Jeff Goins famously said to become a writer the first thing you need to do is call yourself a writer.
Not an aspiring writer, not someone who wants to become a writer, but simply a writer. That transition dramatically increases your chances of actually becoming a published writer.
A few months ago I began calling myself a WordPress developer, and today I am officially a published WordPress developer. I wrote a plugin that has been accepted into the official WordPress plugin repository at WordPress.org!
I was caught in the act of the happy-dance when it went live, by a stranger walking past my office window (standup desk = more aggressive happy-dance. I’m not sorry).
Here’s some details:
The plugin spawned from a client need in my work with Socialexis. The client runs a blog that has tons of great content that was written as far back as 2010 and 2011, but remains perfectly relevant today. In the web marketing world they refer to this type of content as “evergreen.”
The only issue with this great content is that their WordPress theme aggressively features the date. It’s the first thing a reader’s eye is drawn to when reading top to bottom, left to right.
This works great when the date is, say, yesterday. A reader sees a recent date and thinks “Oh, this content is applicable to me!”
But the same “feature” works in reverse when the date is, say, 19 months ago. Despite the fact that the content is just as relevant, the date filters the content into the “old news” category for the reader. Engagement goes down, conversion goes down, sad trombones play.
How can we gain the benefit of the prominent date on recent posts without the negative hit on engagement and conversion for older posts?
Im so glad you asked: enter WP Old Post Date Remover, a handy plugin by yours truly.
The plugin magically whisks away the date on any post older than 2 weeks, while keeping it on newer posts.
The secret sauce is a special CSS stylesheet that is loaded on those older posts, hiding the date field.
Published authors throw big parties to announce their new book, and have book signings. The best way I can “sign your copy” would be for you to install and activate my shiny new plugin, rate it 5 stars (or tell me how I can make it 5 stars), and tell a friend or two.
Also, don’t be afraid of the donate button (bottom right under my jumpy avatar) if you find it useful!