02-15-2016, 02:11 PM
I've only told the story of UserSpice to a few people. I grew up around computers and always had a fascination with programming. I started off on a Commodore Pet, and eventually moved to a Tandy 1000EX. I learned BASIC, PASCAL, and even some COBOL as a kid. My first real foray into programming was when I got the source code to the WWIV Bulletin Board in the late 80s. It was written in C++ and it would take an hour to compile every time I made a change (usually only to fail).
After that, I got away from software development as my primary focus and started building hardware. A lot of it. I built energy management systems for government buildings all over the Northeast US. Since I'm not here to give my whole bio, fast forward to 2015. I had been doing a fair amount of Wordpress and Joomla work, but had gotten away from programming and decided to take up PHP.
I started building a few projects, but the idea of managing users and controlling access to pages, was kind of this void in my brain. I just couldn't grasp the concept of how I was going to prevent people from going where I didn't want them to go, only to allow other people to go there. In search of a solution, that's when I stumbled across UserCake. It was, at its core, a brilliant little solution. It was simple and although I didn't understand how it worked under the hood, it worked.
It had it's fair share of vulnerabilities and weaknesses that made it a bit impractical to start a new project based on it, though. Many people have forked the project and have done some really neat things, but I didn't feel like anyone stuck to the "essence" of what UserCake was and what it did so well. With the blessing of Jon (the latest steward of UserCake) I set off to make a 2016 and beyond spiritual successor to UserCake.
In the first 90 days after release of version 2.5 (the first drag and drop upgrade), UserSpice has been downloaded thousands of times in nearly 80 countries. It's gone through many iterations, finally receiving a full rewrite at the beginning of 2016. This project has grown beyond anything I could have expected. Every single day I get to talk to people who love the software and find cool uses for it. Thanks for taking the time to check it out!
After that, I got away from software development as my primary focus and started building hardware. A lot of it. I built energy management systems for government buildings all over the Northeast US. Since I'm not here to give my whole bio, fast forward to 2015. I had been doing a fair amount of Wordpress and Joomla work, but had gotten away from programming and decided to take up PHP.
I started building a few projects, but the idea of managing users and controlling access to pages, was kind of this void in my brain. I just couldn't grasp the concept of how I was going to prevent people from going where I didn't want them to go, only to allow other people to go there. In search of a solution, that's when I stumbled across UserCake. It was, at its core, a brilliant little solution. It was simple and although I didn't understand how it worked under the hood, it worked.
It had it's fair share of vulnerabilities and weaknesses that made it a bit impractical to start a new project based on it, though. Many people have forked the project and have done some really neat things, but I didn't feel like anyone stuck to the "essence" of what UserCake was and what it did so well. With the blessing of Jon (the latest steward of UserCake) I set off to make a 2016 and beyond spiritual successor to UserCake.
In the first 90 days after release of version 2.5 (the first drag and drop upgrade), UserSpice has been downloaded thousands of times in nearly 80 countries. It's gone through many iterations, finally receiving a full rewrite at the beginning of 2016. This project has grown beyond anything I could have expected. Every single day I get to talk to people who love the software and find cool uses for it. Thanks for taking the time to check it out!