Trackback pointed out a somewhat less than complementary review of YAK.
I think the reviewer probably has a valid point in regard to user-friendliness, but otherwise hasn’t appeared to put a huge amount of thought into his review. In fact, it was negative enough that I feel the need to post a rebuttal both here and in a comment on his post. I don’t mind constructive criticism (as I said, I tend to agree on the user-friendliness front), but I’m less than impressed with criticism that’s based on a fundamental lack of research.
Here’s my comment (hopefully it doesn’t come across as too defensive…):
A question for you: did you happen to scroll down the YAK project page (here: http://www.briggs.net.nz/log/projects/yak-for-wordpress/)?
I’m not trying to be snide, but your review mentions a lack of documentation, and there is basic installation documentation on the main project page.
A lot of open source projects make money by selling documentation. It’s pretty much a standard practice. Some users want to pay, some would rather figure it out themselves. That’s flexibility for you. But you don’t have to waste time figuring it out for yourself, because you can buy the handbook — so I find it rather trite for you to suggest that it’s somehow okay to pay for a plugin with documentation, yet it’s not okay to get a free plugin and then pay for the docs.
Yes, YAK is basic. That was one of the initial goals — along with tight integration within WordPress. So no, there isn’t a way to insert product images from YAK. Instead, you insert them in your post — your post is your product. That’s the foundation of YAK: post as product.
YAK originally had its own menu option, but before the new design of WP, I felt it took too much menu real estate and figured users would prefer if it was included within the standard WP menu structure — settings went into WP->Settings. Orders and Products and then Reports went into the Manage menu (which has now become Tools). I haven’t had any complaints or suggestions to change it, so far.
On the “lack of help” front, there is a forum on my site. A responsible reviewer might’ve taken a look there first — and found that, as with many open source projects, the forum is reasonably active, with support requests, and discussions on how to do things, and so on.
YAK might be lacking in user-friendliness (something I’m trying to address over time, but as a single-developer project, it’s slow going), but an accusation of lack of support is, quite frankly, groundless.
In the distant past, I was one of the editors of a (printed) technical journal in the US. Generally if we were reviewing a product, we’d contact the company in advance for review copies (giving them the opportunity to provide additional information if they wanted). In this case, and for any future reviews you decide to write, I believe you’d be better served contacting the developer (or developers) and give them that same opportunity. It is perhaps a better form of journalism not to rubbish a project or product without actually doing a little research in advance…
