Pligg CMS Blog

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. ** UPDATE ** The forums are now back online. The downtime was roughly 10 minutes, which isn’t bad by my standards. You may see some small errors over the next few hours as we continue to update a few more things. Please report any bugs by leaving a reply to this blog post.

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.

Which version of Pligg are you currently using?
		Response Percent	Response Count
Recent SVN		14.9%	11
Beta 9.5+		59.5%	44
Beta 9		20.3%	15
Beta 8		2.7%	2
Beta 7 or earlier		2.7%	2
	answered question		74
	skipped question		0

How long have you been using Pligg?
		Response Percent	Response Count
Under 1 Month		25.7%	19
1-3 Months		27.0%	20
3-6 Months		25.7%	19
6 Months or more		21.6%	16
	answered question		74
	skipped question		0

What do you use Pligg for? Check all that apply.
		Response Percent	Response Count
Personal use		27.8%	20
Professional use		33.3%	24
Blogging platform		13.9%	10
User submitted news		70.8%	51
User submitted media (audio/video)		30.6%	22
Content aggregation (combining links from other sites)		34.7%	25
Social Bookmarking (Del.icio.us style web bookmarking)		19.4%	14
Product or service rating		12.5%	9
Gaining user input (Dell IdeaStorm)		4.2%	3
Other form of rating		2.8%	2
	answered question		72
	skipped question		2

What made you choose to try Pligg?
		Response Percent	Response Count
Saw another site using it		16.4%	12
Wanted a site like Digg.com		68.5%	50
Searched for a read/submit/vote CMS		45.2%	33
Referred to Pligg from someone else		6.9%	5
	answered question		73
	skipped question		1

How would you rate Pligg in each of these areas?
	Bad	Below Average	Average	Good	Great	Rating Average	Response Count
Ease of Installation	4.1% (3)	8.2% (6)	11.0% (8)	42.5% (31)	34.2% (25)	3.95	73
Ease of Customization	11.0% (8)	16.4% (12)	42.5% (31)	24.7% (18)	5.5% (4)	2.97	73
Performance (load times and server resources)	2.7% (2)	16.4% (12)	49.3% (36)	28.8% (21)	2.7% (2)	3.12	73
Forum Support	2.8% (2)	11.1% (8)	31.9% (23)	31.9% (23)	22.2% (16)	3.60	72
Documentation (wiki/readme/tutorials)	14.1% (10)	28.2% (20)	33.8% (24)	15.5% (11)	8.5% (6)	2.76	71
Overall Experience	0.0% (0)	8.2% (6)	28.8% (21)	41.1% (30)	21.9% (16)	3.77	73
	answered question						73
	skipped question						1

What areas would you like to see Pligg improve upon?
		Response Percent	Response Count
Documentation		54.8%	40
Better Performance		61.6%	45
Hosted Solutions		5.5%	4
Premium/Paid Services		15.1%	11
More Templates		67.1%	49
More Modules		69.9%	51
New Homepage		12.3%	9
Forum Support		27.4%	20
Other (specifics offered later)			14
	answered question		73
	skipped question		1

How often do you visit pligg.com?
		Response Percent	Response Count
Rarely, only to check for updates		15.9%	11
A few times a month		18.8%	13
A few times a week		33.3%	23
A few times a day		15.9%	11
I live on pligg.com		15.9%	11
	answered question		69
	skipped question		5

Pligg plans on using its CMS on pligg.com. What information would you find beneficial in addition to a demo of Pligg on the redesigned homepage?
		Response Percent	Response Count
Featured Pligg Sites		60.9%	42
Testimonials from Pligg Users		21.7%	15
Pligg Tips and Tutorials		88.4%	61
FAQ		55.1%	38
Hosting Advise		18.8%	13
Statistics about Pligg		39.1%	27
Latest forum posts		36.2%	25
	answered question		69
	skipped question		5

What categories would you like to see on the new Pligg.com?
		Response Percent	Response Count
Web News		20.0%	13
Web Design		52.3%	34
CMS News		36.9%	24
Pligg News		78.5%	51
Technology News		29.2%	19
Tutorials		76.9%	50
	answered question		65
	skipped question		9

Digg It! 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.

• Related Stories – New related stories feature returns stories that have common tags. Code can be found here http://forums.pligg.com/showthread.p…elated+stories
• Un-vote – Now users can un-vote stories they have voted for.
• Mass delete private messages – Delete as many PM as you want at once.
• Search for users – On the profile page users can search for other users
• Major database query enhancements – There are no official numbers yet but AshDigg has done an awesome job eliminating many calls to the database. A quick estimation shows that the database calls in version 9.1 was 170+ and now it’s 50-60. This should substantially increase the speed of your Pligg site
• “Reporting/Burying” Stories – Users can bury stories that are spam, inaccurate etc etc. Burying a story grays it out to signify you have buried it.
• Latest comments – A new sidebar module that shows the latest comments has been added.
• Vote counts in sidebar – Now in the sidebar you can view the vote counts for each story
• Custom 404 pages – Now you can easily enable a custom 404 page for your Pligg site.
• “Save” stories – A new feature has been added to Pligg that lets users save or bookmark any stories they want. The stories are saved under a new tab called “Saved” in their profile. (thanks eH9116)
• Title of stories links to original news URL on story page – Now when your users are viewing the full story they can click on the title to view the external link
• Vote count is RSS feeds – The vote count for each story has been added to the RSS feeds.

• New Modules
  • Enhanced RSS importer module – The RSS importer is now a module and has many new features including Import pre-existing feeds and support for random votes.
  • Image upload module – Upload images and use the thickbox javascript library to view them (Thanks Cent)
  • Digg users module – Allow your users to enter their digg name in their profile and an rss feed for their submitted and voted on stories is automatically generated in the rss importer. Admins can then import these stories into their Pligg site. Thanks (jstayii/uncle_jesse)
  • Email all users module – A module that lets you create a message to send to all of the users on your site
  • Page statistics module – A module that allows your users to view all the stories and how many views each story has had.
  • Formula Manager module – A new module has been added that allows an admin to easily modify formulas that are used and their Pligg site. Currently, you can only edit the “report/bury” formula. Hopefully more will be added in the future.

• Enhanced Admin Panel – Major improvements to the Admin Panel.
  • Search users – On the main user management page you can now search for users. You can search by name, email address, level, and date joined.
  • Create new user – Create users from the admin panel.
  • Link Management – As an admin you can do a mass update of stories via the admin panel. You can select multiple stories and either discard, queue, or published them with one click of a button. Admins can use this area to search for any stories, too.
  • Template Editor – Now admins can easily edit any of their template files via a new template editor. This saves the time having to get out your FTP client to make a small change.
  • Comment Manager – A new comment manager allows admins to delete or edit all comments from the admin panel. Mass deletion of comments can be done with a single click. Admins can use this area to search for comments, too.

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. Database Activity Aside from keeping a record of every vote submitted, we also keep a ‘count’ of those votes in a column the links table itself. This is so every time a story is viewed, we don’t have to count(*) from the votes table, we just look at the row we just read from the links table. A week ago we added comment count and just yesterday added ‘reports’. On an average Pligg site the index / home page will show 8 main stories, 5 upcoming and 5 top today. 18 stories * 2 queries (comments and reporting) = 36 unnecessary queries that have now been removed. Many changes have been made to the code to reduce the overall number of MySQL queries and more work is still being done. New Mod’s Today our good friend ChuckRoast released a new ‘mod’ today for translating the ‘story’ page from English into 6 other languages. He’s been a member of the forums for close to a year now and has a history of creating nice little mods that get added into the Pligg code.

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. Meanwhile… I have hired Xhtmlized to convert and template the Fraxi template that I designed. I pray that they do a great job so we can suggest them to Pligg users looking for someone to help them convert a web layout image into a working Pligg template. Moonrank offered to do the job free of charge, which we really appreciate, but I have been wanting to work with Xhtmlized for a while now and I’m glad I will have a chance to see what they can do with Pligg templates. They previously converted another design of mine a few months ago and I was really happy with the results. Hopefully by the time I’m back from Las Vegas, the template will be finished and prepared for me to test out. I probably won’t have a chance to blog from NAB on the Pligg Blog, so I will probably post in another week with a follow up about what was going on at NAB if any of it relates to web development and content production. If you’re planning on visiting NAB this year and you’re a fan of Pligg, please stop by the Avid booth and ask around for Eric. I’ll even give you one of my fancy new Pligg business cards as a souvenir (see below).

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. This job requires an advanced knowledge of the following skills:

• - HTML/DHTML
• - CSS
• - Photoshop. Convert from PSD file to XHTML/CSS, then convert to Template Lite. We don’t want to see a bunch of tables, so please don’t apply if you’re only going to slice the CSS like an amateur.
• - Template Lite (http://templatelite.sourceforge.net/)
• - Ajax. Lightbox and other effects provided by third party sites.

The end product should be compatible with all major browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and Safari). Priority will be given to developers/designers who have experience with Pligg. For more information, and to apply for this job please visit our oDesk.com listing. You can also bid at Scriptlance.com.

Last week I showed everyone the forum page that displays the estimated online time for Pligg forum users. This week I am showing off a feature that has never been shown to anyone outside of the developer group before. It’s called the “Live” page, it functions a lot like the Pligg “Live” page, updating information occasionally without having to reload the page. We all love ajax-refreshing pages, so give it a whirl here. Make sure to bookmark the tool because we won’t be sharing this link outside of the blog for a while.