Food and Drink Menu passes 10,000 downloads
Food and Drink Menu, my WordPress plugin for creating beautiful restaurant menus, just passed 10,000 downloads on the WordPress.org plugin repository. Thanks to everyone for all the downloads and reviews. It’s been great to see the response to the plugin. Here’s a quick run-down of what’s coming up for the next 10,000 downloads.
WPML Compatibility
Food and Drink Menu has had a couple hiccups with the widely used multi-language plugin, WPML. I’ve resolved those in the development version of the plugin and I’ll be releasing the update soon, alongside WPML compatibility improvements in all of my plugins.
Improved Menu Item Sorting and Management
One of the greatest pain points in the plugin is managing large restaurant menus. I’ll try to streamline the Menu Item management screen to make it easier to find menu items, view menu items by section and sort them.
New Menu Construction Interface
I have ambitious plans for a new menu construction UI, which will make it much more intuitive to construct unique menu layouts and customize the output of menu sections. One of the most frequent problems users report is having Menu Sections with the same name in two different menus, but not being able to name them differently. I’ll aim to provide quick-access for renaming sections on a menu-by-menu basis, per-menu pricing, drag-and-drop item re-ordering for each menu and more.
Moving Pro to an Addons Model
Right now, Food and Drink Menu Pro bundles a bunch of different features in a single addon. I’m not sure if that’s the best model for people. Some of you may only want the icon, the specials or the sourcing, not the whole package. I hope to transition the plugin to an addons model, with each feature as a separate addon that can be purchased. Don’t worry, I’ll grandfather my existing customers over to the new system so they can continue to receive updates.
How Soon?
The WPML stuff will be coming down the pipeline pretty soon. The rest of the improvements are still a long ways off, though. My goal is to get them done before the plugin reaches 20,000 downloads. The first 10k took me about 10 months, but don’t hold me to that! I’ll get it done as soon as I can, but I have to balance the free plugin development with my commercial software to keep my business sustainable.
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