Pligg CMS Blog

There have been some issues with the Pligg donation page automatically crediting donors, so until I figure out a solution I will have to manually add donors to the list so that they no longer see ads. If you have donated using the same email address that you used to register for the Pligg forum you should be credited by the end of the day. If you used another email address, please send Yankidank a PM on the forum with the email you used to donate. Hopefully this issue can be resolved sometime in the next week, but I don’t have an easy way to test the donor status at this moment without actually donating.

Today we are introducing a new look for the Pligg Forum. Now the forum matches the rest of the site, by adapting the Fraxi template used on the homepage and blog. The new template was coded by the good folks at Moonrank USA, and designed by myself (Yankidank). The templates were paid for by our generous donors, and to thank them we have removed all advertisements from the template for any registered forum member donors. It’s not too late though for those of you who have not yet donated, submit a donation of $10 or more and reap the benefits. Check out the images below to see what the new forum looks like, or view the forum for yourself and register if you haven’t already.

Pligg Beta 9.8 released today (9/8/2007) with several bug fixes and a more compatible and optimized template. We noticed today that it has been a really long time since the last major release, but if you compare us to Mac OS X we are moving pretty fast with incremental updates. Pretty soon we will be releasing our stable 1.0 version, which should be the most stable and efficient version of Pligg yet.

Below is a list of the most recent changes for Pligg Beta 9.8.

• Fix for various ‘undefined index’ errors.
• Various code improvements.
• Added various module hooks.
• Updates to make yget Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional.
• Various bugfixes.
• MySQL strict mode fixes.
• Optimized CSS.
• Updates to make CSS 2.1 Valid.
• Fixed tabindex on register and login pages.
• Fixed www / no www voting problem.
• ezSQL cache of some of the tables.
• Upgraded RSS Importer to ver 0.5.
• Added ability to use Google site search.
• Added ability to log ez_sql queries to a file.
• Added ability to disable ‘Last 5 people to view this profile’ as it is causing DB problems for some users.
• Hide ‘god’ users from the ‘who voted’ section.
• Fix for MySQL usernames and passwords with “$” in it.

You can download Pligg Beta 9.8 here.

A reminder to all you Pliggers living out west. Pligg module developer Jesse Stay will be speaking at the Utah Open Source Conference this week. Jesse will be doing a presentation on developing Pligg modules and has created some great stuff for Pligg. I’m sure this will be a very informative presentation. Here are the details from his site. I’ve been asked to present on developing Pligg modules at the Utah Open Source Conference, September 6-8, 2007. So if you’re in the area and would like to learn how to write one, please be sure to attend! I’m thinking of going through a 15 minute or so walk through of creating a simple module to show how easy it is. This also means I’ve got to get my Email_Latest plugin fully functional and maybe make the Digg plugin a little better. Also, expect a Facebook module here shortly that will allow you to tie Pligg into Facebook Applications. What would you like to see in the presentation? Thanks Jesse, and best of luck from all of us here at Pligg!

Last week we shut down the old Pligg Wiki because of a large amount of spam that the moderators were not able to keep up with. To make up for the short Wiki downtime we are announcing the brand new Pligg Wiki 2.0. The new wiki system integrates with vBulletin, allowing registered forum members to edit wiki articles and even post comments. The new wiki operates much like a normal forum, so it is easy to create new Wiki pages and browse and edit the existing pages. I have already added several pages from our old forum to the new wiki and some of those articles appear with a “Reserved for future use” message at the top. I plan to include video tutorials in this area for many of the articles. One of the great features of the new wiki is that you are able to create a “book”. This lets you link wiki articles together like chapters in a book, allowing wiki readers to read articles in order. This is great when several wiki articles share the same category and should be read in a linear fashion. Now that we have a brand new wiki, please do me a favor and help us out by contributing. All you need is a Pligg Forum account.

Even after spending a considerable amount of time yesterday cleaning up spam links and even adding some additional content to the Pligg Wiki I have decided to pull the plug on it. Today I signed on and saw that there was a significant amount of spam added since my visit a day earlier. We have been looking for software to replace the wiki for a while now, but there doesn’t seem to be a nice package offered for vBulletin users. The MediaWiki platform has not only a horrible interface, few customizable options, and a generic template thats difficult to change, but it has basically no spam protection. The wiki’s contents will be copied prior to taking it down so that we could post it elsewhere when we find a better system. It looks that it might be a while before we find a better method for posting this type of content, but I’m too frustrated with removing huge amounts of spam daily to allow this to continue. The wiki will probably be taken down in about a week, so this post is just a heads up and a place for you to voice your opinion if you are against this decision. If you know of an alternative to MediaWiki that preferably integrates with vBulletin and offers a decent administrative panel please let me know in the comments section of this article. *UPDATE* Please see the article “Pligg Wiki 2.0” to learn about the new Pligg Wiki.

I wanted to fill everyone in on what’s going on behind the scenes at Pligg.com because a lot of readers and Pligg users have been concerned about where Pligg might be headed. What most of you have been asking me are two things, the first being “why are you trying to sell Pligg”? The simplest answer I can give is that Pligg has been very difficult to manage with such a small team with a limited amount of time available to maintain the project. Not only does it take a lot of time to squash bugs and develop new features for the code, but keeping up with the forum takes a lot of time too. We also feel that at this point we have outgrown the foundation that we started with over a year and a half ago. I would like to completely redo the site and staff a full time developer, but we are not fortunate to do that at this point. I think that by selling the site we are able to hand over the project to someone better equipped to handle these things. Seeing that Pligg is one of the most popular content management system’s out there today, I have no doubt that it will have a bright future with whomever takes it over. We have been in talks with a few investors, but I’m waiting another month to make sure that all investors have had an opportunity to pitch their idea and get a bid in. From what I’ve discussed with the current bidders, Pligg will greatly benefit from new ownership. Possibly the question I’ve received the most during this sale price is “does the sale include the Pligg code”? A lot of people have approached us interested in buying the code along with the site, and many bloggers have written assuming that we were trying to include the code in the sale. Pligg is open source and will remain open source, however if a buyer were to invest enough money we would be willing to consider writing fresh code as originally intended for Pligg 2.0. This new code would be handed to the buyer so that they would have the option to license it however they want, open source or not. Giving our lead developer a chance to write Pligg code full-time is one of the goals I have for selling Pligg.com. His knowledge and familiarity with Pligg would make him a valuable asset to the buyer and this would give him an opportunity to write better code, resulting a better content management system. I believe that most buyers are wanting to keep the code open source no matter what because of the many benefits of having a larger audience that open source brings. If anyone has any questions about the Pligg sale, please contact Yankidank by way of a Pligg Forum PM. I would be glad to answer any questions from potential buyers, and even fill in bloggers with more details about the sale or Pligg in general.

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 Let me elaborate on what this means. In the last year and a half Pligg has grown well beyond our expectations and it is getting difficult for the developers to manage the business side of Pligg on a daily basis without slowing down development. Which consists mainly of advertising, support, and community management. We’ve seen many online businesses develop products to support Pligg recently. Selling everything from custom templates and modules, to support and installation. This should be a clear example of the popularity of Pligg. We believe by allowing more seasoned professionals take over the day to day management of Pligg, it will allow Pligg to flourish into realm’s that we never thought possible. So what does this mean to you, the “Pligger”? Right now, not much, as we’ve just open the channels up for negotiation. Any transfer of Pligg ownership could take months. We believe this will bring a vast improvements the the Pligg community and allow the developers to continue working on the project uninterrupted. As of right now nothing has changed. Keep up your Pligging and we will update you with any information we get. Visit the Sedo listing