Plug-ins & widgets, are add-ons you can put in your blog to give it additional functionality. In WordPress, you have the Akismet plug-in, or reCaptcha, which are tools you use to limit, if not stop entirely, spam in your comments section.

All of these WordPress plug-ins are easy to install. Usually you just unzip whatever you download to a folder and upload it to the plug-in folder. However, that doesn’t mean it will work right away. You will still need to activate the plug-in or make certain changes to some of the php files in your theme folder before it will work. Even so, it does not naturally mean they will work correctly. And I can understand Endoh’s frustration when I read his post.

So I would want to share some of my own experience with a few plug-ins. To begin, let me just say I am a hardware and an OS guy by profession (i.e. setting up a LAN, and getting the OS up on a computer, and solving those irritating errors that pops up is part of my work.) I am not a programmer and I almost know nuts about any kind of programming language – be it java or php. In my considered opinion, even Greek or Sanskrit is less challenging, because they are still a human language. I don’t qualify myself a geek either but I do pride myself in my willingness to explore and experiment with stuff – e.g. google for the solutions and try to solve it myself. I learn a little HTML here and there, and I did mess around with my own style.css to get my blog to look the way it is looking now. (That explains my disdain with people who screams immediately at the point of the first problem and will spend no further effort to deal with it.)

Let me begin with AMM [Amazon Media Management Extension] plug-in. I downloaded it because when I was reading blogs, I saw people with this cool “What I am reading now” plug-ins and I would like to have it too. So some searching got me to this.

Without first evaluating if that is what I need (my bad!), I have it installed and activated, and everything appears to work properly. I was able to make a new book entry, and delete it. But beyond that, I am lost. I admit (as a fact) I have no clue how to get the thing to work – i.e. to get the plug-in to display stuff meaningfully on my blog.

The documentation may have been quite clear to everyone else who read it, but I was completely lost because I have no idea where I should place the code, and how it would look like on screen if I do whatever is listed there. I wanted very much to drop those guys a mail, but I don’t know where to begin – i.e. what to ask.

In the end, I dropped the plug-in, because I don’t know if it might be what I needed, even though it might have been a wonderful plug-in. I must make it clear I am NOT saying that the plug-in is bad, but just saying that I would have needed to acquire some pre-requisites before I could understand and get this thing to work.

So, I tried out ‘Now Reading’ next. I got it installed and activated without much difficulties. But a problem soon hit.

I could add a book, but I couldn’t delete or edit them. When I try to do so, and hit the update button, it returns a blank screen. I could live with that blank screen if it saves the changes (be it an update or delete), but nothing happens. There is a bug reporting forum (you have to sign up an account to use it), but no one saw it fit to contact me for more details. And my bug report has languished on site for almost 2 months now.

While I understand the plug-in is obtained free, and I do understand that there is no obligation for anyone to offer support should I have a difficulty using it, what makes this really annoying was the very fact that an avenue was given to you to report the problems, but there seems to be no one interested in listening to them or getting them solved – which sounded amazingly like our gover-min. So I gave up the getting a ‘Now Reading’ feature on my blog entirely. I am simply resigned to the possibility that ‘I maybe just too stupid to do it’.

The next plug-in I tried, is called FLV Embed. I downloaded this because I have been converting all those .flv files I downloaded and converting them to .swf or other formats before I can embed them on my blog. And if you ask me why I don’t just link it from the original location, the reason is that I hate broken links and I am quite certain I won’t be aware if a video or a file is taken offline.

Like ‘Now Reading’, it installed pretty easily, and activated without any problems. But the real problem is, it doesn’t work even though the blasted instructions are clear as crystal. It is called an FLV player, but it doesn’t play files with a .flv extension. It plays files with a .swf extension though, which I take it to mean I had followed the instructions faithfully and did everything as mentioned. (No, renaming the files to .swf doesn’t work. I tried. Or else I won’t be whining now.)

I know there are people who got it to work, but there are also people who had the same difficulties I had. You can read about these difficulties by scrolling down to the comments section. But I don’t see anyone responding to the comments or making an effort to help the people who had a problem.

* sigh * Yet another plug-in deactivated and left to languish in my plugin folder.

So by now some of you might be wondering just what the hell is the point I am trying to make by sharing all these. The point I am trying to make is this… I am not the kind of sits around and expect things to work with a snap of my fingers. But when even I have a difficulty trying to find help for myself, try and imagine the loads of other users out there who are far less diligent in trying to solve their own problems.

As Endoh was saying… Do you need your customers to be professors to use your product?

All I want to say is… My sentiments, exactly!