This week’s edition of Lorelle’s blog challenge promises to add a little pinch of spice to all those participating. In all my participations, it would be a straight forward one with no room for choice, but there is an exception this once. There will be 2 options on this week’s blog challenge which we have the luxury of choosing to write about.

The 2 options available to you are:

  • Write About a Moment When You Felt “Big”
  • Write About What it Would Look Like if You Were “Big”

I have chosen the first option:
Write About a Moment When You Felt “Big”.

When iLemoned ported the Dark theme by Bartelme to WordPress, I was mightily impressed by the beauty and uniqueness of it, so much so that I wanted to make it better in every aspect possible. I came across a widgetized version of the theme by Diego Ciconi.

However when widgets actually came into play, the theme displayed errors when it was put through a validation test; rendering it as invalid XHTML Strict 1.0. I went into the details and eventually made available for download a new release which allows users to use the widgetized version of Bartelme’s “dark” theme while being rendered as valid XHTML Strict 1.0.

Development on the Dark theme didn’t just stop there. I went on to widgetize the 1st sidebar as well as integrate WordPress native tags in it. Blogs which are using WordPress tags can now have them displayed in the post meta section.

Though they were only minor enhancements to the theme, I received plenty of positive comments thanking me for my work. At that time, I was a nobody in the blogosphere and obviously receiving feedbacks of appreciation was a joy to behold. My efforts and work were getting recognition, albeit on a small scale but nonetheless, I was getting credited and that is what’s most important for a developer’s confidence.

It is through the acknowledgement of users who downloaded the fix that I know my work has benefited them in one way or another. And to a not so widely known blogger, it is a success. It is my time to feel “big”, to be successful. This only spurs me on for future development projects and hopefully in time to come, you will be able to see more instances of my work.