As some of you may have noticed, Pligg is going through some changes. Recently, the administration has decided to open Pligg.com up for bidding. You can read more at the following links Mashable & Tech Crunch
Check out the new forum stats area on the bottom of the Pligg Forum. The stats are now cleaner looking and I added “Hottest Threads” and “Most Popular Forums” to the list. You also have the ability to turn off Top Stats by clicking on the box title and selecting “Turn off Top Stats”, but I don’t see why anyone would do that because lists are awesome. I browse the forum mostly by reading the newest threads using the stats page to keep up to date with the latest threads and replies. Don’t forget that if you’re a fan of Digg’s Spy application you might enjoy the Pligg Forum Live view. Check out the images below to see what the new stats box looks like.
Last week I asked Pligg users to fill out a survey to help me gauge how well we are doing at giving our users what they want. So far 74 users have replied with their answers and the results will be very helpful in helping the developers choose what should be next on the development list and how pligg.com will evolve. Now lets get on to the fun part, the survey results. Remember that just because we are publishing some of the results today doesn’t mean that you can’t take the survey and make your opinion heard. I will continue to leave the survey open for the next 2 weeks to get as much input as possible. If you haven’t already taken the survey, please take a minute to do so.
Pligg.com and Pligg.com/blog now both using the new “Fraxi” template, thanks to the work done by the folks at Moonrank USA. The design was created by me in Photoshop and ported as a Pligg template by Moonrank. The Pligg template version still hasn’t been applied to the site because we are working on some new features release along side the new template. For now you have a beautiful new homepage and blog to look at and help us test out.
I will be updating the forum and performing some enhancements this evening. If the forum experiences any downtime please be patient and come back in an hour or two and it should all be resolved. To help ease the pain I will only have the forum shut down for a small amount of time and bring it back up as soon as possible. If you’re looking for something to do while the forum is being worked on try adding some new material to the Pligg Wiki. I will update this post once the forum upgrade has been completed.
Yesterday evening Pligg released beta version 9.5, our last installment of the beta series for Pligg. Between this release and the next there will be additional optimizations performed and some final tweaking and bugfixes added. It has been decided that most features from this point out should be added through the semi-new module system which lets you plugin your own code without messing with the core of Pligg. This doesn’t mean that the development of Pligg will slow, in fact we expect the opposite. Soon we will be releasing a few new features on Pligg.com that I think will result in gaining the attention of more developers and users. We’re very happy about the current performance and features of Pligg and I think you will agree after testing this latest version. Below is a list of my favorite features from this release (there are A LOT). Picture will be added soon.
I spent the day with my girlfriend trying to come up with an advertisement idea for a magazine ad. I was asked to prepare an ad to be used for an online distribution magazine that is going to feature several open source projects with full page advertisements. I didn’t want to bore the readers with the same old lists of features and then plaster the logo all over it. Instead we came up with what I find to be a nice little teaser ad that will attract readers to learn more about Pligg. I am interested in finding out how you guys feel about the advertisement, so please post a comment.
OpenID
I found a handy script from PHPClasses to ease my OpenID module development. The goal of this mod is too allow both regular logins and OpenID logins. Currently the BETA version of this mod only works for existing accounts. The user will go into their profile and set their OpenID url. They will then be able to login using OpenID. Note: this plugin requires the latest SVN available (at least Rev 957). When finished the mod will allow people to quickly register on a Pligg site using their OpenID account.
Pligg is seeking a designer who is experienced in Template Lite template design and is able to take a Photoshop .psd file and convert it into a working Pligg template. This job will be a full time position (30-40 hour weeks) for a maximum of two weeks.
I leave Friday morning to head out to Las Vegas, courtesy of Avid, to cover this year’s NAB conference and expo. I will be interning with Avid for 6 days doing a lot of video interviews with industry professionals to be broadcast on the net. I will be interviewing Irene Burns, co-producer of the television show, 30 ROCK. I will also be doing a Q&A interview with Chris McCaleb, a writer and director for the online video series “Prom Queen“. You can find these and other interviews by visiting the Savannah College of Art and Design Avid blog page.
