Creating The Screaming Alpha has been a journey of discovery, and like many journeys there have been more than a few pitfalls along the way. I was recently trying to upgrade to a new version of Lightbox, which is the plugin that oh-so artistically displays the closeup views of our gorgeous photos. The installation went horribly wrong and ended up messing up the site pretty badly. As is my wont I immediately hit the message boards looking for help.

Since I was installing Greg’s Slimbox 2 plugin when things went south, I posted on his support forum looking for help. He was very quick to respond and offer some advice, but it turned out that the damage was elswhere and I managed to correct it after some sage advice from a kind soul on the official WordPress troubleshooting boards.

With the worst of the damage sorted I turned my attention to getting Slimbox 2 installed properly. The process is amazingly simple and coding-free, which is why I was so interested in it in the first place. I installed and set it up, and got…nothing. I tried again. No dice. It showed on the Dashboard but didn’t work on the page. I headed back to Greg’s support forum.

I explained my trouble and we exchanged messages a few times. Over the course of just six hours he managed to correctly diagnose the problem (which it turns out was one that had arisen before) and coded a new version of the plugin that fixed my problem completely. I just want to say that again. The man produced a NEW VERSION of his plugin just because I, a total stranger, asked him for help. And he did it all in less than a day. What can one say? Words fail.

Thanks a million, Greg. You exemplify the spirit of generous cooperation among users that built the Internet from an glorified teletype used only by eggheads to trade data sets into the powerhouse of information, entertainment and ideas that it is today.

I’m a writer by training and avocation. My stock in trade is communicating ideas to my readers, but without the tireless efforts of Greg and his fellow code monkeys wordsmiths like myself would be back to handing out poorly-mimeographed onesheets on the streetcorners. So here’s to all the hardworking grunts slowly going blind and/or insane down in the data trenches keeping the wheels of the Internet turning for all of us. You guys rock.

Oh, and anybody with a wordpress site that has any photos would have to be completely insane not to check out Greg’s excellent Slimbox 2 plugin over at the plugin’s homepage. It’s really quite easy to setup and use, and makes your blog look truly impressive. If you happen to have trouble (heaven forbdid), drop by the helpful support forums over at Pixopoint, and Greg and the boys will fix you right up.

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