Your Opinion on CSS & JavaScript Toolbox Required

Hi everyone,

I hope each and every one of you have enjoyed developing with CSS & JavaScript Toolbox.

As you may know (if not please read the IMPORTANT NOTICE post), we have dropped support and updates for CSS & JavaScript Toolbox.

This decision was not taken lightly. The mistake was done early in the game where we provided too many features for CJT free. Although this is great for charitable causes, giving back, community spirit, reviews and ratings, etc, this does not support us developers with income nor does it support our families.

So we brainstormed and tried so many strategies to boost CJT PLUS. From paid advertising and free giveaways to a desperate attempt at threatening to remove features from CJT free to persuade CJT PLUS purchases. This was mere WordPress sacrilege and it was a mistake to even mention it. I am glad we never went through with it.

Thanks to a CJT supporter who knew our predicament and did not want to see the solution wither and die, he suggested we do a name change and a rebrand to represent something more appealing – something that could easily be found on the repository. Easy Code Manager was born.

Then the complexities arose.

Firstly, we wanted to do right by all our CJT PLUS customers so we provided a free upgrade to Easy Code Manager PLUS. This has been – well a headache to say the least. The complexities involved was astronomical and the CJT to ECM migration as a number of CJT PLUS users would testify has been somewhat challenging. For starters, we could only migrate Code Blocks and Templates and not Assignments and Shortcodes, which means those that chose to migrate would have had to rebuild their Code Block connections again.

Anyway, this is where we are at now. The premium Easy Code Manager PLUS is a great product – it has a number of benefits and features more than the CSS & JavaScript Toolbox PLUS plugin. Those that take advantage of it without installing or even knowing about CJT would certainly feel these benefits. True, that Easy Code Manager free is light on features, but this is the sustainable model that we needed to do.

Why the total transparency? and why NOW???

I am at crossroads at the moment. I feel like CJT free should still be updated with bug fixes and ensuring compatibility with the latest version of WordPress. CJT PLUS should also be updated with similar features as ECM PLUS.

That said, I will NOT provide any new features for CJT free.

My minor concern is the challenge to manage two seperate solutions CSS & JavaScript Toolbox and Easy Code Manager. The major concern is how to finally start earning income for this solution, and be able to redirect a good proportion of the funds back into research and development to make the solutions better.

Thanks for your time in reading this rather long post. ??

I am looking forward to anyone who wishes to reply and express his or her views, issues, or recommendations. Your feedback will all go towards a very important decision for both solutions in the future.

Let’s get this conversation started! ??

Kind Regards,
Damian Baker