OMNINOGGIN

Today is the day I turn 26 years old.  For those who don’t know me yet, let me tell you a little bit about myself.

Who am I?

I am a full-time software engineer with a strong passion for web technology.  I started OMNINOGGIN as a personal blog in 2007 in an effort to share my knowledge in the general field of software engineering.  I wasn’t getting many readers by 2008, so I finally decided to niche-ify this blog into a blog that mainly talks about WordPress and a few other web development topics.

I developed my first WordPress plugin and wrote my first WordPress article in March 2008.

Now I have have authored 8 WordPress plugins and have written quite a bit of articles about WordPress on OMNINOGGIN.  In addition to that, I make it a point to write on Weblog Tools Collection about once week.

What I learned in the past year?

• The good
  • WordPress is a wonderful platform and I enjoy developing plugins for it very much.
  • To have a popular blog, it’s 80% what you know and 20% who you know.  Focus on writing great posts/plugins and the rest will take care of itself.
  • Sugar, Spice, and Vitamin blogging strategy works quite well for me.
  • Writing more documentation and troubleshooting guides for your own plugin helps save you a lot of time spent on support.
• The bad
  • Developing WordPress plugins for free will never make you enough money to compensate for your time spent, but it does get you more traffic.
  • Supporting a popular WordPress plugin is exhausting!

Do you enjoy my plugins and content?

I didn’t want to do this, but I just had to ask since it’s my birthday.

I spend a lot of time writing plugins/articles and I make them available for free.  If they have helped you in anyway, or if you are using them for commercial purposes, then I would love it if you can support me by any of the followinig methods:

• Making a donation (small or large, everything helps!)
• Buy the WordPress Plug-in Development book through my affiliate link
• Get your friends to subscribe to the OMNINOGGIN RSS feed
• Link to and/or write about one of my articles or plugins.

Of course this is not mandatory, but it would make a really great birthday gift!

What’s next?

I will continue to support and make updates to my current plugins, but I don’t see myself releasing any more plugins unless I think they will be as revolutionary as WP Greet Box and WP Minify.  I will also be launching a support forum for my plugins to encourage community discussion/support rather than just 1-on-1 support in comment forms.  With plugin support taking less time, I hopefully can focus on more WordPress articles and tutorials for you all!