Last summer while visiting a good friend mine in Minnesota, I took a hard look at my architecture and decided it was time to give it an overhaul. The biggest challenge was bringing my great processes and tools into the mix while still maintaining PHP 5.2 compatibility. When it comes to things like unit testing and code sniffing, the general consensus is, “Can’t be done with PHP 5.2”. I was not satisfied with that answer so I took a crack at it.
After spending many many hours, I not only brought all my great processes to PHP 5.2, but I also published libraries and tutorials on how to do so. Now other programmers can accomplish the same tasks quite painlessly. If you are interested, you may check some of these out on GitHub.
With all my tools in place, I started planning out the new structure for my plugins with these goals in mind:
- Fully decoupled Pro and Basic versions
- Improved APIs and extendablity
- On demand class loading that is opache optimized
- Lighter plugin footprints
- Strict WordPress coding standards
- Verbose automated integration testing
- Easier to manage file names and directory structures
- Full translation support with built in languages
I knew this was going to be big process that would take months. I broke things out into logical steps and went to work. After a few months version 7.0.0 of the basic Advanced Sidebar Menu plugin was ready to launch. I was pretty nervous because it was a big structure change so I scheduled myself a full week in case of bugs. The release went amazingly. A couple small bugs which were caught within a couple hours and then all was well. The smoothest release to date.
I began the structure changes of Advanced Sidebar Menu Pro a couple of months ago, all the while keeping on schedule for the minor releases along the way. Over the weekend my Advanced Sidebar Menu plugin hit another great milestone of 300,000 downloads. What a great coincidence! I had not planned on releasing version 3.0.0 to go along with this milestone but sometimes things just work out that way.
Version 3.0.0 of Advanced Sidebar Menu Pro officially launched today! I’m feeling very exited and grateful for all my customers who made this epic journey possible.