My 2013

Posted byIain Leave a comment on My 2013

As 2013 draws to a close it is a good chance to reflect on the year I’ve had, and as I did a post last year then why not make it a tradition.

2013 started with making the jump into full time freelancing which, initially was an experiment for 6 months, has lasted all year. My biggest and most successful premium WordPress plugin Instagrate Pro has continued to sell and has gone from strength to strength with a recent update to the licenses. There are also some big ideas planned for it in 2014 so keep an eye out.

I continued working for Dev7studios building and developing their plugins and web applications and it turned into a busy year at Dev7studios HQ! I also spent a few months working with the folks at Outlandish on various projects. They are a super clever bunch and I learnt a lot from my time there; I am now a Git convert and feel so much more comfortable with it now.

I also took on various clients who needed websites. Every one was a WordPress site and my favourite was LakeView Day Camp. I am particularly pleased with the custom plugin I created for them to display their facilities on a Google Map of their camp which resulted in the premium plugin Cartogram.

Towards the end of the year I got the chance to write a few WordPress based guest posts which has wet my appetite for writing and is something I hope to continue in 2014:

At the start of 2013 I jotted down some goals for the year. Not resolutions as such, but things I wanted to accomplish both professional and personal. I did not manage to accomplish all of the goals but here are the notable ones I completed.

Run More / Play More Basketball

It was a great start to the year from a fitness perspective. I was running lots, playing basketball regulary and playing 5 aside football every week. It felt good… until I ruptured my achilles tendon!

After surgery and a lengthy recovery programme, six months later I am almost back to normal, but 2013 will always be a bit of a rubbish year because of that injury. However, it did bring some positives. I began to write about my injury, fitness and the recovery on a blog I set up and I even wrote a guest post on the subject. During my recovery I was extremely thankful for the remote working my freelance work allowed. I also made the most of being immobile on the sofa by building the website for Michelle’s teacher resource download site Harriet & Violet, which has proved popular and has a bright future.

Grow a large beard

This was one of the more whimsical goals. I have been working on it from August to the time of writing.

Release a Plugin on CodeCanyon

Although I sell Instagrate Pro through my own site, I knew that any other premium plugins would require more exposure and would need to be sold through a marketplace like CodeCanyon. I hoped to have one plugin released on there this year but I am please that I managed to build and release five plugins.

Make Things for the Web

This year I launched Warbler, a Twitter monitoring tool. It is currently in public beta and although not a massive success it has been a great learning experience and still solves a problem for me.

In January I built DeLorean Ipsum, a small jQuery plugin that produces placeholder text from the Back to the Future script. Totally useless but a great bit of fun and it got some crazy traffic early on thanks to this tweet:

Twenty Fourteen

I am looking forward to the challenges of the New Year. I hope to continue as a freelancer, working on the projects I have planned, building more plugins and hopefully writing more about WordPress.

I will also be a married man and I can’t wait!

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