A Tribute to Brad Iroff

Just nine days ago on April 10th, Brad passed away at such a young age of only 36 years old. Brad is survived by a wife, a daughter, and a second child on the way. My deepest sympathies go out to his family during this difficult time. No family should have to go through this.

Brad owned Kickstand Creative and was a popular guy in the Atlanta WordPress community. He was a legit web designer/developer and knew WordPress better than most people in the community. Brad and I followed each other on Twitter for about a year before meeting each other in person for the first time at the 2015 Atlanta WordCamp. I ran into Brad a few more times at Mickey Mellen’s WordPress Meetups.

A month before the 2016 Atlanta WordCamp, Brad and I talked on Skype about working together on web development projects. Like me, he was more focused on running an efficient business. Before we went into how we could help each other, Brad made mention of his copyright date plugin that updates itself each year. At the time, I told Brad that I didn’t see any use for it because I knew PHP and I knew how to code a copyright date that updates itself every year.

He responded by telling me that not everybody who uses WordPress knows how to code PHP, and with his plugin, you just needed to add a shortcode for a dynamic copyright date. Brad’s point was valid, but I still didn’t think I needed to use a dynamic copyright date plugin. After that, we went about our discussion on how we could help each other.

I saw Brad again at the 2016 Atlanta WordCamp last month where I spoke on a SEO panel with Jenny Munn and Mickey Mellen. Although Brad didn’t care about nor need SEO, he stopped in to support us by watching us speak. He looked at us as his peeps. I remember seeing him walk in while I was speaking. I cracked a smile when he did. After the WordCamp, we continued to chat via Twitter before his untimely passing. Here are some of his replies to one of my tweets.

@mrtechnique “click here” or “call me” don’t give the visitor insight on what the next step is, what to expect, or are buying into.

— Brad Iroff (@bradiroff) March 25, 2016

A week ago, someone had informed me that the copyright year was not current on a client’s website that I designed and provided SEO services for. I was embarrassed. The copyright section for uDesign, the WordPress theme that I used for Amazon Stone’s website had to be updated in the theme’s settings of the WordPress admin section, and PHP is not allowed in uDesign’s theme settings. Initially, I thought no big deal. I’ll just update the copyright year every year manually. I couldn’t believe that I forgot to update the copyright date for three years!

I was faced with a dilemma. The uDesign theme admin section couldn’t take PHP or JavaScript in its admin panel, and I didn’t want to create a child theme just to have a dynamic copyright date. After forgetting to update the copyright date manually for three years, depending on my memory was a big negative. That’s when I remembered my conversation with Brad about his copyright plugin.

The uDesign theme’s settings section may not be able to process PHP directly, but it can process it through a shortcode. There were other copyright date plugins that were in the WordPress plugin repository, but as a tribute to Brad, I downloaded his plugin from his website and used it on all of my clients’ websites that used the uDesign WordPress theme. All I had to do was add [year] to display the current year like you see in the screenshot below:

Game, Set, Match

Brad, you were right. A dynamic copyright year plugin is useful for people that don’t know PHP, and it’s useful for websites that can’t take PHP in the theme admin section. Your point has been made. RIP, my friend, and may God bless your family during this difficult time.

If you would like to help Brad’s family, his wife set up a GoFundMe account set up for his daughter’s college fund.