My posts have been slowing down this month because I’m in the middle of finals (yes, I’m a college student). I am doing a lot of thinking about the next version of Pligg, but not much actual work. I picked up a few Ebooks that I plan to read through over break about Content Management Systems and Web Usability, and I hope to go pick up a solid book about web accessibility from the book store some day soon. If anyone has any great recommendations for web design books please let me know so I can check it out. I am also a great fan of web design podcasts, so let me know if you have any recommendations for any of those either.
Before I forget, check out this interesting site: PopURLs.com. Think of it as the social networking aggregator for nerds. It just opened up and I have a feeling that it’s going to be really popular.
My next personal Pligg project is to design a new administration panel for Pligg. The new admin panel will have a completely seperate template from the rest of the site, which means that I’ll either have to design some CSS from scratch or find an open source template that fits all of the requirements. Today there was a Digg post (and also a Pligg forum post) pointing to Mollio.org. The site offers a really well designed template, but I have yet to read the full license to see what requirements they have for distribution. Right now I’m leaning toward using Mollio, just because I suck at designing CSS. If anyone has any other suggestions please let me know in the next week.
I bet you are all wondering what else will be new about Pligg Beta 7, well I can’t tell you just yet. Right now we have set some really tough goals to hit so we aren’t sure if we will have to postpone some of the features or the release date. We have set a target date of March 19th for the release, but it’s a really fuzzy whether we’ll get everything done by then or not. At first we were going to release a lot of minor updates at an earlier date, but I thought it would be best to roll them all out at once with a much more stable release than what we have had in the past. AshDigg believes that all of the bugs discovered from the Beta 6 release should now be resolved, at least to his knowledge. The new template that will come with Beta 7 will be more compatable across browsers and platforms than the previous, but it is still not perfected. I have noticed some errors on the Mac OS version of Firefox with the search bar, but that’s the only problem so far. The Beta 7 template will come in two options, the 2 column or 3 column layout. I’m a big fan of 2 column layouts now that I’ve seen how much the Beta 6 template squished the middle column when limited to 800px width. This weekend I will post some details about the upcoming Beta 7 release and what new features will be included. Until then, wish me luck on my finals.
The other day I noticed some hits coming from a slashdot.org article and I went to inspect what the buzz whas all about. What I found was an interesting post that brings up a good question:
Andzik writes “Even with all of the buzz around Rich Internet Applications these days, using toolsets like Ajax and Flex, most sites that utilize these technologies seem to be incremental improvements, not revolutionary interface changes. Where does the Slashdot community feel the best opportunities are to substantially create different/better user experiences using RIA tools? What will be the killer app? Are we just not seeing them because the best improvements are being made to web based applications and not in the public space?”
On a related note, Vertigo asks: “Not so long ago everybody believed that it was a good thing to have the freedom to modify your software to suit your needs or to mangle your data in any way. But now that users are flocking to non-modifiable, one-size-fits-all web 2.0 apps like Gmail or Flickr, are we moving away from our open source ideals? Those services do provide many important benefits, but in the process of their enthusiastic adoption did we not loose sight of the most important issues?”
Do you think that the development of well written and web 2.0 software has changed to something that only corporate conglomerates have created? Or are there open source scripts out there that offer creative uses of web 2.0 technology?
Some of you just leaned forward in your computer chairs, either intrigued by this idea or disgusted by it. I know what the latter of you are thinking, “Stars?… those aren’t very Digg-like”. Well, who says we have to do everything like Digg? In fact Pligg isn’t supposed to be a copy of Digg, we’re an improvement. Digg’s system of voting is based on a “vote or no vote�? method. This works for Digg, but any other site that uses this method not only makes their voting system less accurate to user opinion, but they also confuse casual browsers.
I think the reason that most users are turned off by the idea of using a star rating system is because it’s been done over and over again on the web. Digg’s “vote or no vote�? method is something new to the web, making it fresh and hip. But using this method really handicaps your site on two levels. The first level is the usability of voting for new users. Digg’s one vote method is so fresh and singular to Digg.com (excluding clone projects) that it really doesn’t catch on right away for new users who have never visited the site before. People aren’t used to this voting method because it hasn’t been introduced to us before. There’s a good reason that this hasn’t been introduced before, because it isn’t very accurate.
Imagine you’re reading an article in the newspaper that lists ratings for the last 10 movies. The critic can only express his opinion of the movie using a quick and effective voting method to get the point across. Think of how handicapped his ability to express how good or bad a movie is if he has a voting system with two options, “see it”? or “don’t see it”?. How is the reader supposed to interpret this data from such a method? You don’t see this method used in the real world for rating movies; instead you see either a number rating from 0-5, 0-10, 0-100, or some other variation. Critics have also come up with rating movies with either a thumbs up or thumbs down, similar to the see it or don’t see it method. However, movie critics always pair their thumb reviews with a second opinion and a full paragraph review. This in a way gives us a rating system equal to a 0-2 rating system. I for one hate the thumb rating method and I feel like it wasn’t created to give accurate representations. I believe the thumbs method was created to get the reader intrigued enough about an article that they feel like they need to read the full paragraph of text to get an accurate representation of the rating.
My personal opinion is that switching Pligg from a “one vote or no vote”? system to a five star rating system will make voting more accurate and more comfortable for new users. We will of course still offer the option to use the older one vote method in future releases of Pligg, but for now it is my intention to make star rating default.
Digg has yet to officially release this feature, but they posted a link to a video demonstrating it on digg.com. My initial reaction to the video was, “hey I came up with that idea” for a small bit of AJAX used to shrink unwanted comments to a bar. Digg also showed off much needed threaded comments, yet another feature on the Pligg to-do list. Two of the features showed off by Digg, Pligg already has in the latest Beta 7 build. This includes the ability to vote + and – for comments and the ability to edit comments. The editing comments idea still needs to be mastered in Pligg, and the same goes for editing articles. The final feature highlights friends posts with the color green. Not the most necessary addition, but I’m sure some folks will appreciate it.
When you install Pligg, a “God” account is created in your database automatically. The username for this account is “God” (minus the quotes of course) and the password by default is “password”. After completing the first install of Pligg you should log into this account and change the password and email for the account. The God account is given the highest level of priviledges on your site, so you should make sure that the password is strong enough and contains a mix of letters and numbers. You should avoid using common words for the God password. You might even want to read this page about how to choose a good password for some tips.
I realize that when you pick a very difficult password it can be tough to remember down the road. This is why Pligg has password recovery built in. When a user requests a password by entering their username into the password request form, it will send an email to that user’s email address with a password change request code. The problem is, no where along the way will the user be able to see what email address it’s sending the password change request to. This is for security purposes and it will remain this way because it would be unwise to expose user emails this way. But if you are trying to retrieve the God password and you don’t remember changing the default email address you’re in trouble. By default God’s email is blank@pligg.com, so you’ll have trouble recovering your password because that email is nonexistant. So how do you change the password if you can’t do it by password change request? If you have PHPmyadmin you can edit the password manually using this guide. The guide is designed for WordPress, but it is pretty much identicle to what you would do for Pligg and it will point you in the right direction.
TWIT Episode 43: Old Yeller mentioned Pligg a couple times during the show. Leo brings it up and keeps calling it Pigg, perhaps it’s time I write him an email to correct him. You can tell that Dvorak and the rest of the crew are completely ignoring the subject. Dvorak like usual is just trying to get the others to listen to him, he’s such a hog for attention. Kevin joins in a few minutes after they first brought it up and they retouch the subject and talk a tiny bit about Digg.de. Good news is that Kevin mentions that he’s not so afraid of open source projects, just sites that infringe their trademark.
Download the episode here:
http://aolradio.podcast.aol.com/twit/TWiT0043H.mp3
Fast forward to 31:00 and listen for a couple of minutes.
When they stop talking about it fast forward to 38:00 and listen to Kevin talk about it for a short bit.
We are about a week in to the new template and already planning the framework for the next template. Instead of writing the next template from scratch we have decided that the best idea would probably be by using a generator to produce a very stable frame for the site and make modifications and addons as needed. There are two template CSS generators that we are testing out right now:
The new layout will only have one left sidebar starting with the user panel on top, followed by a custom link area, then the navigation area and finally the google ads. I think that I will also design it so that the google ads could optionally be placed in a box above the articles in the main content area, since this was requested by a user in a previous comment. I have always been a fan of verticle ads, but I see why someone might want to lay them out horizontally and I would like to keep everyone happy
AshDigg is also working on figuring out how to make changing templates easier by adding the ability to have multiple layouts in subdirectories and selecting which template you wish to use from the admin panel. This idea is really only in a conceptual stage right now, I don’t believe that he has started working on it just yet. The next template will hopefully also include a revamped administrator menu to make it easier on the eye. One of the areas that I think Pligg really stands out from the original Meneame code is the ability to act as an administrator through a simple interface, and I think we should really focus on making it easier and nicer for admins to access and maintain their data.
Lastly and perhaps most important for some of your aspiring web designers is this fun bit of news. Pligg will be hosting a template design contest for Pligg’s default template. We will feature the template in a future release of Pligg and the top three designers will be given cash prizes. First place will be given $50, second $25 and third $10 via Paypal. I know it’s not much, but we’re still a pretty small project and that pretty much maxes out our Pliggy Bank. The money given away for the prizes is coming from our donations that we have been given over the past few months, and I would like to take a moment to thank those who have donated to Pligg. We have collected about $250 in donations, $100 of which was my own money used to purchase a vbulletin license and domain name. I have recently added a link to the donation page to my signature in the forum to hope that we receive some more money to help pay for competitions like this one. I hope to hold more competitions in the future for things like Pligg mods, templates and integrations.
Back to the template competition… Here are some rules that all authors/artists should follow for the competition:
- All work submitted must be original (by you alone), or the code/imagery must have written permission by the original author to be used for the Pligg project, acknowledging its use in a competition and for free public distribution. The written permission must also have the original authors and your own contact information including a telephone number and current address. This must be scanned and emailed to me. If you choose to have a partner in this project you must do the same and both of you should sign and scan your information.
- All work submitted must be copyrighted by the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license. This will allow anyone to use, modify and distribute your work even commercially.
- Three winners will be selected. The first place winner will receive $50 via Paypal and his/her template design may be used in a future release of Pligg. The second place winner will receive a $25 dollar prize via Paypal and his/her template may be used in a future relase of Pligg. The third place winner will receive a $10 dollar prize via Paypal and his/her template may be used in a future relase of Pligg.
- All winnings will be distributed via Paypal. This means that you must have a Paypal account to accept the winnings.
- All designs submitted are giving away their rights of ownership and will stand a chance at being used, or parts of their design being used, in a future release of Pligg.
- The template should NOT link to your own site anywhere in the template, including the footer. It may however link to pligg.com in the footer and/or the admin panel.
- We aren’t looking for something that looks just like an existing site. Be original, be creative, make us proud. Please don’t be a copy-cat.
- You may use CSS generators to assist you in developing a template, but DO NOT copy any CSS from existing sites.
- You may include Javascript in your templates, but it must be put in the /js directory with the existing Pligg Javascript.
- You may include any portions of Pligg’s current 6.0 template CSS or image files. This does not include the meneame1.css file.
- If you need help, ASK! You can contact us either through the forum boards or the IRC channel. Please remember to please try Google first if it’s related to CSS.
February 18, 2006 | Comments Off
AshDigg rolled out an update to Beta 6 to help fix a few bugs and add a few features. This is an essential upgrade because I forgot to include the .htaccess file with the 6.00 release. 6.01 does not include a /libs/dbconnect.php file, so please be sure to grab that from the 6.00 release or if you have a previous install of Pligg you should use your old dbconnect.php file.
Includes
- The .htaccess file :)
- Support for Gravatars (the user profile page needs some formatting done if anyone has some time)
- Support for /category/{categoryname} instead of the category number.
- Tags are split up so you can click on individual tags for searching instead of having to search all.
- Ability to allow HTML tags (you choose which tags) in a story submission
- This feature has been around, but not really mentioned… When an admin clicks on “Admin: Change the status.” there is a link to “Ban this URL”. This will prevent anyone from submitting another story from that domain. Example: Digg doesn’t allow links from Shoutwire.
- Misc bug fixes.
Download 6.01 Here.
