Saturday 7 November 2026
Saturday was a quieter day in development terms, although I still managed to get a fair amount done. I didn’t spend much time coding, but there were several interesting conversations, some editorial work, and a few opportunities to think about where Niche Clever is going next.
Facebook before the bus
I found a few spare minutes before catching a bus to put together a new cover graphic for the Niche Clever Facebook page. I wanted to borrow something from the visual style of the Niche Clever Interactive plugin heading, but make it about the wider business rather than one particular product. The existing logo provided the starting point. It was a relatively small job, but a satisfying one. There’s something rather pleasing about being able to produce a useful piece of design in the time that might otherwise have been spent waiting around.
And it’s another step towards giving Niche Clever a consistent identity across its various public channels.
Thinking about v11 of the Interactive Professional Portfolio
This is work I’ve been really looking forward to and I had a few hours over the course of the evening to make some progress on version 11 of the Interactive Professional Portfolio corpus. The research phase has been interesting, expanding the tool-set and digital archaeology which helped with the previous version, so there’s a lot of material to bring together before I can move into synthesis.
This is a job that can’t really be rushed and I began working through a fairly deliberate sequence: reconcile the repositories, bring the project stories together, review the relevant conversations, and only then settle the material for version 11.
I also spent some time thinking about how the portfolio might accommodate a wider range of material, including a gallery of visual work. Even so, the next version should be a more substantial account of what I’ve been doing, rather than simply an accumulation of new material. There’s enough development history now that the challenge is partly one of selection and organisation.
A little market intelligence
The daily opportunity scan also produced something worth noting. It didn’t identify a new commission to pursue, but it did turn up an awarded public-sector AI training contract. Even an opportunity that’s already closed can be useful. It provides some indication of what organisations are commissioning, particularly around AI adoption, training and the practical business of introducing new technology, and this is helpful as I think about how to position the consultancy side of Niche Clever alongside the software and publishing work.
Getting Interactive Core ready for WordPress.org
I also returned to the question of getting Niche Clever Interactive Core into the WordPress.org plugin directory.
The latest release candidate had been through a substantial round of testing, including a clean installation and accessibility checks, but getting a plugin accepted into the directory involves more than making sure it works. There’s the packaging, the WordPress requirements, the review process and the question of how the public distribution relates to the development repositories.
One of the issues I looked at was the visibility of the Core GitHub repository. I wanted to make sure the arrangements made sense as the plugin moved towards wider distribution. That also prompted a small change to the public website, removing an unnecessary reference to repository privacy from an earlier article.
The practical difficulty was that the GitHub management connection couldn’t change the repository’s visibility directly, even though it could inspect the repository and confirm the relevant permissions. That particular setting still needed to be dealt with through GitHub itself.
It’s one of those slightly irritating details that can absorb time without producing anything particularly visible. But getting the release and distribution arrangements right is part of turning a development project into a product people can actually install and use.
Where I left things
Niche Clever Interactive Core plugin readiness remains a source of frustration, not because it doesn’t work but because getting it into the WordPress.org plugin ecosystem would be a big win. There’s been a great deal of development and testing, and quite a lot of effort has gone into the infrastructure that supports it, but I’m keen to get it into wider use. If you’re interested in beta-testing, just give me a shout.
Still, it was a productive Saturday in a different sort of way. The visual identity is coming together, the plugin ecosystem is becoming easier to explain, and I’ve started thinking through the next substantial revision of the portfolio.
I’m giving my newly fixed pelvis a test run tonight and am going out dancing. I very much doubt I’ll be doing any work on Sunday.
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