You can do this with the core Joomla contact component now that we have added custom fields

[chrisguk]

I'm an extension developer with both free and paid contact forms. Our paid form could do what the OP (Original Poster) wants for £10. For that you only get a month's worth of updates, which may be none at all, but there is absolutely nothing to stop you continuing to use the extension after that for as long as it will work, and on as many sites as you want. We do our best to make all our code as future-proof as possible. Most likely our code will work well into Joomla 4 and beyond, although we can't guarantee it. Sooner or later Joomla will break something and you'll need an update, but it will never be deliberate on our part.

We do our best to be honest and transparent about our pricing. We offer several different options to try to suit small users like the OP, and professional users with hundreds of sites. We do our best to be fair. But the bottom line is that we wouldn't do anything at all if we couldn't make some money out of it. We would just go away and do something else. We have bills to pay like everyone else. And I'd be surprised if any Joomla developers are making much more than a basic living.

I can understand the OP's frustration. It must be a nightmare to have to keep a lot of sites up to date with dozens of subscriptions all with different terms and conditions. It would drive me mad. The paid extensions eco-system probably needs to evolve into something different, but it will take time. Remember the days before Amazon? You had to register on a hundred different sites to buy different products. It was awful. Perhaps change will come to Joomla extensions too.

In the mean time, users will just have to do the leg-work and find developers they like. We are not all the same.

[Vimes]

But the bottom line is that we wouldn't do anything at all if we couldn't make some money out of it. We would just go away and do something else. We have bills to pay like everyone else. And I'd be surprised if any Joomla developers are making much more than a basic living.

From all the developers I've spoken to, I think this is about right. We barely scrape by most months.

Perhaps change will come to Joomla extensions too.

Personally, I think the time for that has passed. If it was going to happen, it would have happened before now, a themeforest for Joomla would have appeared.

CMSs were needed when you and I first hit the web way back when, like many of the established J developers I started out by creating my own CMS even before they were a thing but when I came across Mambo I realised smarter people had already done the leg work for me and I was quick to adopt.

The likes of FB and Wix, who've come into dominance only in the last 10 years have helped to reduce the number of people who are looking for "their own" website, many people have chosen to adopt those as their primary marketing tools instead of what you or I would consider a "proper" website. As a result the market for J and WP extensions has shrunk a lot in the years since and whilst we're keeping our heads above water, it's certainly not a profitable enterprise any more. Nobody is going to invest in building an extension selling tool that requires considerable adoption by the community's developers when there are fewer and fewer users each year.

[chrisguk]

Wow, I'm surprised to hear that you just scrape by. I always imagined that you, with your amazing product, would be one of the few people making it big. I'm from the pre-Mambo days too. Better keep quiet, we are showing our age.

For us, Joomla would not be viable if we didn't have a solid financial base under us. The Joomla work certainly doesn't pay a reasonable rate for the job. It's more a full-time hobby that provides useful pocket money. Some day we'll quit though; we put up with too much brown stuff for the amount of effort we put in. I don't see how new generations of developers could get into it, or would want to.

Interesting to read your take on what's happening with Joomla. I agree. The bottom line is that free or cheap software just isn't viable except for us old-timers. As we die off, things will change one way or another.