The WordPress community is full of great people doing great things, including bloggers, volunteers, and entrepreneurs. I recently had the opportunity to speak with one of those intrepid WordPress entrepreneurs: David Rashty, the founder of CreativeMinds.
Founded in 2008, CreativeMinds offers WordPress plugins, Magento extensions, and custom development for both platforms. Rashty has over 20 years of experience working in executive-level positions at various startups, and she reached the WordPress community in the typical way: blogging. A startup I was working for chose WordPress as its blogging platform of choice, and when the external plugins they were using weren't up to the mark, they ended up coding their own.
In this post, I'll share the highlights of my interview with Rashty (which I've edited lightly for length and clarity), including her recommended apps and critical thoughts on the current WordPress plugin system.
1. What is the creative mind about?
CreativeMinds is the company behind plugins like CM Tooltip Glossary and CM Ad Changer. What you may not know is how the business started and how much work goes into those products. This is what Rashty said:
Our WordPress business started as a side project while I was working at another company and gradually grew to become a major one. We focus on developing unique and robust WordPress based products where we believe solutions are non-existent or not as we would like to have them.
We invest a great deal of time in each product, trying to add value in functionality, making the UI and UX simple and intuitive, and doing a lot of testing before launch. We are always the first customers for our products, which gives us the ability to understand what is missing. Once we launch, we get a lot of ideas and feedback from our users.
2. How your team works
I thought this part was great because it really exemplifies online business in our age of globalization. Rashty explained that the CreativeMinds team is spread across three continents:
Our team has grown over the last year and now consists of 15 people (not all of them work full time). We are divided into several teams: product, marketing, design, customer service and instruction design.
We are spread over three continents. Our developers are in Europe, while the marketing is in Israel and the United States. We are part virtual and part not. We have an office in Europe and an office in Israel, but some of our team members work from home.
3. What programs and apps do you recommend?
Managing an international team and dealing with the normal stresses, strains and needs of business can be challenging. To keep everyone on the same page, Rashty and her team use the project management app Asana.
Here is a list of several other programs and apps that Rashty told me he recommends:
- Scout Help for customer support
- Moz for search engine optimization (in addition to Google Analytics)
- Crazy egg to see what customers are doing on the CreativeMinds website
- Monitis to track server performance and reliability
- Google docs to help with planning and management
4. How you generate WordPress plugin ideas
Having ideas for plugins can be the hardest part of development. Rashty explained her process:
The ideas come from the clients we interact with and from our own wishes and dreams. Not all are very successful. We have developed several products that we throw away or reuse in some other way. We always start with some basic MVP (minimum possible product) that we pull to see the comments and then we start to grow the product. Right now we are working on six new products. I'd say we get half of our product ideas from our customers and half internally.
5. What do you think about the free plugin model?
One of the most intriguing parts of my discussion with Rashty involved his views on the way WordPress plugins are presented and thought right now. He's very critical of the free plugin model:
Getting users to appreciate the fact that WordPress products take a great deal of time and effort to develop and even more to support is challenging. Some users still believe that all WordPress products should be free. I think this free model does not work: out of the 30,000 plugins on WordPress.org, the 95% are not well maintained or written according to WordPress standards, leading to clashes and problems once installed.
In your ideal world, premium plugins would play a bigger role and receive a bigger place in the community spotlight:
I think WordPress / Automattic should change the way it works and interacts with plugin developers and support them. We are part of what makes WordPress a great environment and we are part of the WordPress ecosystem… I'm trying to say: help us and support our efforts.
As an example, Magento by AOL provides a free catalog in which each developer can list their extensions, regardless of whether they are free or premium, and at the same time receive feedback and provide customer support. This is not possible with WordPress ... If there is no possible model that WordPress endorses and pushes, we will not see too many great plugins.
I asked him about his position and he replied further:
Another aspect of this problem is that many existing plugins are not written according to widely acceptable standards and are not well supported. To help our customers, we must deal with these add-ons. Usually we find ourselves explaining why another plugin they have installed is causing problems because it is not spelled correctly. In several cases at the same time they show JS / PHP errors.
My point is that in order to have good plugins, there must be a sustainable model that WordPress supports, and even drives, that allows plugin developers to develop and support their products.
6. Your Favorite WordPress Plugins
That doesn't mean that Rashty doesn't have all the plugins out there. Far from there. I asked him to list just a few of his favorite community plugins:
I'm lovin 'it Relevanssi and at the same time I am in contact with the developer from time to time. You are doing a great job and you have a wonderful product. At the same time we really like the Visual form builder which is less well known than the alternatives.
At the same time I asked him to highlight some CreativeMinds plugins that he thinks are some of the best:
I think in addition to the tooltip glossary, we have a great new product that we just released called OnBoarding Plugin, which is a great user experience and guidance tool that we are very proud of.
7. Current projects of the company
Rashty was kind enough to give us a look at some of the upcoming CreativeMinds offerings:
We have several plugins cooking: A new WordPress reporting plugin that will be a platform to generate reports for different needs and use cases. A video course management plugin that will help the organization track and control video lessons, a unified product catalog to merge multiple eCommerce catalogs such as EDD and WooCommerce, and several new products that are still in the stage. planning.
8. Your hopes for the future of the company
With years of work behind her, I asked Rashty to look to the future. He explained how he envisions the evolution of the WordPress market in the coming years and what role CreativeMinds could play in that:
I think the WordPress market is still evolving and brands are still building. We would like to see CM as an appreciated brand for great WordPress products, in the same way that we look at EDD / WooCommerce / Yoast / ElegantThemes and other good brands ...
I think the market we are in is going to grow. More organizations and companies are using WP as a content and e-commerce solution, and they need high-quality, reliable tools to power their content and sites. The needs for such tools are going to grow, so I think having a great selection of great WordPress tools is our goal.
conclusion
David Rashty has been very successful in the WordPress plugin market, and it's always interesting to hear a developer's perspective.
Let us know what you think about what you said: Do you use any of their recommended programs? Are you right about the free plugin model? Post in the comments below!
