I started blogging last year and wrote my first blog post about creating a CMS-Block in Shopware 6. After writing the first blog post I heard about a community called we make devs. This community runs hashnode blogging challenges every month.
So this blog post is part of the blogging challenge. The challenges are really great to keep you motivated to write some blogs. This blog post is about my accomplishments in 2023.
Last year I wrote a Dev Retro 2022 blog post which was also part of the blogging challenge. In that blog post, I mentioned some goals for 2023 and now we can take a look at how far I already got!
Hashnode Accomplishments
Since I am writing on hashnode let's start with the goals that I already achieved here. The goal I mentioned last year was that I wanted to earn 2 more badges on hashnode. This is a very small and achievable goal.
I got the gold badge for the 2Articles1Week challenge. Since there are also a bronze and a silver badge you could take a look at it and think that you already earned 3 badges. Even if this is true I also wanted a different badge.
So I also got myself the crazy blogger badge. You could say I was a bit motivated in January. I think I wrote 13 blog posts that month and was really chasing that goal.
I also reached another milestone on hashnode and reached 10k page views.
That feels pretty crazy to me.
If I take a look at my list there is a lot of Shopware on it. So let's take a look at that as well.
Shopware Achievments
Cody Vuelette
This is Cody Vuelette, the purple Shopware PHP Elephpant. A goal was to add this Cody to my Elephpant Collection. This little Elephpant joined me on a secret mission at a Shopware Event I attended.
Every Elephpant has its own story and this one was undercover. At this point I want to thank Shopware, the Shopware Community and everyone who makes those events so special 💙.
Shopware Apps
Another goal was to publish 3 more Apps to the Shopware Store. There are already a couple of very simple apps in the store and this year I already published:
So there are 3 simple apps published already. There are 0 downloads on some apps but this goal was still achieved.
There was another achievement and my best app got the bronze certified badge. I am really proud of that and this also shows that simple apps also work!
Monthly Revenue Rate (MRR) Shopware Apps
Since we are already by the apps let's talk about the MRR. The goal was to hit an MRR of 100€ with those simple Shopware Apps.
I published 3 Apps this year and there was the big Shopware 6.5 Release but I did not do a lot to achieve that goal.
It still happened! The work and the apps that already were published in the Shopware Store were enough. Sometimes all you have to do is to be patient.
Shopware Events
Now it's time to talk about Shopware Events but I highly recommend you to be part of those events if you can!
Boost Day 9
The Shopware Boost Day 9 was an online event. This event was all about stackoverflow. A lot of questions about Shopware were answered on stackoverflow that day. I think it had a great impact and I see more and more questions and answers about Shopware on stackoverflow now.
Shopware Community UnConf
The Shopware Community Unconference is always one of the best events, if not the best event for me. This year was special for me once again.
Cody Vuelette joined me undercover but not only that. I really love this event because there is no fixed schedule and it always comes with a lot of fun as well.
This year I was smart enough to forget my charger for my phone so I didn't take any photos and also did not write about my experience. Shame on me for that! Next year I have to do better.
Shopware Community Dev Day
I was one of the lucky ones who could participate in the Shopware Community Dev Day. This year this event felt a little bit like the Unconf. I really enjoyed it, had a lot of fun and it was just a great event overall.
On this day superheroes were created and it was recorded so that you can watch it!
You can actually watch all talks from this event just take a look at the YouTube Channel. All of the talks were pretty good so you have a lot of content to watch.
Big thanks to Shopware again for organizing those events and always making them as special as they are. It's always a pleasure to be part of it 💙
Write a Shopify App
Shopify is another E-Commerce platform and I wanted to give it a try as well. The entry into Shopify is pretty easy and you can change a lot of things very fast but it comes with a downside.
I am really impressed by how many guides and tutorials are out there about Shopify on how to change things and all those guides just change the base code of the theme.
I did not write a Shopify App yet but I have to. Because if you just change the base code and your theme rolls out an update your changes will be lost. So you can follow guides and tutorials on Shopify but maybe you should do it more cleanly and put your code into an app even if it takes more time.
Read 3 Books
Reading 3 books a year should be very easy but at this time I just finished a single book. So there are two more to go.
Complete Hacktoberfest 2023
Last year I finished Hacktober but I was not fast enough to get a shirt. This year I want to get that shirt as well. So October is the time to open some pull requests
Goals in 2023
In my opinion, it's always good to write down some goals. I already achieved a couple of goals so I can simply set them higher. So let's write down some goals again:
Publish at least 6 Shopware Apps
Increase my MRR with Shopware to at least 250€
Be part of at least 3 Shopware offsite Events
Write at least 2 blog posts per month
Write a Shopify-App
Read 3 Books
Complete Hacktoberfest and get a shirt
Conclusion
Doing a recap on your achievements can help and motivate you. I think it's really important to write down some goals so you can look back at them. Maybe you had already achieved some of your goals but don't even remember that your achievement was a goal once.
It's also good to set new and maybe higher goals if you hit your goals faster than expected. Let's see if I can hit every goal by the end of the year.