Category: regular

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!

Better Click to Tweet is my second official plugin in the WordPress repository. Like most second plugins, this one is far more advanced than its older brother. For starters, I am beginning to grasp more advanced concepts like internationalization, and this plugin comes ready to translate into different languages, depending on the language of your WordPress install.

It started as a search for a plugin to create simple, styled boxes in posts that would allow readers to click on a link that produces a ready-made tweet. Like this one:

The Better Click To Tweet plugin is simple, user-friendly, and translation ready! Share on X

Go ahead and click on the text above, it will pull up a tweet that links back to this post, and gives you the ability to immediately click to tweet it (it has an extra step to let you customize the tweet to your liking!)

I went in search of that functionality, and found a plugin that I liked parts of, but not how it handled the actual meat of the process. It’s pretty technical to explain, but the short version is that the original plugin doesn’t properly use the WordPress shortcode API (because it was written before such a thing existed), and it also makes some mistakes in calculating the number of non-Roman characters like © or ∆ or œ.

Also, at the time, the plugin I based mine off of had an annoying “powered by” link that appeared in every box. In addition to being annoying, it’s against the WordPress rules.

I was going to suggest some changes to the original plugin, but as I went to do so I noticed it had been pulled from the repo (the WordPress overlords were obviously displeased by the “powered by” link as well). So I set out rewriting the plugin from the ground up, using the official shortcode API, and some other tricks I learned.

Long story short, the original plugin is now back in the repo (sans the “powered by” link) but mine was released in the meantime.

Since its launch, my improved plugin has been downloaded more than 1,000 times, with only 3 support requests.

If you’re looking for a great way to drive twitter engagement on your blog, give my plugin a shot!

Here’s the official plugin on the WordPress repo.

Oh, and if you want folks to come read this cutting-edge journalism:

The story of how I got over 1,000 downloads of my second straight #WordPress plugin. Share on X

Here’s the question to ask a potential developer before they make you a WordPress website:

So, what have you contributed to the WordPress community?

The only reason I’d recommend foregoing the question is if they are charging you north of $3,000–$5,000. But even then, the question is still valid.

I’m not saying that all developers who charge relatively small amounts of money are bad developers. But I am unflinchingly saying: some of them are.

You need a litmus test. The above question is the test I’m proposing.

Here are some sample answers you are looking for:

“I’ve written and actively support XX plugins that are in the official repo (or github)”

or

“I’ve regularly attended the core discussions on slack”

or

“I’m a beta tester with XX tickets in the last beta.”

or

“I help with the Polyglots team to translate WordPress into other languages”

or

“I’m a theme reviewer”

or a number of other valid responses. The only thing that you can’t accept is “I haven’t really, I just make websites.”

Now, there are going to be some really top notch developers who can’t pass this litmus test, some gals and guys who can code circles around me, to be sure.

But none of the low quality shysters will be able to pass this litmus test (or you are at most one quick email, followup question, or Google search away from uncovering their rouse.) If someone says, for example, that they actively support their plugin in the official repo, you can ask for the link to the support forums and see how many users agree with you.

Short of an official test or third-party certification, this is the best way to begin to weed out the chaff in the “WordPress Expert” field.

The sad truth: you as a small business owner have been hoodwinked. You are being sold Candy Apple Red lemons.

What’s the point of a website? Why do you have it? What are your short-, medium- and long-term goals with the site?

If your goal is no return on investment, with a side order of being hacked and promoting male enhancement drugs, then by all means pay somebody once for a website, and then don’t pay attention to it for two years.

If your goal is no return on investment, with a side order of being hacked and promoting male enhancement drugs... Share on X

Business owners are busy. It’s in the name. You aren’t dumb, you’re simply ignorant. You’re like me at a chainsaw repair shop. They could tell me that “saw serum” is a thing that is required by federal law and costs $40, and I’d just nod like a dashboard bobblehead at a stop sign. I’m very smart, but I know nothing about chainsaws.

You are very smart, yet somehow this prevailing thought process has taken hold: (1) get a website, (2) rank—presumably magically—in a Google search for your highly competitive niche, and (3) business will just fly in from the flood of traffic.

Worse yet, you’ve been sold the pack of lies that a $400 website on $3/month hosting can do that, with no attention or further investment from you.

Lies.

One problem: a $50 theme the “developer” purchased and tweaked makes your site look really good. That, to your untrained eye, makes their site look just as good as a $3,000 one, so why pay so much more?

Candy Apple Red lemons.

You’ve confused “pretty website” and “profitable business tool.”

The worst part of the whole deal? There are web “developers” out there who can talk fast and sell well who are trying to convince you that everything I’m saying is a lie.

I’ve been on both sides of this thing. A project management client of mine has a website that ranks really well in Google for a very competitive niche. You know how much money she puts into that site to rank well in her target keywords? About $2,000 per month between writers, editors, social media managers, and me (project manager).

There is no short cut to ranking in a Google search: high quality content, focused attention, and time. All of those cost money.

The long story short (my WordPress origin story is fodder for another post), I’m now smart enough to know how little I know, relatively.

When developers start to know how little they know, that’s the beginning of the real learning.

Which brings me back to the litmus test. If you are going to hire someone to make a website for you, and they are content to charge you $400 one time for it with no mention of a recurring cost, there’s a reasonably strong chance they have no idea what they are doing, or they don’t care at all about your business goals, or both.

What if there were a way to vet those developers?

My name’s Ben, and I actively support my two plugins on the official WordPress.org repository:

Better Click to Tweet

Old Post Date Remover

P.S. This post makes many of the same points as Mario Peshev’s great post on Medium. That post directly inspired this one, and it’s where I hoped his headline was going: address the end user. I think I also widened out his definition of “Contributor” beyond those who have contributed to core code. My goal was to write a post that talked more directly to our potential clients, and keep it under 1,000 words. (he said at word count 927.)