If you have ever released a plugin or theme for public use, it is very likely that you have received negative feedback from users. Regardless of how high quality your theme or plugin, there are always users that will dislike it for some reason or other, perhaps it’s because of a conflict with another plugin…
A topic that has intrigued me a lot over the last few months is how to build up a strong community of contributors to projects. When we write plugins or themes for WordPress, we release them under the GPL license (at least the code), which makes it so any one can contribute back to the…
In today’s review, we’re taking a quick look at the WP Audio plugin that was just released by Tom McFarlin. It is a simple plugin that lets you add a responsive audio player to the bottom of your posts.
2012 has been a great year for me. I expanded my plugin development business, I started a large community-driven plugin project, I contributed to WordPress core and plugins that were not mine, and my wife and I started a family by bringing our first baby girl into the world.
I have been doing WordPress plugin development as a business for about two years now. When I first started, by releasing my very first plugin on Code Canyon, it was very much a side project that brought in a little side residual income. Today, I make 100% of my needed income and more off of…
As a WordPress.org plugin reviewer, someone that writes a lot of plugins, and someone that does a lot of support for more than 4 dozen plugins, I see a lot of bad code. Tonight I started a new micro blog specifically for showcasing some of the “gems” I’ve come across.
MyMail is an email newsletter plugin written by revaxarts that provides you a complete system for creating newsletters, collecting subscribers, building campaigns, and more from within your WordPress Dashboard. It is a fully featured email newsletter plugin, including autoresponders, that gives you the power of a system like Mail Chimp, except without a subscription and it’s…
Full Screen Background Images Pro is a plugin I wrote to add full screen background images to your website. It allows you to set as many images as you want across your site and also lets you set specific photos for individual pages, posts, categories, etc. Two days ago I pushed out an update that…
If you hadn’t guessed it already, I really, really love WordPress plugins. I love writing them, using them, reviewing them, and everything else involved with plugins. There is just something about them that really excites me; I always love writing new plugins. I’d like to explore a few of the reasons why I have so…
Closed Beta is a WordPress plugin that makes it really simple and straight forward to allow beta access to your website. With the plugin, you can restrict access to the site to only approved users, let users request access, moderate beta access requests, and show a really nice splash page to non-approved users.
During the WordPress Community Summit, Otto announced a new Amazon-like review system for themes and plugins hosted on the WordPress.org repositories. This new system now requires users to leave a review of the plugin or theme before they are allowed to give the plugin or theme a star rating. I’ve recorded a quick demonstration video…
When you build a plugin or theme, I’d encourage you to really think about whether your settings page is really needed. Have you added the settings page just because it’s the normal thing to do? Maybe because users expect there to be a place to go and “configure” the plugin? Perhaps you just didn’t think…
As of yesterday, I have joined the WordPress.org plugin review team. We are the group of people that moderate all of the plugin submissions to the official plugin repository. This is a volunteer position, but one that I’m very happy to be helping out with.
One of the best feelings that one gets from being a developer is the sense of elation that comes with finishing a product. You make the last change or addition to the code and that particular key stroke designates the product as done (at least for that version). Once complete, the code sits there unchanged,…
A giveaway for Easy Digital Downloads extensions and themes is being held from now until the 10th of October. Three winners will be chosen at random once the giveaway is over. There are two themes and three commercial add-ons up for grabs, so get your entries in for your chance to win!
