Simple Tags - A Comedy of Errors

It would almost be funny, if it had not happened to John. There is one truism about WordPress plugins that all bloggers should always be aware of. You should never ever assume that WordPress plugin developers actually know what they are doing, or are remotely logical. John H. Gohde discovered the hard way that there are actually two completely different WordPress plugins called: Simple Tags.

Yes, why would anyone ever assume that WordPress plugin developers would not be dumb enough to use the same plugin name that was already being used by another plugin? But wait, the comedy gets even funnier, because both plugins actually use the same coding syntax. And, do similar things.

Simple Technorati Tags

John H. Gohde was recently on a quest to implement Technorati Tags on his blog. So, he searched the Web for how to do it, naturally. Came across a bunch of instructions referring to using the Simple Tags plugin. It really sounded like a very easy way of knocking them out.

John was already using the Simple Tags plugin, but did not realize that it would also do Technorati Tags. So, John looked further and found out that it actually could. He found the before mentioned syntax, but it positively did not work as advertised. Further, the options page talked about embedded tags that were invisible. That certainly did not make a lick of sense to John. Exploring further there was another way to generate Technorati Tags whose instructions were obscure and clear as mud. Further, it wasn’t what John H. Gohde wanted. John wanted what was advertised on the Web.

Not So Simple Technorati Tags

After wasting a half-day on this project, John discovered that they were actually talking about two completely different plugins! There is the very complex Simple Tags plugin, version 1.5.7, by Amauray Balmer. And, then there is the very simple SimpleTags plugin, version 2.0, by Broobles that actually did what John wanted done.

Gee Guys, it was really nice of you two to develop your plugins, but couldn’t you have made a better choice of names? Multiply the half day that I wasted on this nonsense by thousands and thousands of other bloggers running into the same problem. What should have been extremely easy to do, took forever to figure out. Why? Because WordPress plugin developers can really be stupid in the dumbest ways imaginable!