You might be wondering where I’m going with this, so please let me explain.
I have been a user of Alan Trewartha’s excellent Widget Logic plugin for many months. It allows you to control on what pages widgets are displayed. Since I’ve got that big old feature box on the homepage, I don’t need another signup form in the sidebar, do I? Hence Widget Logic. It has been downloaded over 300,000 times and has a four star rating on the WordPress plugins directory. It’s simple, and it works.
A few minutes ago I happened to be scrolling through my (unfortunately rather extensive) list of plugins, and an unusual link stood out:
Occasionally I have moments in life when I think that maybe the human race isn’t completely doomed. This was one such moment.
So I clicked the link, and I donated what we call (in the UK) a “tenner” – that’s £10 (about $16). It may not be much (I’m not millionaire), but it’s another £10 towards Alan’s measly target.
When I say measly, I do not intend to offend – I intend to point out the fact that a plugin with three hundred thousand downloads should be able to attract £750 worth of charitable donations. If every person who had downloaded the plugin donated £0.0025, Alan would hit his target.
I am sure that there are other plugin developers out there who request charity donations, but I scroll through the 20 I use on this blog and I see no others. So whilst Alan’s efforts may not be unique, they’re enough to provoke me to write this post in the hope that we can all do our bit to raise some cash.
So please – just drink a few less beers this weekend. Don’t buy that DVD. Whatever it is – please take this opportunity to help Alan reach his target, and more importantly help Cancer Research UK.
You’ll have forgotten about the ten bucks a week from now, but collectively, perhaps we can make just a little difference.
Creative Commons image courtesy of c_ambler