About the jonradio adoption and a "hello" from David
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Hi folks!
There have been a number of questions asked about the adoption and future of the Jonsradio plugins. Let’s go down each of them in turn. Before I do, here’s a link to the adoption notice for the plugins:
http://zatzlabs.com/davids-home-for-wayward-plugins/
Who is this David Gewirtz character? If you’re really curious about my background, feel free to visit my home page or LinkedIn. You’re also invited to follow me on Facebook and Twitter. I also host the ZDNet Government and DIY-IT blogs. Check them out. They’re great reads.
But the fact is, deep down, I’m a project guy and I enjoy coding.
I’ve been working with WordPress since 2009, having chosen WordPress to host the huge migration of the ZATZ magazines from its previous environment based on UserLand Frontier. You can watch a video of my Miami WordCamp presentation about that project here. I rebuilt the whole ZENPRESS CMS as a series of very large WordPress plugins.
Ever since then, I’ve wanted to do more with plugins that other people can use. Seamless Donations was my first adoption and the Jonradio set is my most recent. Time permitting, I’d also like build some fun and useful plugins from the ground up for the user community to use.
What has changed in the jonradio plugins? So far, the only changes I have made are those necessary to transition to plugins to my stewardship and enable access to the repository for maintenance. I also tested and updated the WordPress compatible version on one plugin that was a release behind.
How will our existing installs be impacted? Ensuring continuity of operation is a top priority. All your configurations, settings, etc, should not change. What worked last month will not be changed next month.
What have you done as a result of adoption? My initial priority has been onboarding the plugins: making sure I had them working in the repository, making sure there was a Web site for them, making sure there was a place for news about them, making sure I had a way of tracking support postings each morning (RSS+Feedly), and actually getting to know the plugins so I could provide a quality level of support.
What about the short-term future? In the short-term, my priorities are answering support questions and doing any updates that may be necessary due to security and WordPress version-compatibility issues. I will also add an email signup form in the admin UI so those using the plugin in the field have a way of being notified if there are any issues that might impact them. So, short-term, it’s keeping the lights on.
What about a longer-term future? Depending on the plugin, I will undoubtedly want to add features and tweak things. But I don’t want to just dive in until I have a good feel (and dialog) with current users. Already, I’ve been approached by a number of users asking for new features and when I move into adding features, I will keep them in mind.
What about the name change? When I adopted the plugins, Jon gave me his okay to change the name of the plugins. I thought that since users were no longer going to have his deft touch on the controls, it made sense to take the “Jonradio” moniker off the name. However, both in honor of Jon and to maintain integrity in the WordPress.org repo, the folder path name will always retain the “jonradio” prefix.
Do you have any sort of Prime Directive for these plugins? If you add the two plugins from other sources I’ve adopted over the last few months, the plugins I maintain run on more than 200,000 sites. Ensuring those sites continue to operate those plugins without breakage is my #2 goal. Making sure plugins are updated in response to new security threats is my #1 goal. When to comes to security, I will accept breakage before breach. But otherwise, “No breakage” is the Prime Directive.
How can I be notified of big changes? I’ve set up a very low-traffic mailing list that you can sign up for on http://zatzlabs.com/lab-notes. All my development journaling is also being done at that URL. All the plugins can be found here on WordPress.org and also each now has a home page reachable through http://zatzlabs.com/plugins/.
Why are you doing this and any final thoughts? I have two major personal reasons. The first is that I have used (and am using) some of these plugins in the ZATZ Archive (an archive of 16 years of published articles with 79,600 articles) and want to make sure they remain maintained and supported. A second reason is because I’ve been truly enjoying working with WordPress and the WordPress community. I have long experience with taking on interesting and special projects. For more about that, I invite you to read this article I wrote:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/why-i-code-how-to-think-about-side-projects/
Bottom line: I’m thrilled to be meeting Jon’s plugin users and look forward to a long and productive (and fun) relationship. Thanks for letting me come along for the ride!
–David
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