Back in the game

Releasing a product out in the wild, especially a WordPress plugin, is certainly one of those things that is able to give you a special thrill.

First, there's this thing of putting out something you poured your whole self in for a significant amount of time – typically months, with little to no certainty of anything, let alone success of any sort.

Secondly, simply put, there's an enormous amount of stuff to do before the actual release. Just to name a few of the things to take care of:

1. Branding, because you want your plugin to look great and inspire trust.
2. Set up a support infrastructure, so that you'll be able to accept incoming requests from clients that are using your plugin.
3. Choose and configure a selling platform, which has the crucial prerequisite of having a clear view about how you want to handle licensing, even for freemium products.
4. Curate the SEO aspects of the launch.
5. Produce shareable content on social media that is interesting enough for people to interact with it, and genuine too, since downloads are not the only thing you want: what you're after are customers that are as enthusiast as you about your work, after all.
6. Trust your feelings and take the jump into the unknown.

That's a lot of stuff, I told you. And that's just scratching the surface: each of these points could be unpacked in many different subtasks, and at a certain point it's almost inevitable to confront a feeling of intimidation.

In all of this, you know what? I consider myself very lucky.

My business partner and I come from different backgrounds, but we share the same vision about what a product should be, especially in the WordPress space.

This month we've launched the free version of our latest plugin: it's called Advanced Columns and it's the professional solution for layout management in WordPress.

We want to change how layouts are built with the platform. Yes, it's a bold statement.

The Core instruments that are at one's disposal when you use WordPress can only get you that far: what's missing is a way of bundling all aspects of modern design together, from an accurate management of the visual and spacial hierarchy, to a precise and predictable way of handling responsiveness.

Advanced Columns is all that and much more.

Try it out and leave some feedback, if you like.