I’m building and launching a new WordPress plugin with a new partner soon, and we’re planning on doing it live and in public. Weekly calls will be live streamed and archived. Some of it will not be pretty. :-) Sign up here if you want to follow along: https://express.us10.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=9ee9c87b6b6...
During the pandemic I created an online, multiplayer version of the domino-based game, Mexican Train (https://mexicantrain.online). Ads didn't do much, so I switched to donations. It got quite popular during lockdowns. It's leveled off a bit now, but still generates more than beer money through donations every month. People are very generous.
I built a WordPress plugin and sold it after a few years. I'm currently promoting another. Th answer the original question "how did you come up with the idea?" - I find blue ocean apps that I like and rebuild them, customized for WordPress. My first plugin with a kanban board inspired by Trello. My current plugin is Social Link Pages ( https://sociallinkpages.com ), inspired by Lintree, Carrd, etc.
Not quite what you’re asking, I think, but I know a few developers who nailed a piece of software that they live off of and gently maintain over time. Most of the examples I’m thinking of lucked into one or two big clients who are 80% of the revenue.
During the pandemic, I built an online version of the dominos-based game, Mexican Train, for my wife’s family. They play it often at family gatherings. Her mom posted it to the Villages Facebook group (a huge retirement community here in the US). Mexican Train is very popular in retirement communities.
It blew up. It peaked at around 2600 concurrent players on Christmas. It’s slowed down, but still averages around 70 games/day.
The most amazing party was I run it by donation. I’ve received enough donations to keep it running, and dozens of cards, letters, and long emails thanking me profusely for building the game, and how it kept people connected across the miles and especially during lockdowns.
How does it handling formatting and styling? Specifically, is there an option to remove/replace all the div tags with css and replace them with p tags?
There won't be any div tag. All paragraphs of a Google Docs is converted into p tag only.
Number list is converted into ol and bullet lists are converted into li.
So it's 1-to-1 mapping. The produced html markup is excellent and high quality.
Good for SEO too.
Not quite what you're asking, but I host all my own sites through spinupWP on Digital Ocean (easy, cheap), and my clients host with ServeBolt (unbelievably fast managed hosting).
There's still a huge market. I've done this for years with varying success. It's just a lot of work so might interfere with your full-time commitment to your PHD, and it's really all about marketing more than development. So be prepared for that. It's a lot of fun, tho. Any specific questions? Message me here or through gelform.com
