Talk about a December to Remember, amirite? 😂💪💯
In November of 2024 I started releasing free WordPress® and WooCommerce® plugins, and I liked the way it felt.
So I decided to do some more of that in December.
I called it a December to Remember, and I used Art the Clown as my mascot, because why not? 😎
Now that the month is over and the chaos has died down, I want to take some time to review what was accomplished.
Spoiler Alert – A LOT 😂
But first, was it a “December to Remember”?
In short, yes.
Next year, I am sure there will be people asking if I have any plans for a repeat – which means they liked it and they’d like to see some more of it.
Memorable? Absolutely.
New Plugins
In the month of December, I released 18 free WordPress® and WooCommerce® plugins for the community 🔥
Let’s take a look at each of them.
Matt decided that Automattic was going to charge non-profits for stats features they previous received for free. So I built a free stats plugin to replace the Jetpack version 🤷♂️
Since it looks like a lot of WordPress® devs are heading to Bluesky, I figured it would be nice to show up with a gift. And I did.
I built this plugin to help website owners ensure they aren’t using stock photography without paying for the licensing fees. Mutli-author websites are most at risk, and this plugin helps make the review process much easier.
Metadata Import/Export for Yoast
This plugin was built to help manage SEO on some client sites without having to manually edit the Yoast settings for each post individually. Because, who’s got the time for that?
Purchase Orders for WooCommerce®
This is a plugin I built as part of my #WooWednesday campaign, and helps users replace a $49/year option that Woo charges for.
When a block in the core editor doesn’t do what you expect it to, you make it do what you want. And that’s what I did here. This plugin adds extra feature to the core table block.
This plugin adds a way for you to upload a new file to replace the original, while retaining the originals to reference later. Now you don’t have to search & replace text strings to update an image URL site-wide.
This plugin adds a simple test order payment gateway with settings to choose the order status, giving you the ability to test order functionality without extra bloat or upsells.
Persistent Dismissible Notifications
Admin notices be damned, now you can add a plugin that gives you the ability to remove admin notices even if they don’t come that way by default. We’re gonna clean WordPress® up one plugin at a time 💪
Maintenance Mode for WordPress®
Speaking of building bloat free alternatives to sales machines, this plugin was created to help with that. It also lets you design your maintenance mode page with the block editor, because why not?
For the times you want to associate taxonomy with various others but not have multiple child categories fighting for the slug, this plugin is for you. Associate your taxonomies via a new setting in the edit screen and output the relations with included shortcodes.
Like our bodies, our websites need quality input in order to provide optimal output. An arbitrary score might make you feel good for a second, but making sure your site vitals are right will make you feel good for a lifetime.
Vertical Gallery Product Display for WooCommerce®
This plugin lets you move your WooCommerce® gallery images from underneath the featured image to the right/left in a vertical stack. I built this plugin because I saw someone write a tutorial on how to build a similar plugin, then they charged $19 to download the source code 🤦♂️
There was a discussion on X recently about how other platforms include accessibility checks for images, but sadly WordPress® does not. Well, now it does because this plugin stops content from being published if the images inside the content are missing alt text or not marked as decorative.
Shipping for Multiple Addresses for WooCommerce®
Continuing with the #WooWednesday campaign, I released this plugin to counter the $59/year solution that Woo provides while receiving abysmal reviews. Now you can ship to multiple addresses for free 😎
And to prove I’m not some angry asshole who wants to just harm WooCommerce®, here’s a plugin I built to help devs check their HPOS compatibility. The feature is over a year old, and you had to wait for me to build a compatibility checker 🤷♂️
Cleanliness is next to godliness and all that. So this plugin lets you remove users who are inactive. You’re able to choose the user role to target and the date the user needs to have been logged in by in order to not be deemed “inactive”.
I finished off the month with this plugin, because it felt like a good statement to make – WordPress should have a bloat free SEO solution baked directly into it. And if not, then the solution users choose should be clean and easy to use without unnecessary upsells.
Plugin Updates
Throughout the month I also pushed out some updates for plugins I’ve released. These include small updates to plugins released throughout the month as well as some of my older plugins.
- WordPlay v1.0.2 – added 6 new memes to help put more fun in your dashboard
- Maintenance Mode for WordPress® v1.0.1 – this release included a bugfix, new Spanish translation and code cleanup.
- Media File Versioning v1.0.1 – this release includes two fixes from PR’s, and new Spanish translation.
- BoostBox v2.2.0 – this release adds usage restrictions for wordpress.com, and a new Spanish translation.
- Age Verification v2.9.6 -this release adds usage restrictions for wordpress.com, and a new Dutch translation
Fun Projects
To piggyback off the NotMatt.Press auto-fork of WordPress® that I released in November, I wanted to have some fun with WooCommerce® as well.
So I built PooCommerce, because obviously it had to be done 🤷♂️
This was really well received by Woo staff (</sarcasm>) and required me to respond as to what the goal of PooCommerce is.
After that, I looked through their repos and seen that there’s a couple others that I could auto-fork for the fun of it.
So that’s how PooPayments and Restroom were born. And before you ask, yes, I came up with the names all by myself 😂
Scripts & Things
The month was also a nice time to showcase code that I write outside of WooCommerce® and WordPress®.
Python has quickly become my go-to language for writing new projects and I spend a lot of time using it to build security automation tools, scanners, etc.
Below is a list of additional scripts and things that I released in December.
- Website Uptime Monitor + Visualizer script that I used to monitor Automattic’s websites for downtime when they were going out early in the month. Cuz that’s what friends are for 😎
- Published “Host your WordPress® Plugins on GitHub and Automate Plugin Packaging” to help plugin and theme developers with an alternative to the wordpress.org repository.
- Published Published “How to Stop Your Plugins & Themes from Being Used on WordPress.com Hosting” to help plugin and theme authors stop their projects from working on wordpress.com.
- Released the Savage Scanner script & web app to help with bug hunting both for internal purposes and for fun & profit.
- Open sourced all CannaBiz Software plugins & theme (more on this soon) because I am tired of waiting on federal legalization.
- Released the Vuln Search script & web app to help with bug hunting both for internal purposes and for fun & profit.
Features
This month also saw my projects being featured in a LOT of different places 🙏
While building these projects is fun and fulfilling in it’s own right, having the work I’m releasing acknowledged like this is worth so much more to me.
The list below are how many times I was featured in each publication.
Some are listed more than once because they were published on different weeks and have different plugins featured in them.
- 2X in the “WP Weekly” newsletter
- 4X in “The WP Week” newsletter
- 3X in the “WP Weekly” newsletter
- 7X in “The WP Week” newsletter
- 2X in “The Repository” newsletter
- 2X in the “Within WP” newsletter
- 1X entire section in the “Within WordPress” newsletter
- 1X in the “Loop WP” newsletter
- 1X in the “Within WP” newsletter
- 1X in the Search Engine Journal
I’m forever grateful for everyone who featured something that I have released in December. I appreciate all of you 🙏
Chaos
And what would a December to Remember be without a little bit of anarchy mixed in?
Let’s go over some of the fun things that happened throughout the month, like the More in Core list I published.
If you were a part of those conversations, you can’t deny how much fun you had 😂
- More in Core plugin list for WooCommerce® with 1 plugin (sort of) confirmed. The list was sent to me and then I shared it, which caused quite a kerfuffle 😂
- Blackrock cut their investment in Automattic by 10%, because that’s what happens when the leader of the company constantly loses money for it’s investors.
- Matt rage quit the Post Status slack, because that’s what a baby does when they aren’t being given everything they throw temper tantrums for.
- Posted a 5 vs 1 challenge (with details, as requested). It should be noted that after I complied with Nicholas’ request, he never followed up and when I asked him about it, he blocked me 🤷♂️
- Released “About the Money“, which is a Matt Mullenweg diss track, because word around town is Matt tried paying Kendrick Lamar 500K for a WP Engine diss track. And he deserved to be shown what a real diss track sounds like 💪
- I won 100,000 $WPDRAMA shitcoins from Jeff Matson, which I think is amazing and wanted to include it here because it embodies the vibe of a December to Remember. Plus, I assume it’s gonna skyrocket at some point, but this is not financial advice 💯
So, what now?
The month is over, the quarter is over, the year is over.
It’s now 2025, and the question becomes what am I gonna do now?
There’s a few things I will be focusing my attention on in the new year, and I’d like to at least jot them down here so there’s no surprises as we move forward together.
OK, maybe a few surprises 😎
WordPress & WooCommerce Plugins
The plugins I built over the past couple of months will now be assessed for levels of importance and required attention.
They will all receive continued updates, but some (like BenchPress) will obviously get more of my focus.
Beyond these free plugins, I’m also going to continue focusing on the plugins I sell on Devio Digital.
Plugins like BoostBox Pro, AffiliLink and Waitlist for The Events Calendar will all receive more focused attention in the first two quarters of the year.
While I have a lot of fun building plugins and releasing them for free, I’m also proud of the premium products I build and will be talking about them a lot more.
Security Audits & Bug Bounties
In 2024 I found bugs in various WordPress® and WooCommerce® plugins which I received over 30 CVE’s for via Patchstack and Wordfence.
This was a LOT of fun, and I plan on doing a lot more of this type of work in 2025.
I purchased a book to help with this, and plan on expanding my core knowledge throughout the year via things like TryHackMe, more books and certification programs.
Scripts I’ve released and web apps I’ve built have been some of the funnest projects I’ve worked on in recent years.
I want more of that feeling in 2025 💪
I’m also going to put more focus on offering comprehensive security audits for developers who need a second set of eyes for their projects, as well as website owners who want to make sure the products they’re using are secure.
This means I’ll be publishing more security related content, releasing more security focused tools and jumping into bug bounty programs outside of WordPress®.
Stattic & decentralized publishing
I started Stattic in October of last year and it’s sat still for a while due to December shifting my focus for a bit.
2025 will see a lot more of Stattic, including the release of the Stattic Admin, custom themes and a laundry list of additional features.
We’re gonna decentralize publishing, both from a static site generator perspective, but also in other ways (hello blockchain).
2025 & Beyond
My goals are simple – more progress, more projects, more profit 😎
Thank you to everyone who participated in the December to Remember with me, if it was simply sharing the content I was posting, joining conversations and sharing your insights, or laughing at all the nonsense with me 😂
I appreciate you all 🙏
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