The Future of SimpleMap
I’ve been using Lighthouse to track my changes/bugs for SimpleMap, and it’s amazing. My workflow is so much better, and it’s easy to keep track of things.
That being said, I’m nearing a point with SimpleMap where my work on it will be a little more sporadic for a while. I’ve been working on it almost every night, and as I get closer to being done with 1.1.4 (and closer to starting 1.2) I feel that soon, there will only be bug fixes to worry about for a while. After 1.2 I don’t plan on adding any more major features. 1.2 will definitely bring more functionality to the location categories, including the ability to assign custom map markers for each category and to hide/show certain categories on your map.
In the relatively near future, I’m considering either opening up SimpleMap’s issue tracker to the public, or adding a support forum, so that there’s a more organized way of keeping questions, answers, bugs, and fixes online. I may not be developing new features for SimpleMap after 1.2 (at least not for a while), but I will still provide support as best I can.
The reason I’m thinking so seriously about this is because I’m starting another project. It’s something big, something involving WordPress that’s bigger than just a plugin. I am hoping to have it done by January 2010, or at least in beta by then. It will be a paid service, and it has a very specific target audience in mind, so a lot of the people using SimpleMap might not necessarily be interested in it. Anyway, it’s huge, it’s exciting, and it needs my time and attention if it’s ever going to get done. I’m working with my husband on it, and it will ultimately be a Barrett Creative product.
I don’t want to give much more away, so that’s it for now. Rest assured that you will see sneak peeks of the new project every now and then… and I will still be here for any and all SimpleMap questions. I do plan on concentrating on it as much as I have been until 1.2 is released. 1.1.4 is close enough to done that it should come out this week.