Pros and Cons

I like making and releasing plugins for WordPress. It's a fun, and rewarding, hobby. I'm not always thrilled with the support requirements, but I feel it's important to provide at least some help for my code.

Some days, the support questions really get to me, though, and it honestly makes me want to stop releasing new plugins. That's by far the biggest drawback to releasing plugins.

But for every dozen "it doesn't work!" comments or emails I get, I get at least one "Thank you!", and those really make my day. Some people say thanks with a Paypal donation -- to date, most donations have been $5 and $10 (though one generous user did give me $200! Thanks!!). I've also received some CDs and a pair of shoes from my Amazon wishlist, which is super nice.

Then there have been some really unique perks. Marc sent me an autographed copy of his book, Hammerjack! I'm reading it now, and if you liked Neuromancer or Snow Crash, you'll likely enjoy it. And just today WPStation published their interview with me! Thanks, Michael, for asking me!

I don't have any delusions of fame (and if I did, the onslaught of support requests would quickly remedy that!); I was just happy to share a little bit more about myself. I'm looking forward to seeing his next vict^Wguest! I think this is a fantastic way for the WordPress community to develop an even closer connection!

If you're a WordPress user, please take a moment to send a note of thanks to the authors of the plugins on which you rely. Your blog is what it is because of their work. If you've got a couple of bucks to spare, consider making a small donation to the author of your favorite plugin. Believe me, that's a great way of saying thanks!

8 Comments

On Jan 7th, 2006 at 04:55am Owen added:

You wrock! :)

On Jan 7th, 2006 at 02:17pm tylerwillis added:

I'm pretty sure I've said it, but I'll say it again: you make great plugins.

On the bright side, the fact that you are getting lots of emails - even saying that they can't get it to work - does at least imply that people find what you do useful. :)

I haven't had a single comment/email on the one plugin I've released (which is rather specialized admittedly), but you - you know that people are using your stuff. And that's a good thing.

Thanks for the work you do.

On Jan 8th, 2006 at 01:58am Bertil added:

I really like your style Skippy :)

Your contributions to the blogging community is pure jazz!

On Jan 9th, 2006 at 02:33pm McShelby added:

Hey Skippy, you are doing great work. I guess all the ones that don't drop a line of Thank-you here are just to busy :)

On Jan 9th, 2006 at 07:43pm Ozh added:

(pssst, Skippy ! Tell me the name of your generous donator, I'm going to ask him if he has some special needs for a plugin I would make just for him:)

On Jan 11th, 2006 at 06:46pm la pausa inutil added:

thank you.

On Jan 17th, 2006 at 08:14am Matt added:

Skippy,

My site simply would not work without your plugins! With wp-cron and backup I can forget about the database dise as I know I have an archive of backups sitting in an email folder.

And with Subscribe2 I _know_ that people can subscribe to and are getting notifications of when my site updates.

I looked for ages for a plugin to do this and there is nothing else out there that gets close in my opinion. You are the master :-)

Thanks for all of it!

On Jan 20th, 2006 at 06:41pm Joe added:

Skippy,

I never publicly say thank you for designing cat2email for me. I had a draft post at my blog forever about it and was inspired to clean it up and publish.

You do great work! Thanks again. Joe