Personal Archives - Page 13 of 23

When Theme & Plugin Developers Work Together – Everyone Wins

So a blog post that has been doing the rounds in the WordPress Community has been “Do not buy WordPress themes that bundle premium plugins” by Coen Jacobs from WooThemes. In it it is a exasperation of the arms race experienced by many plugin developers when dealing with some theme developers, who are happy to include premium plugins in their theme.

As introduced in the post, one of the issues of including plugin functionality in themes is that you increase the load time and – in the desperate attempt to be all things to all men – you actually end up bloating your site with features you cannot replicate or don’t need. For example, you may notice this blog running slightly faster over the last few days. This is largely due to removing one plugin that was a legacy from the previous design, who’s functionality is no longer needed. Imagine if that was buried deep within a theme? It would take me as an experienced coder a while to remove the code, and a less experienced individual would probably just be stuck with the functionality.

It has gotten so bad now that at 3 Door Digital we now try to avoid buying themes, as wrestling with them to get them working takes longer than say using Underscores or Peadig to design from scratch.

The Premium issue is a problem, and is something that it took me a while to figure out a solution with WP Email Capture as with WordPress, all derivative code needs to be GPL compatible (which, in my case, it is). It’s something I’ve dealt with a couple of times as theme developers bundled the premium versions of my plugins with their theme, promising extra functionality. When you buy a premium plugin, you don’t just buy the plugin code, you also usually buy access to support and updates, which people can remove should they desire (Gravity Forms – for example – is a GPL plugin but has a solid TOS. I’m speaking with somebody now to get a similar for WP Email Capture). Whilst GPL developers generally are quite a helpful bunch, if you stop them feeding their kids (or in my case, my Pie & Pringle addiction) then – if you knowingly buy a theme with premium plugins attached – you should be able to understand that they may not be so willing to help if things go wrong.

Unfortunately, customers are often caught in the middle of this, and suffer the headache when they are stuck between a plugin developer who has no record of the premium customer, and a theme developer who doesn’t have a clue what they’ve packaged with their theme. The worst case scenario has been for me when a customer used a cracked version of a premium theme (that injected footer links) that was bundled with a cracked version of my premium plugin (that emailed every signup that ever signed up to a dodgy email address). This hack broke when the plugin owner tried to remove the footer links. Of course, both the theme developer and myself were unable to support it, and in the end we gave a copy of our plugin and theme, unhacked, for free.

I should add that I do have great working relationships with some top notch theme designers. Jake Caputo of Design Crumbs has been absolutely crucial in making my plugins more friendly to designers (you should check out his themes by the way), and my top affiliate has just topped three figures in commission last month alone (on top of his theme sales), so it can be rewarding working when plugin and theme designers work together.

So please do it! It’s been a negative rant, but if it means that more theme designers and plugin developers working on ways of complementing their products, rather than stepping on each others toes, then the community and customers will all benefit.

May Challenge Update & June Challenge

So this month has been a huge month for me this month, with various projects finally coming to the forefront, and hard work paying off. I also made my glorious return to the ring, with me appearing in a Britannia Wrestling show in Prestatyn, North Wales in the Bank Holiday Weekend just gone. I was nervous but since the show I’ve been grinning like a loon, it was such a good night for all!

So onto the challenges? Well first of all, I’ve decided that “it’s a secret” is a terrible excuse for a blog post, so I’ve changed it and given the challenges cryptic names, rather than being overly explicit or quiet. As such, I’ve given May’s task a name.

May Challenge – “Limited Edition”: Completed (5 Days Late)

So I’ve had to quickly rewrite this section as instead of being secret, we’re good to go and announce this.

I’ve formed my own Limited Company.

It’s mainly for my plugin work and the stuff kept really secret in the April Challenge that will be announced very soon, rather than any desire to go freelance (I’m very happy at 3 Door Digital and not going anywhere, thank you!). It was brought about with a chat at the last Mini Sascon in The Ramada hotel (where – apparently – people from The X-Factor were staying). My plugins were beginning to earn quite a bit which meant two things:-

I didn’t want to be sued by some trigger happy ambulance chaser which would see me lose everything.
I wanted to be able to sleep at night knowing The IRS won’t be knocking on my door.

After sitting down with a small business accountant, and laying everything out for them (in particular a “am I really on enough to justify going Limited?”), we decided that going Limited was the best option.

It’s quite exciting actually, well not the whole tax paying and filing documents thing, but the fact that it’s come to the point now that taking serious steps with making the earnings from my plugins a wee bit more official is quite nice.

I’ve still loads to do, but the first big step is done. Exciting times!

June Challenge – Saving Stuff

One of the goals for 2013 back in January is to save more cash. I commented on that post that when I moved from Manual Link Building to 3 Door Digital, my savings took a bit of a hit. You will be delighted to know however that since then I have recovered and exceeded my savings amount from pre-moving jobs time. Hurrah!

But it’s a bit slow recently, I put away a tenth of my wage, and I kind of want to increase it, as such, my goal for June is to place one fifth of my wage into savings.

It should be fairly achievable, it’s more to realign my principles. At times I’ve been good (I now have home made sandwiches most days in work), and bad (including one incident when, in a rush, I bought a train ticket, yet forgot to pick it up from the machine when it dropped down. Bellend.), so it’s more to be more careful.

Thankfully, due to a lost credit card and no football season, I’m not expecting June to be particularly expensive. Something will crop up though. All in all, I have an (unjustified) reputation for being a mingebag. I might as well live up to it.

Domain Names For Sale

I’ve scribbled my monthly challenge post already (that’ll be live in the next day or two), but just a heads up for now: I’m selling a bunch of domain names.

At the moment, there’s auctions running on Domain Lore and a couple of Sedo Holding pages. These are projects that I had big ideas for but didn’t get off the ground. Hopefully somebody will find them useful. Prices are listed but happy to entertain serious offers for them!

Domainlore Domains For Sale

Sedo Domains For Sale

I probably should get a page up for this…

WordPress 10th Anniversary Celebrations in Manchester

So on Monday I attended the WordPress 10th Anniversary Celebrations Manchester, held in The Odder Bar. I believe it is the first time I have attended an event more than just the Manchester WordPress community as held at MWUG, as there were a lot of unfamiliar faces. Nevertheless, I roped in Shane to come along with me.

The night began with an interview with Mike Little, co-founder of WordPress, on how the software was formed and how it grew. It was an interesting talk, particularly in how WordPress could further grow (Mike stressed he had a keen eye in the development of WordPress accessibility), so it was good to hear how WordPress grew early on in its development. I could imagine that the interview he gave would be less codey than the one he will give at Sascon. Not sure many of the delegates will know what Gopher is. Still check it out if you are there, it will be fascinating!

After a large helping of food, the next event was a quiz. But not just any quiz, oh no, a WordPress quiz! I must admit I usually go to quizzes being quite a useful member, but beyond correcting a question (as I heard of the Ella Fitzgerald release, and it was in the 2.X development cycle), I was nigh on useless and my team carried me. There were some elements of controversy, namely the “write the minimum code used to power a WordPress hook”, but overall, our team, ‘hilariously’ titled “TurdPress”, won. Hooray! Thanks to Interconnect IT for the prize of The Auditor & Human Made for the free year of WP Remote.

After it was mingling time, and this was where I realised how big the WordPress community was. Everybody there was fascinating. Also in the team thrown together was a Magician & a Hypnotist: James Anthony, who did this amazing trick.

The time came to cut the cake (that used the proper WordPress logo), and we were given a parting gift of true Mancunian style: a WordPress Pint Glass.

All in all, I had an amazing night! Loved every minute and I do need to get myself to more WordPress events. To Matt Mullenweg, Mike Little & any other WordPress contributor, big or small: thank you.

Here is to the next 10 years!

WordPress & Me – 10 Year Anniversary Project Entry

One of my biggest passions is WordPress, and the development thereof. I love it, and every week I turn to my colleagues and say “wow, didn’t know WordPress could do THAT!”. I’ve been fortunate enough to turn this passion partly into a career, and partly into profitable side projects that I run. I’m also fortunate to be based in Manchester, home of MWUG, which is run by Mike Little, help write the damn thing.

MWUG will be celebrating the 10th Anniversary of WordPress with a party (with cake!) in Odder Bar, Manchester (you can RSVP here). I will aim to get there (I’m winging it back from a BWP show the night before in Prestatyn), so it’d be good to see fellow Manchester WordPressy folk.

But that isn’t the point of this post. I read with interest Dougal Campbell’s 10th Anniversary WordPress Blogging Project, where you are supposed to share what happened to you at core stages in WordPress’ development. This is my post contributing to the Blogging Project.

When WordPress was released in May 2003:-

I was 19 years old.
I was just finishing my first year of a Computer & Multimedia Systems course at The University of Liverpool.
I was a bit of a loner at the time, for the first 6 months of University I hated the halls, and I was plonked on a corridor full of some right pillocks. I did eventually move into a floor with nice people, many of which I still keep in touch with, but by the time I moved in they had already organised a house share, so I went into Second Year Halls.
I was also beginning my first full time summer job, working in the restaurant at The Welsh Mountain Zoo.

When I First Started Using WordPress in May 2006:-

I was 22 years old.
WordPress 2.0.2 was the current version (actually quite gutted by this, sure I’ve scribbled somewhere that I remember WordPress 1.5, but alas no).
I had just started working for Livetech in Colwyn Bay.
WordPress didn’t have pages for the home page, which frustrated me no end!
I was still living with Mum & Dad.
I had recently come out of hospital following a bout of Atrial Fibrillation, which screwed me up mentally more than anything else.
As it was brought on by a combination of stress, no sleep and a huge amount of alcohol consumption, I was off the booze.
And as such, I could still comfortably fit into a Medium. HA! No chance of that now!

Since I started using WordPress…

I have found a love for traveling, going abroad for the first time, and since then going to 17 countries.
I have changed jobs twice, and now rather happily working for 3 Door Digital.
As such I’ve left Colwyn Bay and moved to Manchester.
Colwyn Bay FC have been promoted twice.
I’ve started, stopped, started again, stopped again and now due to restart a wrestling managerial career.
I have released five plugins, and contributed to two more (though my contribution to WP Fart is minimal).
I have released two commercial plugins: WP Email Capture & Author+.
I have two super-secret (well not quite super-secret now!) projects that I cannot wait to get finished and out there later this year.
And – most surprisingly of all – I’ve become a dog lover!

So yes, a bit of an introspective, but felt it was necessarily, most of all though I’m proud to be a part of an amazing community. Between the WordPress & the SEO community, both have been great helps to me as a person and career wise.

Here’s to the next 10 years!