Dogfooding or 'eating one's own dog food' is a term used for a company that is confident in it's own product (if it was a dog food they would feed their own dog with it).
I thought it is a rather good term and describes why I started writing WordPress plugins. I needed a certain functionality and it was not going to be available until I personally made it - and that is how most of my plugins came to life.
Theme Test Drive - I remember quite clearly as it was my first plugin - came to life at the very beginning of my blogging while I was desperately trying out numerous WordPress themes, just like you were I am sure. There was no plugin that allowed me to completely replace the theme for testing purposes, so I had to create a plugin I still happily use today (it was of course upgraded and expanded in functionality over the time).
Every plugin I made came as a mirror of my own necessity and I still use all of them on my blog (where applicable, some were done for specific projects). Which means I still stand for every one of them - I eat my own dog food. I think there is no better marketing for a plugin developer.
And generally as such, dogfooding is a great concept in life - you should always stand for what you do.
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4 Comments
I like the concept of dogfooding. You are absolutely right we need to 'stand by our whatever we are doing'
On a question...where do non geeks get information for modifying the amazing grace theme. I like the theme and want to put different things in the sidebars. I need to obviously Is there a document that helps newbies?
Hi Vladimir. I really like your way of writing, it makes me to go around on many pages on your site. Congratulations.
I came to your site for the Test Drive plugin. I didn't tested yet because I have some interesting problem I am dealing with. Although your plugin will solve some of the trouble, I am looking a easier solution.
Here is the task I wan to perform:
I have a thousand of wordpress themes that I want to test (well, MANY thousands).
I want to see how they look, and take a snapshot of them. That implies to load a theme, take snapshot and save thousands of times.
The best solution I got is to load a hundred of themes in the theme's directory , then previewing each theme from wp and then take a snapshot. This is a really pain in the ... you guess.
Any ideas to improve the speed of this work?
For example, I am looking some way to auto start each theme in separate tabs in the browser. I think a combination of Javascript and your plugin could lead to the solution. Then I will snapshot every tab and close it.
Thanks
Fernando
Thank you Adam!
It was first the article and it took me 30 seconds to find the picture using ultra-cool still-not-released my-new-wordpress-plugin.
Welcome to the WordPress train!
Vladimir, you are a true master of writing cool blog posts. Where on earth have you got this beautiful photo? Is that little sweetie yours? What came first: the egg or the chicken? Was this photo the first to create the inspirational spark of writing or it was your idea about dogfooding...or...they came both at the same time?
p.s.
Your influential Spreading the word about WordPress and your ultra geek plugins finally made me packing my historical Blogger coffers:)