TBar: How do you feel about it?
Sep 26 2012 4 Comments
Last week I launched an advertising campaign of sorts ( along with the new site! ) to where I released an update to my popular TB-Testimonials plugin that included a new tool that I dubbed TBar. TBar basically adds a ‘TB’ icon to the WordPress admin bar with a drop down menu which logged in users can use to see a list of my plugins, visit my website, and email me directly regarding quotes for plugin and or theme development (See screenshot).
Earlier I received notice (http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-tbtestimonials-tbar-wow-thats-ballsy-and-not-in-a-good-way) that a user felt betrayed by me and TB-Testimonials and said I “just ruined his fav Testimonal Plugin” with the addition of TBar in the last update. This makes me feel bad that one of my users isn’t happy and now I’m on a mission to find out how the rest of you feel about it and see if maybe we can come to a resolution. Not really sure what to do here, I feel like it could be a very valuable asset to my freelance business and bring in a lot of leads.
So who better to ask what happens next than my users themselves? Do we remove the request a quote stuff? Disable it by default and put a nag notice on the settings page? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Note that I’ve read the plugin guidelines at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/about/guidelines/ and I don’t feel like I’ve violated any of them.
-Travis
I hate it … please remove! My Dashboard is not an appropriate place for you to advertise your business. If every plugin developer did this sort of thing, the Dashboard would quickly become unusable.
Hi Jack,
Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment with your thoughts on it, and I’m sorry you feel that way, however it’s there to stay for now. Since you’re not a fan of it, please feel free to disable it by going to Settings > TBar in your admin control panel and checking the box that says ‘Disable TBar’ and then it will disappear and you’ll never ever have to see it again (unless you uncheck that box!).
As for being an appropriate place to advertise, that’s debatable. But it works and you’re proof of that.
Thanks for using TBTestimonials,
Travis Ballard
I’m totally fine with you advertising in WP-Admin, Travis … your plugin rocks and it would be good for you get some money back from custom work after you’ve given so generously to the community.
However, please make sure the TBar doesn’t show on the front-end website if the user does not have the admin bar displayed – I’m looking at source here and can see tbar still being loaded.
Hey Mark, thanks for the comment. Are you using version 1.7? TBar should be removed completely in that version. I gave up on it, no one really used it and a few people were pretty upset over it so after fighting the good fight for a while I decided that if that’s what users wanted, then that’s what we’ll do. I still have a pro version in the works so we’ll see what happens there. No idea on a launch date for that though I still have a lot of work ahead of me there.
Thanks,
Travis Ballard