I was trawling around for ideas for the site and getting increasingly frustrated with the thought of having to use a pre-built theme, this really wasn't my idea of fun; stifled by someone else's boundaries and limited in what I can achieve has never been particularly easy for me.
How it all started
At the same time Joe Workman had just released his Foundation Theme for RapidWeaver. The idea of being able to use a framework I already knew was appealing and so the decision was made. The site I built went really well and my friend was happy, the inevitable (for me) happened though and I just couldn't resist a little tinkering around with things on the side. I therefore spent most of the summer providing CSS snippets to users on the newly formed g+ group where Foundation questions were rife.
What quickly followed, were requests for a few custom Stacks for Foundation to save people having to learn CSS and the intricacies of the framework. They immediately saw the potential and wanted to achieve some of effects that they saw on hand coded sites using Foundation from Zurb. ButtonPlus was duly born, quickly followed by HeaderPlus, Paragraph Plus, Top Bar Joey and ScrollUp for Top Bar. The small group of users was beginning to mushroom and so it became apparent that I was going to have to distribute the stacks in a more formal manner.
I was conscious though, that what had started out as an exercise to help people should remain so. The last thing I needed was to start another business, after all I was supposed to be retired (not due to age I hasten to add). I therefore took the plunge, registered a domain name and signed up for a cartloom account in order to distribute the stacks. Justin Bamforth of Amia Design very kindly not only provided the hosting of the Big White Duck site for free, but also wrote the site and did all the icon artwork for the stacks. Without this help, allowing me to focus on the code, it would have been closer to a Christmas launch rather than a September one.
The premise that the stacks should be free and yet well supported and professionally presented was foremost in my mind. In fact, it still is, it is just that now I understand what that means. Essentially it boils down to no sleep and very little time to do anything else, but it is fun and tremendously rewarding.
Many users are kind enough to donate to the project through the "buy me a coffee" links on the website. This is much appreciated and in time, I hope, will mean that the only costs I incur are my time. Moreover the huge amount of kind comments, thanks and seeing the lovely websites that people have created are more than enough recompense for the effort that goes in to the stacks.
The Future
Well, really, more of the same. We now have thirteen stacks released with another two that are close to completion. Thanks to my friend Joe Workman, the process of writing and releasing the stacks has been greatly eased. It also means that the Foundation stacks can be tightly integrated with the Foundation theme. This can only be of benefit to users and I think, that, particularly with the most recent additions, they are really reaping the rewards of this approach.