2013 was a fun-filled year – full of opportunities & joyous moments. I’m writing this post as a recap of what happened in 2013 – for me personally & for my company.
The year began with the continuing mystery of whether I will be the father of a baby boy or a baby girl.
March:
The day of 4th March 2013 had a nervous beginning.. it was my interview for US visa. I do remember taking at least 100 different documents with me on that day & travelling with my sister to the venue. And like every exam during my engineering, I was doing the LMP (last minute preparations) for this interview too. The effort paid off.. I did pass off that interview. That laid the foundation for an exciting month ahead for me.
I had to prepare myself to leave for US on 12th March 2013, exactly a week after the visa interview. It would be an understatement to say that week was hectic.
The next 15 days in March were the days I witnessed a totally new culture, new people & new places.
April:
This was when I visited Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California. I remember I had my uncle (Prakash Raygor) wait the whole day for me. I was supposed to meet him at 11 AM. That was delayed due to my Google visit. Finally, I was able to meet him only after 7 PM.
May:
As soon as the dust settled down after my US visit.. anxious times started. The delivery date was getting close.. Finally the day arrived. 21st May 2013. I & Riddhi (my wife) were blessed with a baby girl. Easily the most wonderful moment of 2013.
June:
This was the month when we released the WooCommerce Booking & Appointment Plugin. Little did we know that this would be one of our most successful & popular plugins down the road. What we did knew was that WooCommerce users badly needed a Booking plugin & there was nothing available at that time. And there is nothing available at the time of writing this post too.
It took 4 months of work before we could release a MVP (Minimum Viable Product). It was released on 26th June 2013. The plugin has seen 10 version upgrades since it’s release.
July-November:
These months saw some version releases for all our WooCommerce plugins: Booking & Appointment plugin, Order Delivery Date plugin & Abandoned Cart plugin. Apart from that, we did gain many fans of our plugins. We managed to get our plugins reviewed by some of the best people in the WordPress world. Some were paid reviews, while some volunteered for their sheer passion for WordPress & our plugins. I’ll list them here:
Volunteered:
Craig Grella – OrgSpring.com (They build free websites for non-profits)
Chris Lema – ChrisLema.com (Do subscribe to his blog. He blogs everyday & you won’t feel the need to unsubscribe ever from his blog.)
Paid reviews:
Jean Galea, Joe Fylan – WPMayor.com
Nathan Weller – WPHub.com
Joe Fylan – WPLift.com
I have interacted with each one of them personally & they are wonderful people.
Some people who contributed in the form of ideas, features, feedback for our plugins:
Andrew Woods
Craig Brown
Donnacha
Jacopo Alabiso
December:
This is when we migrated our website www.tychesoftwares.com from WP E-Commerce to Easy Digital Downloads. We were supposed to finish the migration by 1st October 2013, however, that got delayed. You can read more about it here.
We finally launched the new website on 7th December 2013. This also saw the changes in the licensing model. We changed from lifetime licenses to yearly renewal licenses for support & updates.
This wouldn’t have been possible without the support of a wonderful team.
Closing Note
Personally, I am very happy the way 2013 has been for me & for my company too. I couldn’t have asked for anything better. People (champions) appreciating our work, becoming a father, US visit – these would be the highlights for me.
Thank you to all my customers, my team, friends & my family.
Have a wonderful 2014.
