January 29, 2012 – MakerBlock

Simple Series – Half-Life; Market Research

I’m wondering at what point will the downloads on this plugin plateau. Whatever the eventual baseline download rate, I would suspect that speaks to the amount of maximum market share that is possible for a plugin that performs these functions.¹ I would think that downloads would spike when I release a new version of the plugin. Given that I released about five updates to this plugin the first day, I would assume some of those initial downloads were duplicative.

As far as rankings go, at this time this plugin is #5 on WordPress.org’s plugin search page, #5 inside WordPress’s internal “Add New” plugins search page, and no where to be seen in the Google rankings. Looking at Google Keywords, it appears that there’s no small amount of search traffic for the keywords “WordPress series.” There’s some 200,000 global monthly searches. One of the reasons I’m following this so closely is that I’ve had a few ideas for plugins that I could sell.²

Here’s the WordPress.org plugin download stats for “Simple Series with SEO!” for the first four days.

1/26/2012: 1 download
1/27/2012: 99 downloads
1/28/2012: 37 downloads
1/29/2012: 20 downloads

What will tomorrow bring?

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I promise I won’t subject your RSS feed to my obsessive stats checking. Much of the time I use this blog as a way to document/save/organize information that is probably really only interesting to me. [↩]
A brother’s gotta earn, right? [↩]

TARDIS’s are more practical than you might think…

You could use a prop TARDIS for a tool shed, chicken coop, garden shed, file cabinet, etc.¹

But, as I was watching that video of Sillysparrowness build her TARDIS, I couldn’t help thinking… This is a time and relative dimensions in space device – why does it need to be enclosed? As long as you are going to use it as a prop, rather than as a storage device of some sort, you would really only need the front, the left or right panel, and the top. Admittedly, then you could only take front or 3/4 perspective view shots. If it were modular, the left and right sides could be swapped back and forth so you could take a left or right-sided 3/4 view picture.

If constructed in such a fashion it wouldn’t take up much room if you were to put it facing into a corner.²

A place to change clothes very quickly before you go off to save the world? [↩]
NOBODY PUTS BABY IN A CORNER! [↩]

Anti-Virals

Here’s the WordPress.org plugin download stats for “Simple Series with SEO!” for the first three days.

1/26/2012: 1 download¹
1/27/2012: 99 downloads²
1/28/2012: 37 downloads³

It looks after being bumped from the newest plugins slot, the downloads dropped precipitously. So much for going viral, money, and fame, eh?

Actually, I’m happy to have helped out a 100 people or so. I also think a lot more people will end up using this plugin over time. The alternatives, while very good, are more difficult to use and do tend to add a lot of other stuff into your WordPress installation.

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That was me installing it in another blog! [↩]
And a blog ain’t one [↩]
I have nothing clever to say about this. [↩]

DrawBot – The Assembly, Part V

I just finished soldering the Adafruit Motor Shield … this time with all the bits in the correct places. The Adafruit directions are incredibly detailed, I just soldered a few parts in wrong like an idiot last time. This time it went much smoother and much quicker.

I just wired up the two steppers, plugged in the power adapter, plugged in the USB cable, uploaded the Polargraph firmware, fired up the Polargraph software, and asked it to try to draw something. And it started to twitch away in what appeared to be a meaningful pattern!!!

Huzzah!

Now… for sleep!

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