Gravity Forms is on the verge of releasing one of its biggest core updates since the software first launched over three years ago. A great number of changes are occurring that will improve the flexibility of Gravity Forms, and hopefully, increase its usefulness for many people.

I have been awaiting this update for quite some time as I have been asked to hold off on doing too much work on tutorials and screencasts until it is launched. Primarily, I have been working on support the last few months, while also reviewing previous support cases, and reading documentation and making the odd tweak. My hope is that my role will continue to evolve as I take over documentation, tutorials, screencasts and marketing in the second quarter of this year.

I started working for rocketgenius in May of 2012, and am quickly approaching my first completed year with the company. In that time, I have written thousands of responses on our support forums, and over two thousand customers on our separate support system. Sometimes, I don’t really feel like I’m providing enough value to the company, as they did hire me at a point where they didn’t need any more staff to run effectively, but if you take all I have done just in the separate support system that includes metrics, and make some assumptions, then I think I’ve done alright, but I hope for an even better year in 2013.

More than half a million people are using Gravity Forms currently, and that number is growing by leaps and bounds every day. The amount of support work that was required when I first started was probably one third less than it is today, and I have no doubt that as sales continue to rise, we will need more support resources available to help keep our community happy.

There has also been an immense growth of third party add-ons for WordPress. When I search Gravity Forms on WordPress Plugins Extend, I see 95 listings. This number will probably increase over one hundred this year, and the quality and complexity of these add-ons is increasing as well.

Since I started, rocketgenius has also released a few add-ons for Gravity Forms with Picatcha, Polls and now the Quizzes add-on along with updating nearly all of our add-ons for new features, and new versions of WordPress and Gravity Forms.

One of my happy moments of the year was finally taking the time to write out the Notifications Troubleshooting Steps. About one third of all support inquiries can now be answered through one of two troubleshooting documents, our normal Plugin/Theme Conflict Troubleshooting steps or the Notification Troubleshooting steps.

I’m excited about creating more documentation and walkthroughs this year that will hopefully continue to help more and more users, and allow the company not to hire more staff for a bit longer than they otherwise would have. Overhead is always important for a small business, and as much as staff are resources, it can also quickly change an agile business into a lumbering company. Which I don’t feel would be right for rocketgenius.

Things have been going really well at rocketgenius, and I can’t wait to see what the year ahead brings. There are a few add-ons on the horizon from the team, and some other updates that will definitely continue to excite the community.

I’m also very hopeful that this is the company I will be with for the long haul.