We're updating this topic annually 🎉
Buttonizer is six years old, the past years we've got amazingly support from our community and we hope for many more years to come where we can keep improving Buttonizer with all feedback we can get. Firstly, thank you for these amazing years! 😊
We've archieved and learned a lot the past few years, we've helped ten thousands of websites, we've responded to over 850 support tickets from both free & premium users, we have implemented many new features and we've expanded our development team to speed up the process! 👨💻
So, how did Buttonizer start back then in 2017?
At first, @Jeroen , @George , Mark and myself started Buttonizer as a sideproject. We didn't plan it to release it in the first place. We used the plugin internally for the websites we've build. We just called it FAB: Floating Action Buttons.
On one day the plugin got more and more features and we thought it would be cool to release the plugin as this isn't just handy for us, but could be handy for other webdevelopers. There wasn't realy a plugin what did this.
Releasing version 1.0
So we started creating more features, we brainstormed for a cool name (aparently it was me who had come up with the name) and send it to WordPress for review. We got accepted! It was 30th of August 2017 when Buttonizer was accepted and was released on WordPress!
The first few months after release patient was what we needed. As we just started, the amount of installations was building up very slowly.
Installations
20 installs... 40 installs... 54 installs... 70 installs... After a few months we finally hit the 100 installs. "WOW AWESOME!" was what we thought! But it would take another year before we would finally reach the 1000 installations. Meanwhile we've updated the plugin a lot and cared for our users as much as we could! Also we added a lot of new features to Buttonizer.
How did Buttonizer look back in 2017?
Below, you find a screenshot of Buttonizer version 1.0.2. This is the version we went live with:
Buttonizer 2.0
After a while releasing new versions we brainstormed for a new improved and bigger version. Almost completely rewritten from the ground up so we could build stuff quicker and improved our logics.
We've worked a whole year on the newest version of Buttonizer 2.0, with a beta period of three months before releasing it! This period was a bit stressfull, because the older version (version 1.5) didn't get as much attention as we loved to give it. The 2.0 version took a lot of time to build.
In September 2018, @James joined our team! We speeded up the development of the 2.0 version. In february 2019 @Castor joined the development team.
With three developers working on Buttonizer the development went much quicker. We've also moved the GIT project to GitHub and we started planning issues to make it less messy as more people worked on the project.
Milestone: 10,000 installs
As development speeded up, the amount of installations also speeded up. In March 2019 we have finally reached our first 10.000 installations!
On May 31th, 2019, we were ready to release our brand new version: Buttonizer 2.0!
Before
Below you find s creenshot of Version 1.5.7, the last version of the version 1 series.
After
Below you find the first release of Version 2.0.
Milestone: 20,000 installs
After releasing Buttonizer 2.0 and working on many new features, the active installations were growing rapidly. By December 2019 we've hit the amazingly 20.000 active installs! Wow!
By this time we were working on our next big update, Buttonizer 2.1 which was very time consuming. In the meantime @Jasmijn joined the team to manage our social media, she also produces the video's for our YouTube channel 🙂
Milestone: 30,000 installs, the big 2.1 update
When we were finalizing our 2.1 update after three weeks of beta releases (with over 100 beta testers!), it was time for release!
April 2020, the release month of 2.1 update, we have found out that we have grown to over 30.000 active installs! It's amazing how quickly this went and how much has changed!
At the end of August 2020 @FabianDJ has joined the development team.
Version 2.1
Still going strong in 2020, what did we do?
We have refactored our frontend code, written a new JavaScript API, making it easy for you to trigger Buttonizer with your own custom JavaScript or UI elements! This will bring a quicker preview window and a more robust future for the development of new features.
We also took the time to write unit testing both for our new frontend and the dashboard. Unit testing is a technique to automatically test code while we're working on updates and new features. This will make sure nothing breaks after updates, if it does, we would be welcomed with many red errors and yellow warnings. We are still writing unit tests until today!
A lot of bugs have been fixed and a lot of new features have been added, like:
- Advanced live dashboard preview
- Many new styling options have been added for more customizability
- Customize the body of your Social Sharing Buttons
- Added many new click actions like
Close on button click, Line and WP Popups implementations
- Implemented import & export functionality
- New color picker
- And many many more!
Unfortunatly, our developer Castor has left the team in June 2021 to focus on his study, we will never forget him and thank him for his years of dedication!
In July 2021, @JonasT has joined the team to fill in the gap!
Going standalone, 2021 🚀
In 2021, we started R&D (Research and Development) to go standalone with Buttonizer. Back then our plan was to make Buttonizer widly available. Months went into building a strong new backend, reworking parts of the frontend and taking the time to fix buges.
In August 2021, we released our (back then new) Buttonizer Dashboard. This dashboard was part of our transformation making Buttonizer available on any platform, but back then only you could do was reviewing your subscription.
This changed in December 2021, our first public beta went live. Buttonizer could now be integrated on any platform! Our new platform was tested by 200 amazingly BETA-testers!
Fast forward to 2022
In the first few months, most of the time went into bug fixes in the standalone editor and working on new updates.
March 2022, Buttonizer launches on Shopify
In March it finally happened, Buttonizer became available on Shopify as a native app! Easily installable and a great app.
July 2022, WordPress plugin update
After some work, we reworked our plugin to work with our standalone. This way everything works on one platform, as soon we deploy an update to our service, everything is updated automatically.
August 2022: Buttonizer Analytics
After launching our WordPress plugin update, we shifted our work to privacy minded Buttonizer Analytics. Privacy is very important for us, so we went for the best approach and that's simply: don't track too much. Read more about it here.
October 2022: Going into widgets!
Many requested them, and it was time! Our WhatsApp widget was released.
Thank you for the 80.000 installs!
We want to thank everyone for another year! We've grown a lot again and we're not even done yet!
If you have any feedback, let us know! Share the love ❤️ by replying to this topic, since when are you using Buttonizer, how have you experienced the updates the past few years and how do you hope Buttonizer will envolve in the future? 🙂
Cheers from the whole team!
