How sexy started...
Humble beginnings
SexyBookmarks originally started as a simple, yet effective code snippet that I wrote for both static sites and Wordpress users. The original “Attractive Social Bookmarking Menu” included only the most popular social bookmarking sites and had no real “options” to speak of. It was simply a set n’ forget menu that you inserted into your site/blog… There were no additional options or features to enrich the menu in any way. This original version never caught on, and didn’t gain much popularity whatsoever. However, the few people who did download the original menu left some good comments in regards to making it better. So, I set out to improve it by adding a few more sites to the list as well as fixing a few small bugs that were messing with the code’s validity.
Though it may have been quite simple, it was in fact enough to grab the attention of at least one internet superstar… David Walsh. He seemed to think that it was noteworthy and asked if I would add Script & Style to the list. He also posted a link to the menu there, where it instantly attracted nearly 3,000 visitors the first day! Although that spike in traffic was not sustained, it was definitely enough to generate a buzz.
Simplicity evolves
It was not long after that original spike in traffic that the menu was developed into a Wordpress plugin. The original plugin was also quite simple with no real options to speak of. It was more or less just a way for people to insert the menu without having to edit their Wordpress theme. This too was nice in it’s own right, but seeing as how the name is “SexyBookmarks”… It was fairly obvious that this just would not do for very long. So in an attempt to live up to it’s self-dubbed sexiness, development was stepped up a notch and several additional options and functions were added to appease the masses.
At this point, my own personal version of the menu that I used on Eight7Teen had an exclusive addition that everyone seemed to want… The custom background image that said “Sharing is sexy!”. I had originally left it out of the menu for fear of offending some people who might download the plugin. However, it was apparently something that the vast majority of people who downloaded the plugin were eager to get their hands on. So in an attempt to keep from offending anyone, I added the option to choose “Sharing is sexy!” or “Sharing is caring!”. Some people actually do take offense to the word “Sexy” you know…
This was a sort of “stall point” so to speak. See, I had added so many new options and features without ever reorganizing the codebase that bugs starting popping up left and right. The next month was almost solely dedicated to squashing all of the bugs which I had created!
