Some people use the guise of “Oh, I did this out of the goodness of my heart for the people and the people have turned on me – those greedy pigs” as a cover to hide behind when their dirty, annoying, or deceitful tactics have been exposed.

If it was done for free out of the goodness of someone’s heart, then don’t ask for donation money in return. Don’t require payment to get the proper support. Just give it away and never, ever ask for anything in return whatsoever.

99% of everything I do on the ‘Net is free for everyone. But I’ve found ways to make a living from it using advertising and other profitable API’s, along with selling other premium products. But the 99% I do for free does not entitle me to impose annoying or deceitful tactics in the name of “you owe me” and I don’t disguise my “free stuff” as charity – it’s part of my profitable and successful business model.

So please understand the difference between a business model and a pure charity. There is nothing charitable about the creation of AIOSEO any more so than there is about the rest of the “free stuff” you’ll find on the web – including my own “free stuff”.

The AIOSEO plugin was rightfully created with the hope of making money in mind – but the business model is a bit annoying, deceitful, and disingenuous. A bit of “fine tuning” on how they handle their customers and everyone will be fine – and everyone wins.

I asked what should have been a simple question for the designers of an SEO plugin – my one and only question ever about this plugin – on your forum the other day and “hallsofmontezuma” – whoever that is – was an arrogant jerk that was clearly not interested in helping. Here’s the link to it: http://semperfiwebdesign.com/forum/configuring-all-in-one-seo-pack/how-can-i-dynamically-generate-page-title-desc-with-php-variables/

There is next to nothing for documentation and I’ve heard piles of gripes from everyone about your tactics – so let me give you some helpful advice like you were requesting.

Instead of pretending you care about the people using your plugin and at the same time creating an awful user experience in an attempt to make money – just be straight forward and go with a free plugin and documentation with paid support.

You want to see how a business-savvy pro does it? Check out GD Star Rating and their premium support page – http://www.gdstarrating.com/premium/.

That plugin is powerful and elaborate and functions very well. The documentation is superb. The questions in the support forum are answered quickly and thoroughly. And there’s an option for paid support.

So they created a great plugin that’s free, genuinely help create a good user experience for the people using it, and still found a way to make money – everyone wins.

Oh, and by the way:

1) I do not know the people who created GD Star Rating – have never spoken with them – nothing. No clue.

2) My solution to the problem I had with AIOSEO was to disable the plugin for the page in question and write the code myself. It took about 6 lines of code and 5 minutes to write. I tried doing it through your plugin – but cut my losses and did it myself.

If you think a winning business model is to be disingenuous, annoying, and arrogant while forcing your users to disable your plugin and write the code themselves to solve the simplest of tasks – then please keep doing what you’re doing so that you’ll fade into oblivion and we won’t be pestered anymore.

And a final last reply to hallsofmontezuma saying “I’m not sure what you want me to do short of writing the code for you” – you most certainly did know what I wanted – and you didn’t care – and it shows. What I wanted was one simple example – one line of code – a bit of documentation – anything besides a link to the page that explains what a WordPress hook is.

And don’t think this is coming from someone who doesn’t understand giving free support – 99% of what I do on the web is free and if you check out my site’s forum it isn’t hard to imagine the thousands and thousands of hours I’ve spent helping people for free – and that’s what has made my site so successful – and in the end allowed me to make a nice living from it and a positive user experience.

Best of luck to ya – I hope for your sake you listen and learn from the suggestions you’ve been getting from everyone.

“[ ] do not automatically reactivate plugin after upgrade is complete”

i know it’s one extra click in the upgrade process (for those who don’t want to reactivate straight away at least) but it seems the clearest and most practical option to me anyway.

It’s imperfect, but it makes my life easier, so my appreciation for the plugin outweighs any complaints I might have.

There may well be better (paid!) plugins which perform the same or similar functions, but for a student/beginning artist, $25.00 is a lot of money…