Telling Stories with Technology
This August, I’ll be attending WordCamp Portland.
I’ll also be speaking at WordCamp Portland.
Last week, I also decided to sponsor WordCamp Portland.
Why all the investment? It’s simple. I love Portland. I love WordPress. And I have a blast spending money on the things that I love.
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Show off Codex work in your own sidebar.
Some time ago, I released a plugin that allows you to highlight contributions to the core WordPress project on your very own site.
Today sees the release of version 1.2 of the WP Core Contributions Widget plugin. This new version adds a Codex contributions widget as well.
So now you can show off both your Trac reputation and your work on the Codex. Those who write documentation for the core project are just as important as the devs who write the code; they deserve recognition, too!
Version 1.2 also extends internationalization by passing all output strings through WordPress’ internal translation functions. Updated .po files are included for translators.
This latest update also features work from the talented Mike Bijon, bringing the total number of individual code contributors to 4. This is definitely becoming a community project!
Read the full details of version 1.2 here. You can download the plugin from the WordPress.org repository or fork the code yourself on GitHub.
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to be shadowed in my day job by a computer science student.
He was interested in web development and eCommerce, so I thought I’d show off a few of my sites. He was pretty impressed.
Well, until we got to this site.
The old Jumping Duck Media website was somewhat stale. WordPress plugin listings were out of date. The news feed was over a year old. And the online store was just broken.
So I blushed, apologized, and quickly moved on to another, more up-to-date site.
When I got home, I immediately pulled this site down and committed to rebuilding from the ground-up. I’m proud to say that I’m (mostly) done rebuilding and ready for the public to once again see what I’m up to.
My goal has always been to help people overcome their fear of launching a dream. I provide direct support through consulting, help pull together resources and other material, and (when I’m able) I’ve been known to contribute financially as well.
That goal is the foremost purpose of this site.
I will provide code tutorials for developers. Support forums for those still learning. A free monthly newsletter with lessons and resources. New product purchases and downloads.
Stick around and see what comes next.
I’m in the process of changing my online business model. Simply building WordPress plugins, giving them away, and sitting on IRC and in support forums isn’t a sustainable endeavor. So some things will be changing – and some things will stay the same.
I will continue to develop cleanly-coded open source plugins.
I will continue to distribute these plugins for free online.
I will begin to develop and distribute free, open source WordPress themes.
I will no longer offer free support for these products.
Limiting support is more a reflection on my limited time than anything else. I can’t afford to spend hours debugging personal sites, re-configuring Linux installations, or offering custom workarounds for conflicts with other, incompatible systems. Particularly when other people have been benefiting financially from my free efforts.
So instead, I will be launching a paid support forum on this site.
Membership will be only $5 per month, and you’ll get support for all of my plugins as well as WordPress itself from one location.
As I get ready to release new themes and plugins, you’ll also have exclusive access to early releases, private beta tests, and perhaps a handful of non-distributed systems as well.