Skip to content
FREE & OPEN SOURCE Million Dollar Script is a free WordPress plugin for sponsor walls, campaign grids, fundraiser boards, and premium add-on workflows.
Back to blog

August 24, 2026

Million Dollar Script 3.0 Alpha

It's finally here after all these years. Million Dollar Script 3.0 Alpha!

Release

Hello!

In 2005 the original Million Dollar Homepage put a website up selling tiny pixel blocks and sold out in five months. Shortly after that the first version of Million Dollar Script came out. After the original author sold it for a while, he opened-sourced it and released it free, and looked for someone to carry it on. That was me, in 2010.

Since then I've slowly converted it into a WordPress plugin. I realized it really needed to be rewritten from scratch. I've spent a long time researching the right way to rewrite the whole thing, testing software, libraries, frameworks, plugins, experimenting with different ways of doing it. I've talked to a lot of people. The same few things kept coming up:

  • People want large grids.
  • People want simpler checkout.
  • People want to publish to NFTs. That one's coming soon.
  • People want to demo it and see it in action.
  • Ultimately, people want to make money. A lot of you don't have money to invest in a site, you want the site to make money. So I've also created an extension system and a bunch of extensions that offer more ways to make money and add new features.

I've just released Million Dollar Script 3.0 as a public alpha. It's a huge update, completely rewritten, and here's what's actually new.

What's different from MDS 2.0

3.0 isn't a patch on top of 2.0. It's the rewrite I've been researching and talking about for years:

  • The grids are better. They're fully responsive now, so they work on phones better instead of just looking squashed or resizing using gimicky methods to resize the imagemaps and having zoom limitations. Visitors can now pan and zoom, pick exactly which blocks they want, and preview artwork in place before they pay.
  • Checkout is simpler. Users can order quicker, easier, with less steps.
  • There's a real migration path. If you're running 2.0 today, the migration tool does a dry run first. You see exactly what will move, including grids, pages, orders, packages, price rules, inventory, artwork, settings, and your custom field values, and you get a report on anything that was skipped or needs a look. Then you import and the old plugin stays installed until you're comfortable switching over.
  • It's built for a big site. The order pipeline was tested through half a million simulated orders. It's validated against WordPress 7.1 and works on MySQL or SQLite, and the admin screens work in dark mode, which helps when you're managing orders at 2am.
  • The core stays small. Extra capability lives in extensions instead of in the core. There are 23 Million Dollar Script extensions right now. 13 are free, and the rest can be paid monthly, yearly or a one time fee. You can install them from the extensions page of the pugin admin and update them like any other plugin.
  • There's a real API. Scoped REST API keys let you build your own integrations without handing anything over the fence.

Extensions

If you don't have money to start with, MDS is the thing that makes the money for you, and the extensions are how I've tried to add more ways to help you do that. I'll let the full catalog do the talking, but a few stand out:

  • ImageGrid is a free extension for a paid service I created at ImageGrid.dev specifically for people who don't have powerful enough hosting so they can still generate large grids. It's an API service you can sign up for to get a key to put into the extension. It's still new and created just for MDS 3.0. However, since it's an API service it also can be used to do other common image operations such as resize, optimize, crop, and create tiles for images that can be used in OpenLayers which MDS 3.0 uses to display grids. You can also serve them from a CDN if you like so they are faster around the globe.
  • Fields (premium) allows you to create custom fields for your orders. It also supports adding custom fields to the Contact Form extension and I'll be adding support to other extensions wherever possible in the future.
  • Subscriptions (premium) gets you out of one-time sales. Recurring plans, trials, usage allowances, and subscriber only features.
  • Advertiser Workspace (premium) gives your advertisers a proper place to manage their own placements, artwork, and renewals. That's fewer support emails for you and more renewals for you.
  • Revenue Agent (premium) drafts sponsor packages, proposal pages, and outreach copy from your own site. You review and send whatever you like, nothing goes out on its own.
  • Sponsorable AI Tools (free) lets you publish little tools, calculators, quizzes, and generators with sponsor slots in them, and collect leads while the sponsor's name is on the page.
  • Local Money Map (free) sells spots on an interactive local map with QR codes for each one. Local businesses are a sponsor audience most pixel sites never think of.
  • Launch Wall, Bounty Engine, Missions, and Time Capsule are new ways to sell things that aren't pixels: launch slots, moderated bounty boards, public missions with supporter recognition, and future reveal slots.
  • Revenue Reports (free) shows your actual revenue, order status, and which grid is pulling its weight, with CSV export.
  • Search Visibility (premium) and SEO Basic (free) help people actually find your grid when they search.

If you want all the premium ones, the Complete Extension Pack covers every current premium extension with one license cheaper than getting all the extensions separately.

Demo Playground

I've created a demo! That's another thing people have very often asked for and finally I have one. You can even see the admin and install some of the extensions right in your browser. It doesn't run on any server, it runs right in your browser, only you have access to it.

It has little tutorial missions to help you try to figure some things out. I might make more of those some time if you like them.

Hopefully it makes sense and is helpful. If you have any feedback on that as well please let me know.

How to get it

  • Download the plugin from the plugin page. Currently it's under the Pre-Release Versions drop-down.
  • Browse the extensions catalog to see what's free and what's premium.
  • The alpha zip, changelog, and issue tracker are on GitHub.
  • The forums and Discord are where I hang out. I've brought the forums back, redesigned the site, and gone through the docs, so there's less to figure out and more to use.

It's an alpha, so I'm expecting it to have rough edges. That's the point of releasing it now instead of later. Install it, migrate a site if you have one (after backing it up properly of course), run a real order through, and let me know if you find any errors or issues, what's missing or what doesn't make sense.

I'd also like to know what you're building. If you run a site with Million Dollar Script, come and post your link and your story on the Stories forum. I like reading about who's out there making things and looking at your sites. Other people like to see it too.

That about does it! Good luck!

Ryan