Friday, May 10, 2013

Crappy WordPress Theme: DirectoryPress

What do you think of a premium (i.e., not free) WordPress theme that is buggy and that requires its tech support to fix and said tech support claims the only way they can fix it is if you give them FTP access to your server?

Sure. Emailing them the FTP password to your system. What could possible go wrong with that?

Sigh. DirectoryPress, I think it may be time that ScreenSite.org parts with you and your crappy-software ways.

When I told DirectoryPress' tech support that our University-based server was locked down and does not permit FTP access from off-campus they said, essentially: sorry, pal, you're on your own.

This issue arose when I discovered a security hole in their software that led to 455 injections of spam into our system. I contacted them for help and they said: oh yeah, that's version 6; you should upgrade to version 7. And when I did try to upgrade to version 7, it borked my entire site.

Oh, and their version upgrade requires you to export all the page/post data out of WordPress, then wipe it clean, and import your data after the upgrade.

Urgh!

I've been disappointed with DirectoryPress in the past as it seems rather hacked-together. It's part of a suite of WordPress themes for creating sites for classified ads, auctions, real estate, etc. I suspect that the directory theme is the poor relation in this suite, that they don't give it as much attention as the others. And there are aspects of DirectoryPress that are unnecessary or, indeed, don't make sense unless you're trying to sell something through your site.

So. I'm taking suggestions for a better system for a link directory. What do you say, Hive Mind?

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