Please Help Test the Upcoming ARVE Version

The upcoming versions of ARVE and ARVE Pro are already running on this site where I sell the Pro Addon. So I am comfortable enough to use it here. However, the WP ecosystem is very complex with its hundreds of thousands of different themes and plugins and the new hated Block Editor (Gutenberg). Given experiences I am afraid to release the new version out in the wild. The worst thing that can happen is if you work hard on something for over a year and then get punished with negative reviews as a “thank you” because something breaks or does not work as expected. I already got a few negative reviews that got be angry lately. After 8 years working on this plugin I got only 140 reviews and now the rating dropped to 4/5 stars. If you have anything positive to say I really would also appreciate a review, does not need to be long.

I even started the admin message with “If this message bothers you, just close it!”. Because some people are so easy offended by simple things like admin messages, probably mostly the people that use other peoples free work for ages and would never pay for anything or donate. I had people accuse me of begging … I hate this state of fear of doing anything “wrong” to get punished every second. Someone seriously asked me to make features free and if they are not “a waste of money”. They want them but think everything should be free. I wish these people see the other side of open source one day and learn how great it is then. When you are a user it’s all great, you get almost everything for free, you can demand, complain, write 1-star reviews because of bullshit reasons … sorry I am ranting. I may delete this later.

Because of fear I already postponed the release of the plugin version for too long. I need your help trying it out and reporting any issues you may find. The release is planned in the near feature if anything goes well. I appreciate your help. I have given out free licenses to beta testers in the past but that resulted in lot of people claiming the free stuff without ever actually giving any feedback, so I won’t do it like that this time.

How you get the latest version#

If your host supports WP-CLI or you have it installed on your VPS hosted WP site. The quick way to install is:

wp plugin install --activate https://github.com/afragen/github-updater/archive/master.zip

wp plugin delete advanced-responsive-video-embedder
wp plugin install --activate https://github.com/nextgenthemes/advanced-responsive-video-embedder/archive/beta.zip

Otherwise:

1. Install the Github Updater.
2. Delete your ARVE Plugin.
3. Your WP Dashboard > Settings > Github Updater > Install Plugin and fill in
   Plugin URI: https://github.com/nextgenthemes/advanced-responsive-video-embedder
   Repository Branch: beta
4. Your WordPress Admin panel will now always notify you for the latest alpha or beta versions during the testing period. After then, you will get the stable version wordpress.org.
5. The Github updater Author also recommends putting in a Github access token to lift the API call restrictions. As I assume most of you will not have a Github account. I do not know how important this is, it should still be able to detect new versions just not check 100 times a day or something like that. I do not have the numbers.

Additional steps if you own the Pro Addon:

1. Have your stable ARVE Pro Version installed.
2. In your WP Admin go to Settings > NextGenThemes Settings.
3. Check ARVE PRO Beta Updates and click Save.
4. You will get prompts for the latest alpha/beta versions now.

Alternative install of the latest ARVE Pro alpha/beta version (in case the above does not work, please let me know):

1. Log in to My Account and click View Details and Downloads > Scroll down > Download the latest alpha or beta version you find there.
2. Delete your currently installed Pro Addon.
3. Install arve-pro-X.X.X.zip through Admin > Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin->Activate

Thanks again if you followed this through, I know it’s not the most convenient thing to set up but I think its still a good solution to deliver unreleased plugins to sites. For what is new see this post.