Duane and I work very hard, this much is uncontested. We both recognize that to grow our company and to do things they way they ought to be done in this business means a high level of dedication, will, determination and fortitude to ensure success. We’ve been working non-stop on a variety of client projects, like courtneysummers.ca, visioncritical.com, ticketfly.com, and Rogers’ urmusic.ca. We’ve also been working on our GPL projects like WordTwit, BuddyPress Geo, and of course WPtouch.

So, in short: We think we deserve a break.

Punta Cana

We’ve chosen a nice spot in the beautiful coastal area of Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. Duane and I will be there for two weeks and will be going over company year-end stuff, planning for the next phases, and re-positioning some of our ideas to grow as a company in 2010 in the directions we really want to see things move.

Business + Pleasure

Of course a place like this doesn’t often invite the idea of ‘business’, but that’s just how we operate- why not do some of the more onerous tasks in a place you’ll enjoy? Most people wouldn’t know it but we run this company, for the most part, virtually. Duane and I live on separate sides of this big country of Canada, and a getaway like this facilitates a number of personal and business needs for us both.

Unsupported

We’ve yanked the plug on our plugin Support Forums for the time being, mostly in an effort to stop the tides of on-going to-do lists so we can focus on the overhaul we think is sorely needed, and will bring more to the table for the user community of our plugins. We apologize if it leaves you high in dry in the mean time, but rest assured that we’re not walking away from our plugins or supporting them.

Surprises

Who knows, maybe we’ll push out some plugin updates while we’re down there, or a beta of one of our slow-cooking WP plugins like Transporter (backup/migration) or Integrity (security).

Itinerary

Duane’s already arrived, and I’ll be leaving tomorrow afternoon. Weather’s looking hot and bright for the week ahead, so too for our plans : )

We’ve crushed a few dozen bugs, added a new feature called ‘Skins’, among other new features, and have totally re-designed the WPtouch admin panel.

This week we hope to shore up the last of the new feature additions and push out another beta release. Once tested 1.9 will be served fresh to everyone. We will likely release 1.9 and follow it up with point releases that will add (among other things) languages, new skins, and additional WordPress plugin compatibility support. We’ll have a complete listing of changes for 1.9 posted here soon.

WordTwit

WordTwit will also see an update soon, with more support for other shortening services and hashes, as well as kill some bugs.

Transporter

Our as yet unreleased plugin Transporter (one click WordPress database/file backup and site migration) will be something we work to have released as a public alpha in the future.

The road looks bright for BraveNewCode plugins, so keep your thumbs out and hitch a ride when our updates swing by your town.