BuddyDev: Rethinking The Future
As a regular member, you might have noticed the lack of active participation recently. The problems mostly originated from the financial crisis we have been facing for last 1 year. We were going through a tough period and honestly, could not concentrate on the things here. We planned to add more values, added more people to the team but lack of experience in managing resources/time always seemed to be a problem.
Last week, I have finally decided to trim down the team and we will be concentrating more on development rather than worrying about the financial woes. Since the team will be small(4 persons) from June, It will be easier for us to manage the work and everything.
In last 1 year, I learned a couple of lessons and the most important was simply adding people to the team does no good, you need to work with skilled people who share your vision. Anyway, I am happy that I learned something. In last few days, I have been doing introspection and here is what we will be doing in future:-
- Concentrate on Work & Work only
- Our supporters(and we love you) have been with us through all these time, let us give back
- Concentrate on Forum(Forums will be the most active place from today onward)
- Cut down support for free plugins on blogs(My apologies about this, But our paying customers deserve better service and we need to concentrate on serving them better). Supporting free plugins/themes via blog has taken a lot of time and we can not afford that anymore. The plugins/Themes support are only available via forums now.
- Release more Plugins(Free & Premium both), will be releasing a couple this week.
- Introduce new Ideas section for possible ideas suggestion(We are working on it and should have it by next weekend)
- Concentrate on Our blog(We will be posting tricks/tips, a lot of them , to help Developers, Site owners who use BuddyPress). We will have around 3-4 posts each week starting with tomorrow(Please do come back tomorrow to learn something new :)).
- Concentrate on Themes(I personally feel BuddyPress is underutilized in theme, we need to explore the potential more and there is no better way to show it than doing it)
- We will be adding new WordPress plugins and adding support for WordPress(without BuddyPress too) on BuddyDev
My sincere apologies to you all for the last 1 years mismanagement and bad response time on forums and comments. We are actively back now and you won't have any complains in future. I have missed you all my friends. I hope that you will join and support me in the new phase too as you guys have done earlier. Hope to see you all guys back again. Let us build a better community together.
Thank you for being with us all these times.
– Brajesh
Brajesh,
I can understand exactly where you are coming from. I wish you and your team good luck and prosperity; good things will come your way, I am sure. I have felt the sting of cutbacks and other financial issues this year as well. 🙁
I hope that anusharma is one of your remaining team members 😉 I look forward to enjoying your continued support and excellent theme/plugin craftsmanship. If there is anything that I, as a member, can do to help you just let me know! (and yes, I WILL be renewing my membership this June!!)
Best Regards,
Phillip Andrew Green
Hi Phillip,
Thank you for the kind words and your support. It means a lot 🙂
I hope that you are doing well now.
Yes, Anu(@anusharma) is still with us and we will be giving our best shot to the BuddyDev again.
Looking forward to provide better support and be more active again 🙂
Thank you
Brajesh
I am doing as well as can be expected for a single father with a sailboat he can't afford to fix and use!! ugh!
Sorry to hear about that. I really hope that things will go better for you in the future. Wish you all the best 🙂
Well Brajesh, just give all the support for the new times, and really say that we missed your cool technology and that whatever you need, just ask! Good luck on the new stage!
🙂
Thank you Selu 🙂
I have cherished your support. Looking forward to the future ahead 🙂
sorry to hear but all the good luck coming year! Keep up the good work
Hi Hendrik,
Thank you. We are hoping for the best 🙂
Tough choices in times of hardships, but it's understandable. Here's hoping things work out for you and the Buddydev Team!
I was wondering though, I still have a few question concerning your awesome BuddyBlog plugin. I would be willing to pay for support as there's just a few things needed in order to make it perfect for the current website I'm working on. Would I need a membership in this case?
Thanks in advance!
Hi Sam,
Thank you for the support.
I haven't been able to support our plugins recently on the blog. Anyway, please drop me a mail via contact form and let me know your requirements.
A membership is always appreciated 🙂
Just sent my email!
Many thanks in advance Brajesh! 🙂
Hi Brajesh,
Just checking in to see if the email made it to your inbox yet. Let me know if I need to send another one.
Thanks again, and a have a pleasant day!
Hello Brajesh,
I think that your strategy will help provide you with greater control, lower frustration, and create some breathing room to enjoy life. Anyway, here are a couple of things to consider: 1.) Provide some sort of error-reporting template that helps both the user lay out the problem in a manner that's beneficial to your team the first time around vs having to continually circling back to the user; and 2.) Perhaps a way to upload video where the user can demonstrate what is happening?
I think giving your subscribers voting capability for the suggested ideas against any existing and/or future plugin would help to prioritize and schedule out the work you pursue. Stephanie and Steve at FormidablePro use this method. It seems to work. It certainly helps to manage user expectations.
And I do agree with you, the theming in BuddyPress needs to be extended in a way that is "shocking". And by "theming" I mean the UI, not the backend. I want the users to be blown away by what's possible… stuff that they've never seen before and provides them capabilities and solves "interactivity" problems that have not been demonstrated on a "community-type" website implementation; that is, where the difference between the typical "social network" (FB), vs a "community" (BuddyPress) is made abundantly clear.
Peace!
Hi Quint,
Thank you for the Support and the the insightful reply.
I am going to implement your first point tomorrow for sure. It will help a lot.
Thinking about the video option, seems like an awesome idea.
As of subscribers, members voting is concerned, I and @anusharma have been working on Ideas suggest section for this site. It will take some time but we are going to have that on/before mid July for sure. The subscribers will have privilaged right and all members can suggest updates/new ideas. I am hoping that will certainly help us to bring better components/updates the plugins/themes quickly.
Thanks for justifying my point on BuddyPress theming. I completely agree with all your points about the UI and usability/interactivity.
We really hope to bring some freshness and set a trend in future 🙂