Thursday 12 November 2026
I submitted Niche Clever Interactive Core 1.0.7 to WordPress.org on Thursday, after another round of review and a final correction to the way the plugin handles question-length limits. It’s been quite a long process getting to this point, and although I’ve been through the submission procedure before, this is a much more thoroughly tested and documented version than the earlier candidates. Even so, I don’t think I can assume anything and I’m now waiting to hear back from the Plugins Team.
The final review was of release candidate r14, which addressed a problem identified in r13. The automated tests passed and the independent reviewer confirmed readiness for upload, so I worked through the reply to WordPress.org, checked it against the previous correspondence and submitted the updated plugin. It’ll be a few days before I hear anything but I’m pleased to have the submission out of the way for the time being. There’s still a possibility of further questions or changes, but at least I can turn my attention to some of the other work that’s been waiting while I’ve been concentrating on Core.
The business of selling Premium
I spent some time investigating Freemius, which looks like a promising way of handling the commercial infrastructure for the Premium version. I’ve already done quite a lot of planning around subscriptions and licensing, but I’m now getting to the point of making decisions about how the whole thing will operate in practice.
The research suggested that I could keep Freemius within Premium itself, leaving Core independent, which would be my preferred arrangement. It also identified some conflicts with the existing packaging process and raised questions about how expired licences, updates and renewals would be handled.
These are details I want to understand before committing to a particular approach, especially as I’ve already developed some of the infrastructure independently. There’s no particular advantage in replacing working components without understanding what I’m gaining and what I might be giving up.
My intention for Friday is to register with Freemius and begin working through the practical setup. It’ll be interesting to move from researching the options to actually implementing the commercial side of the product.
Tracing SMARTS all the way back
I also returned to the project histories, this time concentrating on the origins of Trigger SMARTS. The existing chronology goes back to February 2025, but I knew the project had started earlier, so I tasked the Digital Archaeologist to investigate the missing period.
It found proposals and correspondence from October 2024 that help establish the original requirements and the early development of the screen-management system. The resulting research pack provides a useful basis for extending the history, although, as ever, I still need to review the proposed additions before incorporating them into the main account.
It’s satisfying to recover that earlier material, particularly when it explains decisions that are still reflected in the software today.
Richard Craven’s publishing systems
There was further question-and-answer work on the history of Richard Craven’s publishing infrastructure, particularly the relationship between the Editorial Knowledge Map, the Extraction Workbench and the new website.
One of the more useful points to emerge was the role of the website as both a presentation of structured editorial information and a place where changes can be made and passed back into the underlying system. That distinction matters for the next stage of development, because the website needs to work with the editorial infrastructure rather than becoming another separate collection of material to maintain.
I’ve been meaning to get back to the website itself, and Friday should give me an opportunity to make some more direct progress on getting the new site up and running.
An interesting job application
I also spent some time on LinkedIn and found an AI Transformation Lead / AI Learning Specialist opportunity and I submitted an application, drawing on the combination of AI implementation, software development and knowledge infrastructure work I’ve been doing through Niche Clever.
It’s an interesting role, and one that seems to connect several strands of my experience that don’t always fit neatly into a conventional job description.
A quieter evening
I went out in the evening and got back at about ten then spent a little time browsing the website and trying out some questions through the interactive system. Sometimes it’s nice to be actually using the site rather than developing it – I’ve been spending so much time on the technical details of Core that it’s easy to lose sight of the experience of actually asking a question and reading the response.
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