This past weekend, notable, highly respectable [and former] Automattician Philip Arthur Moore wrote a fantastic article that’s been making it’s way through the usual suspects and circles entitled We’re Ruining WordPress (This Needs To Stop).
But in the hopes that some of those of you who read this blog are fellow bloggers, publishers, readers, designers, developers, and so on, I wanted to link it here with you to make sure you didn’t miss it and because I hope it resonates with you.
In short: If you’ve yet to read it, I highly recommend it – it short, poignant, and will likely strike a chord with many of you who are looking to contribute to the WordPress economy, have a business within the WordPress economy, or who enjoy following the WordPress economy.
Many of the things that Philip outlines in his post is what we’ve seen happen in other economies, too: Just look at Google Play or the App Store and how little apps cost. Games that used to run us $30 – $50 on a given system now cost $4.99 to $9.99 and people still complain (and it’s not even worth talking about in-app purchases).
Anyway, as much as I enjoy writing about WordPress and the various facets that come with it, and as much as I enjoy doing so with the occasional meme and what not, this particular post hit home with me because I’ve been working in the WordPress economy for several years at this point, I’m getting ready to push forward with a new effort, and because I’ve been thinking about this for the last few months (and clearly more so over the last few days), I thought I’d write a WordPress theme developer introspective of sorts on how it feels to be a part of the WordPress theme developer economy, its challenges, what I want to see change, and what I plan to begin doing as soon as possible.