PHPCow Help

PHPCOW has some very good features.

1. Where other applications have poor template implementation, PHPCOW makes it extremely simple, allowing you to use either one of their pre-built templates, or use the wizzywig editor to create your own customized templates.

2. Although there are some bugs, features like RSS/ATOM feeds and block management (how your articles are displayed) make managing a site fairly simple and straightforward.

3. Although it isn't listed or linked on their site, they evidently now have a support forum called PHPCOW HELP.....which will hopefully cut down on problems with their staff.

With the good comes the bad:

1. The root of all the evils is the wizzywig editor (which even PHPCOW has said is awful). We hooked them up with Cute Editor, which is by far the best editor I've ever seen, so hopefully PHPCOW 3 will be a much better program.

2. PHPCOW is a resource heavy application. We've used a variety of servers and had problems regardless of how much we invest. We've been told by PHPCOW that our server is the problem, but they refuse to help optimize it, or to publish fixes or recommendations on their site....instead they want you to buy into their small overpriced servers. We've lost countless articles, and hundreds of hours of work because the program decided to not save work, freeze up, etc.

3. The support is very bad. I've been as vocal as anyone about this. I think part of this is a language barrier, as they are based in Spain. However, as a business, they really need to improve how they treat customers/potential customers. With a program this involved, which has so little documentation about its features.....but uses encrypted software, they need to understand people are going to need help and guidance.....but they have little time or patience for people that need help.

Looking around, I'd say that we are one of the few people around who have anything positive to say about PHPCOW......regardless of the issues, we still recommend it based on its price, features, and ease of use.

I've been banned by PHPCOW for "abusing them" in a thread at Digital Point forums. I have to say that they are mistaken......We are tough on them, yes, but far less than others are....and if banning anyone who says anything negative is how they do business, they are gonna have problems. We continue to recommend PHPCOW to people, have sent them customers, and have made recommendations and pointed out bugs to them. However, I have to say that we have been extremely patient with them for a long time through a lot of bugs, lost work, crashed server, etc. We were promised updates and patches more than 6 months ago, as well as a support forum (this is the closest I've seen)....hence, we have a reason to be a bit perturbed with their staff.

I'm honestly hoping they come to their senses on this banning us and ignoring our emails. We've invested way too much time, effort, and money into PHPCOW to be treated the way we have, and for them to deny us any patches, fixes, support tickets, or updates to a program we purchased is unacceptable....

There is an 8 page thread that gives a lot of background on PHPCOW at Digital Point Forums that I encourage anyone considering PHPCOW to read.......its not all positive, nor is it all negative.....it points out a lot of issues and concerns, as well as great features.....like any objective review should.

I've seen you on DP too, sorry you've had a bad experience with them but the fact that you still recommend them says alot about the script I think. I see it as a company that became overwhelmed. They really have a lot of phpcow users out there that are probably always asking them the same old questions over and over, I can see that as getting annoying. I have my site up on their testimonials and get tons of how to questions, and I think its overwhelming! So here we are, I established a place to get the answers easily because people seem to have the same issues as they learn "cow" language and get their sites up and going. I'd love to keep seeing you around Capper and help us out with some of the issues we all may have had, and ways to solve them,tutorials of any sort or just "chewing the cud' so to say :-)

Well, the fact of the matter is I've seen very few people that have had a good experience with their support. Look around the web and you'll see people far more critical of them than I have been. I've stuck around for three years because I have so much invested into PHPCOW that it doesn't make sense to leave.

As to being overwhelmed, thats no excuse for some of the stuff they have said and done, threatening to delete my site and content by sending a script to my server, bouncing my emails, banning me from support.........that, to me, is completely unacceptable, and should easily scare off any potential customers.

All of our complaints have been legitmate......there are several bugs, all of which should be addressed in PHPCOW 3.......as well as big problems like the editor freezing when making changes to templates, the editor coding html wrong, work being lost because the connection resets (WE've literally lost hundreds of hours of work to these problems)......its so bad that we've taken to using a different editor to write our articles, cut and paste them into PHPCOW editor, then save a copy in notepad.

Those complaints aside, its been about a year since there has been any majot patch or upgrade....in the meantime they have moved into hosting and started up the MyWeb program.......while there is nothing wrong with that, it seems those of us that use PHPCOW have been forgotten.

So I won't give them a free pass for being "overwhelmed", they have a long history of treating customers rudely. I think I have been very fair and honest, I've asked them to talk to me, I've asked to be referred to a supervisor.....no response........is that acceptable to you, or anyone else? Is it acceptable to simply ban/or ignore a paying customer who has helped you and recommended you to others because they say what you don't want to hear? Is it acceptable for them to tell me I cannot upgrade or patch my installation ever?

I've told them, unless they change their attitude, and start acting professionally, I'll do everything I can to make sure people do not spend their money on PHPCOW. If I wanted I could go around the web and post emails and chat transcripts from the last two years....and I guarantee they would never have another customer.........but thats not what I want to do, I'd like to work together and solve all the little bugs, see a forum like this take off for support and ideas, and recommend PHPCOW to everyone.

I will stick around, and am happy to help. As I've said there is a lot of potential with PHPCOW.

I think this forum is a wonderful idea, and I think it can do nothing but help the PHPCOW staff as far as support goes......this is a place to get and give help, as well as exchange ideas on features.

Thats my feeling exactly too! I love helping people, which may be a downfall at times LOL and I truly believe phpcow is one of the cms scripts out there. We just need to show people all the crazy features they already have on top of how much further they can go with it integrating other items. Glad to hear you'll help me out with this! I have sadly let my script go on autopilot for awhile now which it still has done amazing on rankings etc so my memory gets rusty on some "how to's" so it nice to have you and other that have been with the cow for awhile as a backup

I'd very much like to see PHPCOW link this forum on their site, so we can expand the community and get some more input/ideas.

I do know that they have found this forum and have contact me telling me they love it. We'll see what happens. I have a good feeling about this forum no matter what. I mean we've been up a few weeks and already rank #1 in google for "phpcow help" which is what people would type in IMHO so we'll get this place going...no worries

You just happened to find us quickly, with my obviously placed sig link LOL

I just hope that they decide to at least talk with me, and understand that we are simply pointing out the good and the bad....trying to make the program better......they have enough drones that go from place to place saying how awesome PHPCOW is....the problem with that is people discount them quickly as phonies......Even in the comments here I see the issues we have discussed echoed in the sentiment.

Capper can you throw some light on your traffic and/or bandwidth consumption per day and what's the server hardware that you have? Server VS Script is a age old dispute everywhere and many a times needs skilled admin to tune eveything.

We've been through all kinds of servers.....virtual dedicated, dedicated. Right now we have a Dual Xeon system with 2x250GB HDD and 4GB DDR2-667 RAM....which isn't cheap.

As far as traffic, we have about 160K uniques a month, with our bandwidth right around 95-100GB a month.