Happy New Year 2024 and 2023 In Review

I sit here on the last day of 2023, reflecting on the year that was. I have been blogging on ajaydsouza.com for over 20 years and have consistently written a year-in-review post for most of these years.

I signed off my year-in-review post last year feeling pensive. 2022 was a rough year from a health perspective. Thanks to God’s grace, I did not require any medical attention in 2023, except for my annual flu attack, which I survived without seeing a doctor.

I cannot say that 2023 was massively upbeat. However, it has been eventful, with some great moments. In the spirit of positivity, I’ll limit this blog post to those.

Life

Our daughter has continued to grow at an astonishing and enjoyable pace over the past year. She’s gone from crawling at the start of the year to running all around the house. And I’ve still maintained my sensitivity to smells! Parenting has taught us the value of patience. We have learned to slow down, teach her patiently, and wake up early every morning.

In March this year, we made a trip to India after over 3 years. This was our first holiday as a family, and it presented several teachable moments. We ventured out significantly this year over the summer, visiting several National Trust properties, castles and gardens. In September, we returned to Suffolk on holiday after over a decade.

Awesome news: My beloved Ashwina passed her driving test and will now share her driving with me. Given how much I enjoy driving, I’m still undecided if the sharing is a good thing. At least I can drink and not drive!

I did say I’ll keep it positive, but it would be remiss of me not to mention that my grandma passed away earlier this year. I was very fortunate to have met her in India in March. Her health had severely deteriorated over the past year, and we had prepared ourselves for the inevitable. I spent the first few years of my life growing up with her before my parents had their own house, and several of my memories still remain. I particularly recall the songs she sang to me to put me to sleep. I started singing these to my daughter soon after she was born last year – Edelweiss from the Sound of Music and The Woodpecker Song.

WordPress and Development

In January this year, I decided to log into my Twitter account. I don’t recall what made me log into Twitter – probably curiosity after Musk’s acquisition or a desire to connect with more folks in the WordPress world. I started by cleaning up many dead accounts, significantly reducing my follower and following counts.

Over the past year, I’ve focused a significant amount of time on rebuilding connections, and I can happily say that I end the year successfully.

How is this relevant to WordPress or development, you ask? Most people I’ve connected with over the past year have inspired me on my WordPress journey over 2023.

I started writing articles on the WebberZone blog on WordPress development, including a well-visited block development tutorial.

I pushed through only 8 major plugin releases this year. However, I did spend significant amounts of time improving the quality of my code. In particular, I’ve learned classes and autoloading and improved the security and accuracy using phpstan. There’s a tutorial coming soon on WebberZone.

I finished the year by redesigning the WebberZone site. The last redesign was in 2020, and it was time for a refresh.

A New Business Venture

I’m very pleased to announce that after a decade of debating, I finally registered my company here in the UK. Beyond Develop will serve as the parent company for WebberZone and directly offer WordPress design and development solutions.

I continue to build out Beyond Develop’s website. My key focus for 2024 will be releasing premium versions of Contextual Related Posts and Top 10 in Q1 and Q2, respectively. If this interests you, may I suggest signing up for the WebberZone newsletter?

Reading

At the start of this year, I set an ambitious target to read 45 books. I had read more in 2021 and 2022. Midway through the year, I realized that I would not be able to complete 45 books, so I revised my goal to 40. With my 36th book completed today, I have come short of that target. However, can I argue that the book set featuring Peyton Brooks by M. L. Hamilton (aff.) made up for the shortfall? If you haven’t read them yet, I posted updates in January and June. I’ll post another one later in January.

Work

There are no surprises here, but work has remained busy—probably busier this year than ever. I started the year with heavy marketing rounds and ended it with a busy set of executions. I have travelled quite a bit in the past year and have kept bugs away (at least during my travels).

What’s in store for 2024

I don’t make any New Year’s resolutions because I know I won’t keep them. However, I do aim to achieve a few things every year.

This year, my key focus is to build up Beyond Develop. This will involve building pro versions for my two most used plugins and more frequent and smaller updates for the others. I’m also hoping to land one or two small projects where I can use my WordPress expertise. This should hopefully turn a profit in the first year. I still have a long way to go in learning to manage a company. Baby steps.

We’ve also got a few holidays planned for the year, although I expect work to disturb them and WordPress to complement them.