I am a firm believer in lifelong learning, and especially as a service provider, I think you should be continually expanding or deepening your skillsets.
In my case, I have been using WordPress since 2005, which sounds like forever, and in the tech space, it kind of is. But in that time, I have remained a dabbler where it comes to code. Although I started my tech life as a programmer I took little interest in become a WordPress developer.
I tweaked and customized themes and plugins, tossing code in my functions.php where necessary, but I stayed away from learning to actually build themes and plugins myself. I suppose I was enjoyed the same thing that brought many to WordPress — the availability of tools to suit my needs.
Of course, being a part of the community means you should actually take part in the community and give something back. I managed to skillfully avoid that for a long time. So alongside my entry into the community space with the local WordPress meetup I am starting (more on that in a bit), I want to start contributing some substance.
So my development journey begins. I am more interesting in plugin development than theme development, so I am jumping in. I have some ideas for plugins I want to develop, not necessarily to start a plugin business. Some of them form part of a larger vision I have for a future venture though.
I plan to share my process, and my thoughts on what I’m learning as I go. So if plugin development interests you, feel free to follow along.