Today’s an exciting day! I just adopted a great plugin from the WordPress.org plugin repository, Seamless Donations. This plugin makes it possible for non-profits to accept donations via PayPal in any WordPress website (except for WordPress.com).
The original developer, Allen Snook, works at Automattic and has had to move onto other priorities, but this plugin has tens of thousands of users at non-profits who count on its continued operation.
Since I’ve been doing a lot of pro-bono work with non-profits and I’ve been enjoying doing more and more coding again, it has been my privilege to be able to take over the project from Allen and continue his great work.
What’s your roadmap, bucko?
In terms of a roadmap, it’s important to understand that I’m not going to issue any code changes until I’ve spent a good amount of time coming up to speed on the code of this plugin. I also know that there are some users who have been very concerned that unplanned updates have hammered on their custom-hacked extensions.
Once I have a good feel for the code, have gone through and responded or closed all of the open support questions, and have a good feel for the state of the plugin, my first addition will be to add hooks for PHP additions and any necessary identifiers for CSS customization. That way, future updates won’t break code installed on production sites.
I’ll also be setting up a mailing list (check back here and on the support boards) so I can let you know when new changes are coming and invite you to participate in beta tests.
Who is this David Gewirtz character and why is he doing WordPress plugins?
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 is my first adoption. I hope to adopt more plugins in need of attention and, time permitting, build some fun and useful plugins from the ground up for the user community to use.
That’s it for now
I’m off to look at the support boards and see what I can answer right away, and what I have to research in order to provide a good answer. Thanks for listening!
–David
