Computer screen with the old Sports Bench Homepage

Ready to release Sports Bench to the wild

The time has finally come.

After coming up with the idea in January, putting the ideas onto the screen for designs in May, spending the summer making it a reality in code and spending the last two months checking and making sure it works, the Sports Bench WordPress package is finally ready to be released.

Well, kind of.

The package is available for purchase at the moment, but it’s a bit of a soft release right now, especially for the theme. The theme has a longform feature, but it’s only accessible through the post template feature, which is coming out in WordPress 4.7. So technically, the release of the package won’t be until around Dec.6, whenever the next version of WordPress finally drops.

Personally, I’m just glad to finally have finished something that was a challenge and a joy to create. Frankly, I don’t really care if it makes that much money. That’s not really the goal with it. Instead, I just wanted to create something that showed off a lot of what I’ve learned in the past four years as a web and WordPress developer.

And the best part about it is that it’s still not quite done. I have some ideas I want to try with the plugin down the line, like widgets in the dashboard, a better backend visually and maybe even an app. But those things are down the line a bit.

As for what’s coming up next, outside of trying to find a full-time job, I’m hoping to start coding a iOS called “WP Developer”, which will allow theme and plugin developers to keep track of downloads, active installs, ratings, other stats and questions about the theme/plugin on the WordPress.org forums on the go. Surprisingly, I couldn’t find anything in the App Store for that, so I’ll fill that void. Also, I’m learning AngularJS (which I said I would do this time last year, but I finally have the time) since that’s where the internet appears to be headed. I’m hoping to start working on a daily blog theme that runs with AngularJS after the start of the new year.

But now it’s time to enjoy the completion of a very large project.

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