Just my 2 cents

  • Hi there,

    Congrats on your new plugin. I have actively been following all achievement/point plugins for a few years now, and as such i am always skeptical when a new one pops up. That said, i figured i’d leave a few thoughts here.

    1. Please consider commercializing your plugin as soon as you can. Every single free point/achievement plugin up to date has failed and was abandoned. Most likely because the developers started the project with a lot of ideals and time, only to have life get in the way. If you make money with the project it is more likely you will stay motivated and we will get a plugin that lasts.

    2. Please think as specific as possible while developing conditions. One of the few surviving free plugins (MyCred) has managed to stay alive because it offers ways to reward users for very specific actions (i.e reading a specific post/category, claiming an offline code/voucher etc.). There are already enough plugins that reward users for logging in, sharing or commenting in general.

    3. Consider early on which profile plugins to support. Users only care about achievements (i.e. Badges) if they have the ability to show them to others. As such, take a look at ultimate member, buddypress etc. and plan ahead.

    I could go on, but what i’m mainly trying to get across is that coding and more importantly maintaining a robust achievement/point system is a huge undertaking. It’s a perfect example of a ‘go big or go home’ activity. I applaud you for giving it a try and hope to see your plugin grow to a professional product. If it does, i will certainly be using it.

    https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/wordpoints/

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
  • Plugin Author J.D. Grimes

    (@jdgrimes)

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

    1. I’m already beginning to commercialize the plugin by offering premium add-ons. I watched the collapse of CubePoints, and like you I believe that commercialization is essential to maintaining a points plugin.
    2. In the next version of the plugin (2.1), conditions for awarding points are going to become much more fine-grained. It will also be very easy for developers to add new types of conditions. I’ll continue to allow more fine-tuned configuration in the future.
    3. I’ve had requests for integration with both BuddyPress and Ultimate Member, and I’m planning to make the BuddyPress add-on my next priority. I agree that supporting the popular profile plugins is important.

    Having watched CubePoints collapse (and now MyCred), I have to agree: points plugins need to go big or go home. I was using CubePoints when it collapsed, and that is partly why I created WordPoints. My plan is definitely to try and “go big”. And I think I’m getting close to taking WordPoints to the next level. We’ll just have to wait and see.

    Thank you again for your thoughts!

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
  • The topic ‘Just my 2 cents’ is closed to new replies.