Overcoming them requires a bit of detective work.
This is not a rant, it is just communication.
The Pelican static blog generator system is wonderful. It is not perfect, but few things are.
I only use two plugins on this blog, and both of them took quite a bit of extra work to set up due primarily to incomplete and sometimes incongruent documentation.
I wrote up some additional hints for the Photos-plugin and for the Tag-cloud plugin.
I love the concept of Open Source software. I sincerely appreciate the work of people who freely share the fruit of their labor so that others can have the chance to improve their lives.
Unfortunately, when a new user is unable to understand the instructions for setting up a piece of software, the whole point of writing it is lost. If you can't use it, it becomes irrelevant.
I now have both the Photos and the tag-cloud plugin working here, and I tried to document what I did to get them working (links above). If there is something more I can do to make the docs more accurate and comprehensible, just let me know.
Pelican Static Blog Generator is a thing that works! Some of the plugin docs . . . let's just say there's room for improvement.