FB Magic Bar

Hey guys! Today I was asked to take a look at a new WordPress plugin that is about to be released by Chris Jenkins called FB Magic Bar. One thing that all of you know, and that I told him before I agreed to review the plug in is that Im a no nonsense kind of guy. Im going to say it how it is 100% the truth good or bad.

Well Im sorry to say that on this particular product the results are bad. Very bad. Not only bad in concept but also bad in execution.

Ok so lets first start by getting the basic premise and concept of this plug in. Basically what it does is put a bar that is suppose to look like Facebooks header on your WordPress site or blog. It shows that there is a new notification in the same way that Facebook shows a new notification with the little red number and the idea is that people will be more likely to click this. The click can then take them to any URL you want.

Ok so let me first say that the concept itself is not very sound. So what .. people are on my site, and see a bar up top that sort of (but not really) looks like Facebooks header with a notification indicator and they are going to magically think that its really Facebook and its a real notification? Come on really? Even if your site visitors where this stupid and thought it was really Facebook (they aren’t though) or if they just clicked it out of curiosity when they end up on a squeeze page or sales page or whatever instead of Facebook there just going to bounce away anyway.

Besides the concept being shaky the execution is not very sound. First lets take a look at what a real Facebook header looks like:

Now lets take a look at what FB Magic Bar creates on your WordPress site.

Honestly though its kind of formatted the same. In reality its not even close. The icons that  ‘Magic Bar’ uses are not nearly the same. They are just stock icons. As if getting a designer to make icons that actually look like Facebooks was to hard. I mean it might have taken a little bit of effort, like a whole hour or two. But the creators of this plugin where obviously not interested in making there FB Magic bar actually look like Facebook.

While I can understand that they where hesitant to use Facebooks logo WTF is with that magnifying glass? Do you see a magnifying glass anywhere on the real Facebook header? Nope. It looks like some stupid graphic they pulled from a Google search and just threw in there for no real reason. Heck even the color of the bar is wrong.

When digging deeper into the plugin on WordPress I notice that there are a couple of options. I was not sure what each one did so I started looking around for the help menu. The first place I looked was for a sub menu on the left of the WordPress admin. But there was not any help there at all. I did notice that in the settings page there was some buttons for tutorials and news (see screen shot)

But when I clicked on the tutorials and news button nothing happened. They totally didn’t work. Now to be fair they might not be in yet. But being 6 days away from launch and asking for reviews I would expect that a complete product would be provided, with working tutorials. But alas there where none for me to look at and review or if they are suppose to be there the button is broken.

So I clicked my link a few times and decided to have a look at the click tracking to see how that works. Here is a screenshot.

As you can see the click tracking follows the basic theme of this plugin. Very basic and poorly done. As a professional developer and programmer myself with WordPress experience I know 100% for sure that it would not have taken much effort at all to put some decent click tracking into this. Even a simple bar graph breaking up the clicks by day over the last week or so would have been better than the generic counter that you get. Also unique impressions would have been a nice addition.  The tracking is the same as  almost everything in this plugin, produced with minimal effort.

Basically this plug in is nothing more than a very poorly created pop up that is seeking to hype its sales by trying to identify with Facebook. I dont see this bringing ANY value to your site at all. Honestly I was given it for free and the first thing Im doing after I finish this review is taking it off my site. I dont even want it for free. The front end price is $17 with a $47 OTO and then a second $97 OTO. Do yourself a favor and save your money.

UPDATE:

Just got a Skype from Chris. Though I honestly dont recall him telling me, he claims he told be the price on the JV page is wrong and that it will not be $17 for this plug in. Honestly that makes no difference though since I wouldnt pay $1 for it. Heck as I said I was given it for free and I still dont want it.

He also claims that he told me the tutorial videos dont work. Im 100% sure that he didnt tell me that.

Neither of this things really makes any difference on my opinion of this plug in.

I also wanted to note that Chris initially posted a comment to this review. I approved it and responded. However all day, over and over he has been spamming this post with comments, being quite abusive. In the end I had to ban him and elected to delete all of his comments as many of them where not appropriate for posting. I honestly think his behavior says more in itself than any review I could ever do.

 A quick note about the reviews I do on this site. The product vendors give me access to their products for free in order for me to do my review. However I make no promises to them regarding the results of my tests or what I will write in my review. Should you click a link that takes you to a sales page for a paid product for sale this link will be an affiliate link and I will be paid a percentage of the sales price should you decide to invest in it.

About the Author

Brett Rutecky

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Brett Rutecky is a full time online marketer, web developer, and entrepreneur. He has developed scores of Facebook apps, dozens of custom web sites and hundreds of scripts.

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