Post Status Excerpt (No. 44) — Small Wins with Small Plugins • Post Status

In this episode of Post Status Excerpt, David talks with Collins Agbonghama, the Founder of ProfilePress and the author of a few other WordPress plugins. Collins shares what he called a “small” win in Post Status Slack early in January 2022: he acquired a plugin (now LoginWP) for “5 figures” and was able to break even on a revamped, commercial “Pro” version after only four months. David and Collins talk about this accomplishment and consider how similar opportunities may exist for other WordPress entrepreneurs.

Why This Is Important: Often you hear about large product acquisitions between relatively large companies in the WordPress space, but not so much the smaller ones — even though they can be just as impactful on people’s livelihoods, especially for independent developers and freelancers.

Every week Post Status Excerpt will brief you on important WordPress news — in about 15 minutes or less! Learn what’s new in WordPress in a flash. ⚡

You can listen to past episodes of The Excerpt, browse all our podcasts, and don’t forget to subscribe on Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, iTunes, Castro, YouTube, Stitcher, Player.fm, Pocket Casts, Simplecast, or by RSS. 🎧

🔗 Mentioned in the show:

🙏 Sponsor: Wordfence

Who can afford downtime, a black mark on their brand’s reputation, or the SEO impact of getting hacked? That’s why so many WordPress sites rely on the real-time protection provided by Wordfence Premium. Now, Wordfence Central offers Premium subscribers a powerful and efficient dashboard to manage security for all their sites from one central location. Try Wordfence today!

Transcript

EP 44

David Bisset:

So speaking with you today is a pleasure. Can you tell me, well, I am from I’m from the, as you probably already have figured out from our communication earlier.

I’m from the United States. I live in Florida. I’m from the east coast. Can you tell me where you are in terms of the current.

Collins Agbonghama: I’m from Nigeria. I live in Nigeria, actually, Nigeria is in Africa. Then I live in new city called Legos. Yeah. I think it’s actually one of the most popular city in Africa. Yeah.

David Bisset: Is there and how are the WordPress meetups in that area of Africa in Nigeria?

Collins Agbonghama: Oh, my team, we have the biggest community or meetup in Africa. Yeah, we do have the, I think, a yearly WordPress conference or the meetup. So, although I haven’t really attended the last one. They did. I wasn’t really chance, I was actually out of the city.

So I could do that then. And it’s supposed to do one last year, but because of the COVID situation, that got postponed. Other than that, we do . Little meetups here and there in NIGOs in Abuja and whatever, although I have not personally really attended them, but I do see the announcements on their post on stuff like that. And now local WordPress on slack.

We do have a WordPress slack community. Actually. I think it’s utterly the biggest in Africa. Yeah. So.

David Bisset: Interviewed or spoke with Mary Jo a couple of weeks ago. I’m not sure if you know her. But okay, great. Cause it’s a big continent and it’s a big country, but I didn’t want to make any assumptions, but we were talking about wpafrica.org.

And the websites she’s put up in her hopes for getting WordCamp. Africa over there some day was a very encouraging I’ll share that link in the show notes for people because I, where you’re from and where she’s from are close enough that I think it’s worthwhile to make that connection to our readers.

Thank you for being a Post Status member. What I wanted to, what I wanted to talk to you about today was you shared what you called a small win last Friday on January 7th. And before we get into that, though, can you just briefly tell me I should say a little bit about your background, but how many WordPress plugins that you.

Currently, like have in your possession or what you like, give us an idea of what your WordPress plugin developer and business scope is. So we know that going in,

Collins Agbonghama: so actually started off teaching WordPress on plug-in development on blogs, like on-site point. So to close on that invite, to. And then smashing magazine in that proceeded to digging my own WordPress and actually to solve my own problems, then accident accurate factors because I had wrote a tutorial on side point on our two DG custom log-in from then I had people, come into in comment session, stating the ones, the two out to be Tony to a plugin they could install on their WordPress site. That was our beautiful, perfect verse. And over the years I had this situation, actually use Sandy for Miami marketing as my immediate marketing software. For sure. One of the problems I encountered with it was Eastern morality wordPress posts are to good to the platform, you know, to craft the process in newsletter to central message bedbugs.

So I was not like hi by that auction mix, this whole process. Then I discovered the API has a the mentor or an end point for sending the may to a Butte, a plugin called sending of loopy. I try to Butte the plugin from start to finish in and realized I could actually extend this particular plugin to support or the email marketing platform. That was out in Optune was born too, which may love team who send

bob stone opt-in forms or lead capture forms that, you know, you put in your name you’re email . And when you click on send it will synchronize to your platform, then another part of the plugin is actually for Sandy, automated newsletter. From your WordPress, as you form your WordPress sites to your email marketing subscribers, it’s actually kind of similar to newsletter Bolivia.

We actually came into the market for newsletter glue and the likes that, or do we, we don’t do just email automation. That can send you WordPress post stats on images. We also do lead capture. Yeah. So that’s pretty much the two plug-ins and yeah. Yeah. And I think so our school beauty, a couple of adults.

During the early days of easy digital downloads, I did a couple of add-ons for them. And I think there was a time is the clothes or tech parts in plugins. And they decided to acquire one of my add-on in

David Bisset: what if your, one of your EDD plugins that you made was acquired?

Collins Agbonghama: Yeah. Yes, it was not quite that.

I think it’s called license free downloads. Yeah.

David Bisset: Who acquired? Also Pippin acquired a plugin that you wrote for EDD.

Collins Agbonghama: Yeah. So they wanted all plugins to sit in their website to be unofficial. I don’t know, created by them. I spoke them. And then, so they reached out to me and said, if I would be keen.

in selling the items to them to do takeover on the maintenance. And I said, yes. Yeah. Also you’re smart. The option of deciding not to say to them on Austin, you’re set on selling it. You’re safe. Yeah. So that was that was one option, but I just paid for them to acquire it. Yeah. So I also made the plugin called nippy.

That’s really sort of like an umbrella site for a couple of payment gateways. Then our selling on WooCommerce and payment gateways, like to check out stripes, paper, and the likes.But over time, actually phase out on the stripes Boone tree. And to check out because of lack of sales in living, Jocelyn WooCommerceus to check out blogging on the EDD paddle gateway plugin.

So. Two years ago. Yeah. Two years ago I sold the business to WP manage the JAG. The folks behind showing four months if you’re in CRM and you are in support. So

David Bisset: you were quite busy.

Collins Agbonghama: Yeah. So currently Monday. Oh, fabulous. logging WP, which was formerly known as Peter’s Login Redirect

David Bisset: yeah. So yeah, log-in WP is actually what, we’re, what we’re here for today.

You made like, I, like I mentioned earlier, you made a post in Post Status slack business channel on the 7th of January, and I’ll read it off here. So people don’t have to go hunting for it. It says you’re sharing a small win. You said three years ago, I acquired Peter’s login. Redirect. Now renamed log-in WP plugin.

You said for five figures and continued to maintain it for free and then four months ago. So that was three years ago now, four months ago that would put this in September ish of last year. You revamped the code and UI and launched a pro version called LA. And then you gave the URL to logic, wp.com, which we’ll put in the show notes then you’re.

And then you said after that app, you’re happy to announce that it broke even. And now in terms of now moving forward, looking for, to profit. And you had some doubts that it might either was the right investment at the time. And then you had a couple of great responses from the post status community in terms of.

I think the biggest surprise there was that you broke even on five figures in four months. I’m looking at the log-in wp.com right now. If no one is familiar with the plugin it, the tagline is on the website. It says redirect users to different URLs after they log in, log out and register.

And it has. According to your site here, it has over 100,000 active install. So I’m assuming that’s the free version. Mostly. But the plugin offers log into redirection posts for, you know, after somebody has registered developer friendly placeholders, lots of integrations with commerce easy digital downloads profile press, and the list goes on and on.

So that’s why we’re here in a nutshell. And that’s why I wanted to talk to you because that small win. First of all, I don’t think it’s that small. But it is a win and it’s a wind that a lot of other people love to hear stories about. Yeah. And so I wanted to just pick your brain for a few minutes here, in terms of first of all, what attracted you to acquire this plugin three years ago in the first place?

Did you think three years ago that this was going to be something that you were going to be able to eventually turn into a revenue generator? Or did you just acquire the plugin just because you needed a sidebar.

Collins Agbonghama: Actually we’ll be, we’ve been getting requests of ideas and pro fact-based.

We get customers asking us. They want to conditionally redirect users after they login. Perhaps based on the user role or different criteria, but mostly based on the users look like we have a couple of users that using some lender, lenders as their lending management system, you know, which vendors there. Yeah. Their are teachers and their students too.

We get a lot of requests for asking if we could implement a feature that allows students to get you directed to a particular page. Then maybe the teachers get redirected to on that page, you know, based on the user

And I discovered the there’s actually another plugin called Peter’s Login Redirect that does exactly what I was actually going to build into WordPress. So I reach out to ??. And he was open to on our position. We agreed on the C and she probably plugged in to me. So I continue maintaining the plug-in with each time, we’ll get a request for condition after logging, who will comment maybe direct.

And I think Alex had discovered community, which was even when we commented documentation or knowledge base on websites for people looking for without, so over time we started getting requests for, with devish on, based on the courses students have. Take, for example, if your students have completed or is enrolled into core state, they want to use us to be dedicated to a certain page.

And if they give me the ability to cause B once you, your user to do that, you’ll be directed to another page to get us some of those feedbacks on improve plugging. Yeah. So I started off selling that in the feed function and I was actually surprised that. It was really new. I think it got quite a number of installs we got a, quite a number of SES forms, especially from the land. That’s pretty much the gist of what we have. We have users using from one, our plugins that we integrate with bots, the users from negative blend that actually makes up a majority of the the customer base .

Yeah. So that’s what I found.

David Bisset: Interesting too. So just to kind of summarize the story a little bit, if I understand this correctly you acquired. This was the free plugin you acquired from Peter, right? You, it was free at the time when you acquired it. So, but once you acquired it, you started because you had the free plugin, people were making requests, like feature requests or enhancement requests.

And you saw a lot of Learndash requests in there. And then is it those requests that kind of fueled what is going to go into the pro version of the plugin? That sounds like.

Collins Agbonghama: Yeah, that’s correct. And also Russell got requests for redirecting back to the previous pitch, say from a user, is visiting a setting page.

Then they click on the login link in the navigation menu also. And after logging the ones, they use that to be redirected back to the pages they are on. So I’ll tell you it’s that into the plugin to and that has also gotten quite a number from cs too. Yeah, right? Yeah.

David Bisset: So in slack, you don’t use it in slack because the learn dash thing is very interesting to me.

The strategy here just seems to be, you had a free plugin, you’re getting requests about LearnDash, which you said before, you didn’t really have a lot of experience. It’s not like you were a big learn dash user. You knew what yeah. You don’t use LearnDash, but these people using this free redirect plugins says, Hey, could you, we would love to have this functionality and this functionality specifically for these things, including learn dash a lot of learn dash.

So that was kind of one of the big. One of the big features you wanted to put into the pro plugin, right? That’s what I was reading out here in slack. So when it comes to other plugin developers I think there’s a lesson to be learned here. Maybe it sounds like to me that for people trying to.

Find a way sometimes building the plugin is the easiest part for a developer. I think sometimes the hardest it feel free to agree or disagree, but sometimes it’s coming up with something people want to use and eventually would probably want to pay for those ideas. And people start off with like the plugin like itself, but this plugin hooks into learn dash and A lot of other integrations as well.

So it kind of kind of enhances LearnDash, it’s not really a, you know, you can use it for learn dash. You don’t have to, it’s not as much a standalone plugin as much a like a learn dash extra plugin or, you know, for people that just want it for LearnDash. Do you think that’s a good strategy for plugin developers to kind of think less or just, or give more consideration to other WordPress platforms like LearnDash or.

Whatever else too, to see what’s missing. And is, do you think that’s a good market to go after, like you kind of did?

Collins Agbonghama: I think like for my story, I stumbled upon the market accidentally. . Right. So if I’m to advise the plugin developer, how I advise them to actually stickly niche that has beginning of market.

The for those to run, you get, you know, quite in off season to maybe carve out your development cost or, you know, just assay probably as is site e-comm or something that was not necessarily something you want to focus on. Syntech.

David Bisset: So you, so it might be a good idea. I mean, you said you stumbled into it accidentally, but you, not everyone is, has the time or the patience or the free plugin already acquired to stumble into that accidentally.

So, what I w so if somebody is looking for a niche market and S so one of the places can you share with us, like one of the places that you got, I think you mentioned this in slack, one of the places that you got, some of your ideas from. I don’t want to sh I don’t want to steal your thunder, but but I do think you got with one of the places.

Collins Agbonghama: Yeah. So basically see communities, for example, your Facebook group, Facebook. Yeah. You could look around your groups.

And significant blue dodgy or if they sell their positions that solved that problem. Yeah. You could also look around where this community lack on the WordPress community and also on twitter too, to get ideas from those places. Yeah. So you look for that. Yeah. I belong to quite a number of WordPress related groups. I try to see if I can the solutions to some of that problem

yeah. Although I normally don’t do that often, but back in the days I used to, you know, look at problems users are facing through DAS solutions for those particular problems and see if it will flash on. And if at the end of the day, it doesn’t really get any trash on it, and move onto the next thing.

David Bisset: W, you know, that’s been, that’s not the first time I’ve heard that, but I think it has to be repeatedly reminded that look for S look for something that’s repeatedly being mentioned as an itch or, well, look for something that people are complaining about and see if you can fix it.

And that doesn’t require creating a new plugin. But if somebody, like you said, you were in Facebook, was it a learn dash Facebook? Yeah. Okay. So it would Lauren dash Facebook group, for example, you see what people are either complaining about, or they keep asking the same questions over and over again, obviously LearnDash is probably looking at that too, but because you’re, I’m guessing because you’re a smaller, faster developer that you can create that kind of integration with the plugin that you have.

I think that’s pretty smart. You said also not just Facebook boob groups, but Twitter and Reddit where your other places you were looking, but you, I should say Browns.

Collins Agbonghama: Yeah. Yeah. So, I normally do community like Facebook group. Ready time to that in the evenings before I’m also at night before I go to bed, just to see what people are talking about. You know, was it the news over. Was actually happening in the community. And also I belong to because of belonging to the marketing software, Facebook group stream, and just look around and see what people are talking about. Yeah. So that physically. I get most of my exits

David Bisset: That’s fantastic. And I think you kind of have to go with where the regular users go. Oftentimes I think a lot of developers kind of, I don’t know, I think maybe they’re looking in the too high up in terms of what problems to solve sometimes, you know, like these like monstrous integrations and sometimes it’s the simple itches other.

Watch what the developers to scratch. I’m just going, I’m just simply, still amazed at that again in about a, what was it? You broke even on this plugin five figures and four months. And just for those who are going to look at the site later, I’ll spoil it for you. There is a simple, log-in WPS simple pricing.

It looks like it’s per site and it’s $49 standard for one year, one license for one site. And the agency has unlimited sites for $99 per year. I’m just bringing these prices because these prices are actually very reasonable for like a particular plugin. So that in itself, if you’ve already made, if you’ve already broke, even in four months, And we’re not talking, it’s not like this plugin costs like a million dollars per purchase and that’s oh yeah.

It’s easy to make up money in four months. So you must be getting, and you don’t have to reveal numbers here, but you must be getting some great you must be getting a lot of traction to be able to do it in that, that quickly. How do you advertise, how did you advertise the pro version of log-in WP?

Did you use the free plugin for that? Or did you go back to these Facebook groups and what I mean. What was your general marketing plan? Once you figured out these people, once you figured out this solution you made was going to be good for these people.

Collins Agbonghama: So what I did was after bloody probation I anchored in to the???

That’s been emotional ID. Then I also created a website for the product. And wrote a few documentation and actually started doing a little bit of content marketing, although that hasn’t really brought seizing yet, yet, but majority of the, sales or marketing, although we see that from the free version. Yeah.

David Bisset: What do you think about the WordPress?

Plugin ecosystem today. I mean, you just like everyone else sees acquisitions by large companies. Large companies hosting companies are they’re large companies. They take these big plugins, but they also take small developers to sometimes some developers have talked about. You know, there, there are these large companies putting lots of money and people toward these plugins and they feel like maybe their opportunities are reduced greatly because now, you know, five years ago, seven years ago, a lot of people were still small.

A lot of developers are small shops. And now if you decided to make a certain plugin, for example, That happens to be similar to a large, you know, plugin that’s made by a larger company. That’s a tough nut to crack. As I like to say, do you think there’s still room in the WordPress plugin ecosystem for developers to have the kind of success that you said you accidentally fell into it?

So I’m going to use your words, but do you think developers can still have these happy accidents in the space.

Collins Agbonghama: I’ll be honest. Backing it is when you creative, a WordPress Plugin. Publishing to any one place repository and maybe sit out almost other stuff. Most many times, oftentimes the plugin will grow organically and you’ve already gotten up to 1000 or thousands of installation activities so that our child, but I told him the same, like before actually we really very hard to grow and stand out from the crowd. Yeah. So now these, you actually really need to have it big marketing budget. Yeah. Content marketing. Yeah. And also promote promoting the plugin.

And also if you breed it, plugin actually takes, I think our months for you to go from so. 500 active installation or a thousand active installation, unless maybe he gets people back. Some of the major WordPress, Blockstack, maybe WPTarvern, Post Status and the likes. Trying to grow in new plugin, actually be very difficult, have seen a lot of in about plugging out to struggle with it.

Typical example is actually the guy that, so that owns home Slice WP. Yeah, then also on a couple of other plugins plugging or touching it. So it’s really very difficult, but so that’s actually the states or the secretion of tips. When you work for some plugging markets, do you just need to have money to spend on marketing and even spending it on marketing and trying to trying to promote.

Many times max, even months need any results. So it’s really incredibly to be the new WordPress plugin.

David Bisset: Do you think that you would have had the same kind of success if you started fresh or do you think you had to acquire Peter’s log-in redirect plugin because it already was in the plugin repo.

Collins Agbonghama: There is a number of plugins that does exactly what we were doing. Logging of loopy in the WordPress plugin repository, but many times if you search for, let’s see you might not even see them in the first week because yeah, they’re hating, we built down the paging. WordPress Search results. So it’s, I really don’t, it’s actually very difficult.

Yeah. So that actually this decision of if you a new WordPress program, I’m not sure I would have had the same level of success. Yeah. Which I’m acquiring a new plugin. It’s our basically was piggybacking on the already existing user base on trying to upset the probation. If I didn’t acquire the plugin, I’m not sure I would have liked to seen such a success at all. So that’s why they decided reality.

David Bisset: Yeah. Sad reality because yeah, it’s very hard to get brand new plugin to have traction now in the WordPress plugin system. So a lot of strategies I’ve seen, not just yours. I have been to acquire a plugin that has a lot of installations. And also you also mentioned there was something very interesting was the plugin search, which I, that’s not the first time I’ve heard that either. Where if you happen to rank high in a particular search word, for whatever reason you obviously tend to get more attention. So it’s almost. There is an algorithm in the WordPress plugin, repo for searches that you enter. That’s been, it’s kind of being watched by a lot of people.

We, you know, the secret sauce that algorithm is only held by very relatively few people. So, to obviously not gain the system but yeah, if you appear at the top, for some reason, when someone types in a good keyword, they’re more than likely to check out your plugin and then they’re more than likely to install it.

And. More than likely to see your pro integrations and then upgrade. So that makes perfect sense. I

Collins Agbonghama: okay. I have a suggestion for the WordPress plugin repo.

It should be really absolutely days if they go, they could add on like a filter for popular plugins, new plugins. Yeah. That would allow for a lot of now plugins to get more visibility .

David Bisset: Yeah, they do have a featured plugins area on their homepage, but that featured plugins is I think cherry picked because right now it’s classic editor, it’s kismet jet pack and classic widgets. I mean, it’s all automatic. Or similar really related stuff.

Collins Agbonghama: I would love the filter to be in the section. Lets say you are looking for a SEO plugin. After tapping in the ASU, in the search post, the results you’ll get less. The feedback will be, less see, on the side bar. Well, this century is what’s really cool. You know, sits out, back, open up plugins that new plugins. That will be really excellent.

David Bisset: Well, I know some people are probably getting this information, you know, I’m putting it into their spreadsheets.

I know that they’re there. And I would like to, as you like to see that information come out in the public. And not keep it to some selves. Maybe we’ll see that maybe assumed, but I agree with you what I wanted to tell people about, because I haven’t heard you give a lot of interviews. I at least maybe I missed all these wonderful interviews you’ve given, because this is the first time I’ve heard your voice.

I do, however, have read your, this is your first one. Oh God man. I’m so sorry. I should not have been your first podcast. I re yeah. Believe me. Anybody who talks to you in the future. We’ll is much, much better. I thought you did the WP minute, but we’ll get to that in a second. I do want to point people though, when they’re, when they finish listening to you want to learn more about you, you did an excellent hero press essay.

I’m not sure when it was this thing does not have a date on it, but it looks like it was probably early 2019. I’m guessing by the comments. You did w I’m going to put it in the show notes for this podcast. It’s called WordPress saved my life. And I think if people want to learn more about your history with the net and with the web and then WordPress and in particular, I mean, you directly said in the post WordPress saved my life.

Apparently you were able to make enough revenue to live pretty comfortably in Nigeria things. Plugin works and your premium plugin profile press and all of that. So I encourage people if you like listening to Collins, first of all, ping him and post out of slack or on Twitter and tell him he should be doing more interviews because he’s a smart man, but then also read the hero press as well to get some background on it.

One thing I did want to ask you about though, before time runs out for both of us For your w three w three guy handle. Is that, what, how did you come up with that? This isn’t the last question. I’m just curious.

Collins Agbonghama: Oh, okay. Oh, and back in the days while I was trying to learn web development, actually, learned, a lot of.

What I know, like HTML CSS from w three schools. Yeah. So we replace the schools with guys who have been using that that’s been running for so long.

David Bisset: Yeah. It makes sense. Yeah. It makes sense. Then when you said w three schools, I’m like, oh yeah, of course. I remember w three schools. They’re still around.

Yeah. But I remember early days when I was learning stuff like you, I would Google something and w three schools was notoriously, always the top. Ranks in Google and that caused some controversy in terms of they were, I don’t know if they were gaming the system or whatever, but it, nevertheless, it didn’t matter.

It didn’t matter to me the information was there. And at the time it was really good. Was that in stack overflow for me were the two things that got me going way, way back. Yeah. So that’s cool. The other link I do want to send you, I do want to ask you real quick about this. So we did mention, we did, I just mentioned now talked about profiles.

And I’m going to blink in the show notes here, and it was something that happened. Let’s see. It’s hasn’t, it’s like mid last year. All of that, and I’m not, I don’t want to go into the story of the background. First of all, the link I’m going to share the WP minute article is going to ha is going to explain it.

It’s sharing an interview with you and Matt, and we kind of covered it in post status as well, but there was some confusion in the community when you acquire this was another acquisition, correct. And then he made some changes to the. That didn’t sit well with some people that didn’t sit well with some people.

And I know that must’ve been a difficult it couldn’t have been an easy experience to have that kind of feedback come at you especially since a lot of people probably didn’t know you. I didn’t know you honestly. And that’s kind of the reason why I wanted. I always like to talk to people eventually that I, that are doing things in the community because you don’t want to be the F you don’t want to hear the first thing someone is doing, not knowing them.

And then you hear about this and then you don’t know anything about them. So what do humans typically do? They typically think, oh, they just assume soon bad intentions. Right? And I know you didn’t have any bad intentions, but now that we have a year. Almost a year has passed since then. And you’ve, you’re continuing to update the plugin, I think.

Right? Yeah. Yeah. What would, what were the lessons that you would feel you took away from that experience and what could plugin developers potentially learn? What knowledge can you bestow going through that particular learning, learning experience with the profile press. Yeah.

Collins Agbonghama: So I would like to put it out there that there isn’t acquire the WP user avatar plugin, or basically the cost we’ve.

We genuinely, were requests for to create a feature that allows them to let start user upload custom profile data. And also for them to. You know, yeah. Basically to have a custom. user profile. So wanted to be the future into posts. Then I discovered there was a plugin that actually does that. And even more, it has incubation with job boards and stuff like that.

So, similar to what I did similar to map which w login VP pushed the auto and was willing to. To say the plugin on. Then I acquire the plugin. Then I revamped the plugin as I, or I rebranded the plugin as four factors. I really didn’t know.

Oh, I did not remove any feature from the plugin. Yeah. What, in hindsight, I change most of the complaints or reports that I took. You release a simple plugin on, I needed to do really very complex plugin for that. I really apologize. I never really thought it was going to. So, you know, John’s going to this situation will be that messy, but I think it’s being over six months of sooner and at the heat of the moment, our, the peak of the situation we had we had the issue of the plugging drops from four point five to

Yeah.to eight point two, one or 1.5 on stock. Yeah. But over time, we’ll start fixing many of the bugs then, you know, trying to do add back the bow. I use that time .We’ve gradually improve the review on about rating on the plugin from 1.5 to three. And we’ve continually I more on features that we get a lot of feature requests on with listened to many of those teacher requests and really to the plugin, you could check the plugin and see some of the recent reviews of cost of users.

So many of them, you didn’t know what actual account that’s done. Division-wide many users were really very upset. Yeah. For that. I really apologize.

David Bisset: These things happen, especially since things move so quickly in the WordPress ecosystem and plus, so plus once something catches on Twitter, sometimes it explodes. Yeah.

Collins Agbonghama: I actually wanted to revert, but I told you want to do with artistic changes, but I spoke to a couple of friends and the advice, some advice there, you know, regard to that. In the heat of the more mental in that particular, during that time we had some genuine customer messaging telling us or us seeing more features to be included like adding a payment feature on improving on the member direction and stuff like that. So we already have people that have already upgraded and loved the plugins.

And so trying to revert back to 10 to really, you know, make the situation even more messier. So I’d said to, you know, live it contentfully, there was another plugin or two that for the old plugin on. So people that were disappointed or that didn’t love the change, this most of the, actually the name of the plugin is one user avatar.

We’ll talk about actually using any customization or actually losing any features in some, the old plugged into that was actually the plugin actually act a light immigration deck for all disciplines. Yeah. So I think that actually is the situation.

David Bisset: Yeah. And I understand here, and I’ll just read the quote here from the WP minute here.

It says to, to kind of wrap things up on this, it says, because I think your situation, it, a lot of times people feel alone in some of the challenges that they face dealing with. Plug-ins especially if you work remotely. And especially, I’ll be honest with you. I mean, you being in Africa, I wouldn’t be surprised if you if someone working in Africa versus someone working.

New York New York. There’s a lot of people they’re writing plugins and writing software and so forth. And maybe in certain places in another country somewhere there, there isn’t many. I mean, sometimes you feel a physical presence sometimes, you know, It does add to being lonely or being left out, or at least it looks that way on Twitter or something.

You know, it looks like, you know, you have all these or these comments or coming in the ratings and all that on wordpress.org, but you did make a good point here. And I just wanted to repeat what you said on the WP minute Lincoln. Of course, we’ll include this in the show. Moats show notes. And you said maintaining free plugins.

Unpaid labor. And it’s very demanding. You get droves of users demanding help, and then even if you do help them, you can get criticized for doing so. And as soon as you offer a paid version to help offset the cost of development and maintenance for the free version you get criticized. And that’s true.

That’s you’re only as good as your last job and you own what’s the expression I’m looking for. I’ll think of this in a second. Cause I’m going to have to edit this part cause like, only, oh good things do not. Oh, good things. Don’t go on punished. Is sometimes an expression that I use, so you’re trying to do good, but sometimes people are just nasty regardless if you give them something for free or not, but I really appreciated the.

The story that you left in post status slack. I really appreciated it because it, the more developers share their stories, especially in places like post-data slack, which I believe is a great environment, especially in the business area to act and to actually share those wins. Because if you don’t share those wins Collins, then especially, you know, some people like if I were you and I had this thing that happened to me last year, and I had a little egg on my face.

There I keep using the expressions that I don’t know if I was a little embarrassed if I was a little embarrassed by something that that happened to me that I did that happened to me just by chance. I’m not sure if I would be so brave to stick my head out in a community, but fortunately you, you are, and post status is a great place for that and that this win about log-in WP about making a financial.

Success in terms of just breaking even and show in such a short period of time is fascinating. And I can’t wait to share this win with the WordPress community where we’ll make a mention of it in a newsletter. And whenever people hear this podcast I, this is your first one. I’m glad it’s in this positive light because these plugin developers a lot of.

Are still unclear about where to find their ideas and using you as inspiration, I think is a really good thing they should be doing so kudos to you. And yeah. And I’m going to say you’re brave too, because you decided to talk with me and I didn’t I’m you and for your first podcast, and if you knew me at all, you probably would not have picked me as your first person to talk to you on a podcast, but.

I would like to have you back on though, maybe sometime later this year to talk more about some of the things that Mary and I were talking about, like, the WordPress community in Africa and how people are making such strides over there, what you have seen because you’re physically there firsthand to see some of these things.

And I think it’s important for the entire global community to be, to know each other better and to know what’s going on and not be focused. Other places in the world. But thank you very much for speaking with me. Is there, what are the best places for people to follow your work on your comments on the web?

Collins Agbonghama: I’m actually I’m actually active on twitter @w3guy then on Facebook or my Facebook.

David Bisset: that’s okay. Yeah. I’m not going to pry into your Facebook life. I really don’t.

Collins Agbonghama: And I also own also on the best non [email protected]. And you’re going to share down there my blog. Yeah.

David Bisset: Yeah. You’re going to share that in the, and I’ll put it in the show notes as well. Great.

David Bisset: Thank you very much for your insight. Really appreciate it. And I’m going to look forward to seeing more of your small wins.