As a non-developer who is in the midst of figuring out how to bring a digital vision to life, I'm going to come at this from a different perspective.

It seems to me that the most effective thing anyone who wants to "build/achieve something" can do is to follow in the footsteps of the "starving artists" - people who will work menial side jobs and live in relative squalor in order to focus their time and energy on what they are truly passionate about, giving up (others would wrongly say "sacrifice") anything that gets in the way of this much more meaningful goal.

My version of this has found me settled in the developing world where I have spent a few years exploring poverty and its endless causes and effects to try to come up with an effective, efficient, scalable solution to help people sustainably better help themselves.

I don't want to get into too many details of my story or what I'm trying to build (this is not an advertisement for me or my efforts, or a solicitation for a development partner), but just as my non-digital project plans have evolved immensely as I have learned more about the situation here, my digital plans have evolved considerably as I've become more aware of what exists/is possible. They’ve gone from a basic blog with articles and embedded videos, to maybe building some sort of user profiles with custom post types, to discovering BuddyPress and bbPress, to buying BuddyBoss, to discovering the myriad plugins for any feature you can imagine, to considering building out much of these features (classifieds, events, knowledge base, etc…) myself with something like Toolset. In the end it'll mostly be a combination of gluing together various plugins with my own CPTs, and making various tweaks to the layouts and functionalities.

Now, many would say that I could have saved 3+ months of time and living expenses if I just had a competent developer on-board who would have known all of this, as well as save another 6+ months of upcoming work to figure this all out. This is time which I could instead put towards things that I am actually competent at. But what they don't realize is that because of various choices that I've made, my monthly all-in cost of living is probably equivalent to 2 hours of a good developer's time. I even live on less than most locals do. This has all allowed me have the time and flexibility that is necessary to really get to understand the situation (both here and in general) to a degree that very few others are able to, as well as to now focus on learning how to do basic WordPress development - which will certainly be a very useful skill to have - and eventually all of the other things that I will need to learn.

Perhaps I could have found a developer who is similarly passionate and willing to work for free as a co-founder, but that's simply not an option as what I'm doing is deeply philosophical at its root. I've finally come to appreciate a quote that I've long thought about "Those who know How will always work for those who know Why" - something that a much younger version of myself laughably, and wrongly, thought he knew both sides of. There's no chance that I could cede any control of my project to someone who hasn't spent 6+ years getting to the Why of it all.

Perhaps I could find someone who would be perfectly content with "working for" me for free, but I still don't know the fullness of the Why myself, much less how that should manifest itself into a website, so it wouldn't even be a productive relationship as much of my time is spent just pondering, then trying something out, then throwing it away.

Any of the above people - competent paid developer, competent co-founder, or less competent volunteer - would sooner or later quit rather than deal with my bullshit. Fair enough - all the more reason for anyone who is trying to do anything difficult to stick to themselves until the can properly make a good first impression and make good use of people's time.

So, I'm left plugging away alone, bit by bit. Spending a month or two exploring what options/possibilities exist and reflecting on how they could be incorporated into the site in a meaningful (let alone compatible) way. Spending a few days learning about wp_query here, another few about hooks there, still not really understanding either. Half a day to figure out how to add a dropdown filter for a search box. Waste a week with a search plugin (SearchWP) that is ultimately beyond my capabilities of leveraging, but then fortunately finding one (Ajax Search Pro) that is nearly as powerful and far more flexible/user-friendly at a fraction of the cost. And so on.

I've got complete confidence that I'll figure it out and that this will become "successful" - the technical stuff really isn't all that complicated, the fundamental ideas are solid, and it'll all be provided for free to people who desperately need it. I just need time to focus on my work, which I have plenty of given the decisions I've made.

And, as stated in the article, when there is some minimum viable product out there, I'll have profits (in this case, I assume I'll receive donations given the billions that are annually flushed down the drain with 99% of NGOs) to pay for competent people to bring some rigor to my hacking, as well as help optimize it for better scaling. Or, perhaps with what is now a clear project and vision, they (and other people with other skillsets) will volunteer those services because they believe in it. Ultimately I aim for it to be highly collaborative, but for now it is just a mess of thoughts and poorly written snippets.

Having said all of this, I'm extremely grateful for the bits of guidance and tips that various people have given me in various forums, facebook groups, as well as the wealth of WP resources that people generously share all over the web. To say nothing of the existence of WP itself. None of this would be possible without people being generous with their time and knowledge.

And that's the real message here. Lest I be misunderstood, this is not about me. The real message here is that we all need to focus on what is important in life and what is enough to pursue it. A hint: find a way to use your skills, preferences, opportunities and resources in a way that makes the world a better, more harmonious place for having had you in it. Give up everything that gets in the way of that and get to work. When you do that, doors will start to open where you never expected, and will increasingly open as you find more success.

I'm sure there are countless people in the WordPress community who could attest to this - they started contributing in some negligible way, and that grew into larger projects, jobs, careers, friendships, marriages etc…, all centered around the great idea of democratizing the web.

I hope this fits in, and is perhaps even appreciated, here in some way. If not, it was nice to reflect upon and articulate for my own sake…