Welcome to BlogUtils – A Solo Dev's Quest for Plugin Sanity

Updated August 2026: BlogUtils is no longer a commercial project. All four plugins are now free and open source under GPL-2.0. This post has been revised — it originally announced $50 pricing and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

The Part Where I Introduce Myself (Promise It's Brief)

I'm about to add four more WordPress plugins to an ecosystem that already has... checks notes ...approximately 60,000 of them.

I know what you're thinking: "Great. Another developer who thinks their plugins are special." And you'd be right to be skeptical! But hear me out, because I've got a story about subscriptions, bloated code, and why I'm done with the way most WordPress plugins are built.

The Problem: When Did Plugins Become Monthly Payments?

Here's the thing – I've been writing code for decades. I've seen trends come and go. I've watched free tools become "freemium." I've witnessed one-time purchases morph into monthly subscriptions faster than you can say "SaaS creep."

And somewhere along the way, WordPress plugins joined the party.

$9 a month for a word counter. $15 a month for a reading time generator. $29 a month for a progress bar that's literally 50 lines of JavaScript. When did we collectively decide this was okay?

Look, I get it. Developers need to eat. I'm not saying all subscription models are evil. But when I just want to add a simple feature to my blog – like showing how long it takes to read a post – I shouldn't need to commit to a long-term relationship with someone's billing system.

The Lightbulb Moment (Or: Why I'm Doing This)

I was reviewing a popular reading time plugin the other day – you know, one with tens of thousands of active installations. The download was 580KB.

For context, that's roughly the size of a small novel. To calculate reading time. Using basic math.

My version? ~19KB.

That's not a typo. That's not me being clever with compression. That's just... not including a bunch of stuff nobody needs. No analytics trackers. No upsell popups. No framework that does 100 things when you only need one.

Here's the kicker: that 580KB competitor plugin is nearly 8x larger than all four of my plugins combined (~77KB total). One plugin. Eight times my entire suite.

It's like buying a hammer and getting a free anvil, forge, and blacksmithing certification course you didn't ask for.

What I'm Building (The "Keeping It Light" Collection)

I'm launching with four plugins, each designed to solve one problem really well:

Word Count (~17KB) – Shows word counts on your posts. That's it. No fancy AI predictions about how many words you should write. Just accurate counts that match what Google Docs and Word give you. Because sometimes simple is enough.

Read Time (~19KB) – Calculates reading time using the same algorithm Medium and Substack use (200 words per minute, for you speed-readers taking notes). Check the header of this post to see it in action. It even accounts for images, because yes, I've actually thought about this stuff. First image? 12 seconds. Eleventh image? 3 seconds. Your readers are skimming by then anyway.

Progress Bar (~18KB) – A smooth, 60fps scroll indicator that shows reading progress. You're seeing it right now at the top of the page. It's performant enough that your site won't feel sluggish, and your readers get that satisfying visual feedback as they scroll. Small wins matter.

Table of Contents (~23KB) – Auto-generates a TOC from your headings with smooth scrolling navigation. If you're on desktop, it's in the sidebar to your right. On mobile, it's collapsible at the top. Works with Gutenberg, Classic Editor, and all the major page builders. Yes, even that one you're thinking of. And it's still under 24KB.

Total size of all four plugins combined? ~77KB. That's less than most single plugins from competitors.

The Part About Money (Let's Not Dance Around It)

All four plugins are free. Open source, GPL-2.0, the whole thing sitting on GitHub where you can read every line before you install it.

They didn't start that way. There was a price, there was a checkout, and there was a plan about a sustainable little business selling tools to bloggers. It didn't work – not "grew slower than projected", just didn't work. So rather than leave four finished plugins rotting on a disk, I put them out under GPL-2.0 and shut the storefront off.

Not a strategy. Just the honest end of one.

The Promise (This Is Where I Get Sincere)

Here's what I'm committing to:

No licence keys. Nothing to activate, nothing that phones home, no feature that stops working because a key expired. It's just code you own.

The source is on GitHub. Fork it, read it, fix whatever bugs you find. That's what GPL-2.0 is for.

Lightweight code. I'm not going to bloat these plugins with features nobody asked for. They're small, they're fast, and they're going to stay that way.

Theme compatibility. All four plugins are tested on the major WordPress themes (Astra, GeneratePress, OceanWP, Hello Elementor, Twenty Twenty-Four). They use WordPress hooks properly, so they work with basically any theme. Not just the popular ones.

No tracking, no upsells. No analytics beacons, no "upgrade to Pro" nag in the admin, nothing reporting your site back to me.

Why You Should Care (Besides My Winning Personality)

WordPress powers approximately 43% of all websites as of 2025. That's a lot of blogs that could benefit from better tools. Tools that load fast. Tools that don't require a monthly commitment. Tools built by someone who actually cares about quality.

I've been building software for decades. I know what good code looks like. I know the difference between "works on my machine" and "works everywhere." And I know that most WordPress users just want plugins that solve their problems without creating new ones.

That's BlogUtils in a nutshell.

The Free Thing (Because Everyone Loves Free Things)

Oh, and before you go – try the free read-time generator on the homepage. Paste in your article, see how long it takes to read. No signup required, no tracking, just a useful tool that demonstrates the kind of quality I'm going for.

If you like what you see, the plugins are on the plugins page – same code, running inside WordPress instead of a text box.

Welcome to BlogUtils. It's good to have you here.