This is a brief update on what I’ve been doing, my plans for the site and my WordPress Plugins.

Busy, Busy, Busy!

Work has been pretty busy. For those that don’t know, I head up the web team for a large organization based in Brisbane. The role is mostly management / internal consulting, but with
a little hands on development.

The website uses the RedDot CMS, which is an interesting challenge for me, because it’s a proprietory Windows based solution, and I come from an open source background. I haven’t learnt much about RedDot itself yet, but I’m going to focus on that soon.

We’re looking getting a project off the ground to revamp the intranet site, which I’m very interested in. You’ll probably see some intranet related posts in future as I’ve been reading a lot about this topic.

I’ve also undergone some training in the Prince2 project management and ITIL service delivery frameworks, both of which were fairly intensive.

Because work’s busy, I have less time for my online ventures. It’s a little frustrating, as I have so many things I want to do. At least I enjoy work!

WordPress Plugins

As yet, I haven’t performed any testing of my plugins in WordPress 2.6, but I know I need to do it soon. I’ve had reports that DualFeeds works fine in WordPress 2.6, but don’t know about the others.

There is one very small issue with most of my plugins. WordPress 2.6 may break the Check Version function in the Options page. This does not affect the core functionality of the plugin and is only likely to occur if you have moved the wp-content folder from its default location.

The only plugin that’s likely to have it’s core functionality affected by this issue is LocalCurrency, which uses an AJAX call similar to the one used by the Check Version function. If you use LocalCurrency, don’t move the wp-content folder from its default location.

This means I’ll need to re-release all my plugins with this fixed. I’ll take the opportunity to add a few new features that I’ve been promising for a while.

Also, as mentioned in my last post, I’m working on a new DoFollow plugin for WordPress, which will only reward the people who leave good comments with a DoFollow link. Progress is slow because of a lack of time.

I also have several plugins that I’ve written and use, but haven’t released because they need some polishing (ie an option page added, the code tidied up, etc). There are also several half written plugins, that I’ve never got back to. When I have time, I’ll plan to finish these off, but don’t hold your breath.

The problem is, the more plugins I release, the more work’s involved with maintaining and supporting them.

New WordPress Theme Coming

I’m also in the middle of creating a new theme that looks a lot better than the current one. I am a good web developer and I do have design skills, but this doesn’t come across looking at my blog. I plan to rectify this soon.

Here’s my current header (click to see full resolution):

Here’s a sneak preview of the new header (click to see full resolution):

Let me know what you think! That’s just the header. The whold theme will be revamped – in fact, I’m rewriting it from scratch.

Direct Advertising

With the new theme, I’ll probably start offering some direct advertising. Many other bloggers do this, but I haven’t taken the step yet.

I’ll nofollow the links, so as to stay in Google’s good books. I haven’t determined the pricing yet, but I’ll provide details in future.

Services

I’ve been turning down requests for custom WordPress plugins because I’ve been so busy. I’ll have to drop free model as there just isn’t time: I’m not going to stop working on my projects, unless I’m being paid for the work.

I’ll still be offering a Custom WordPress Plugin service, but I’ll have to be adequately compensated.

I’ll also offer a Custom WordPress Theme service in future, now that I have the taste for WordPress Theme development. This was always on the cards: it’s a natural extension for plugin developers with web design skills.

Final Thoughts

There’ll be a number of exciting things happening here in the coming months. I’m busy and I’m only going to get busier – but it’s all good!