I’ve enjoyed tinkering with web design and coding languages since 1994, when my family first got connected to the internet via America Online. It’s never been my full-time job, and I’ve established a pattern of building more personal websites than I have time to maintain, but I think I’ve finally built something that’s going to last.

While it’s not a full-fledged website, I feel like it’s the culmination of all that I’ve learned and tinkered with all these years. And it’s only going to get better.

It’s my first WordPress plugin: Auto Featured Image from Title.

I built it because I like to blog. And, as every blogger knows, it’s great to have an image attached to each and every blog post you publish for so many reasons (SEO, social sharing, general attractiveness of your blog, etc). But I didn’t like having to find a unique image every time I wanted to write something.

Sure, there are some great sites out there that offer great images for free, but after you’ve been blogging a little while, even these start to seem a little limited in what they offer. And I really didn’t want to start paying $5-10 per blog post to get a picture from a stock photography website.

So I built this little plugin.

I released the first version of it as a free plugin in the WordPress plugin directory about 5 months ago. I thought, “Hey, if I needed a plugin like this, maybe someone else could use it, too!” And it’s been downloaded over 2,000 times since then.

Then I thought, “I can really make this plugin even better.”

I have a lot of thoughts.

So I added a whole bunch of features, and released it as a PRO version.

And I’m already pleasantly surprised at how well it’s been received. Ecstatic, even. It’s been a fun ride, and I can’t wait to see where the road leads.