The Good

Installation was went smoothly, certainly smoother than many scripts I’ve installed. The directions in the readme file are clear and concise and the install was the same. The documentation less so, but they are working on it.

The templates provided are great. Pligg uses Template Lite a lighter weight Smarty compatible template system. I’ve worked with both Smarty and Template Lite extensively so that is a major plus for me.

The Bad

Keep in mind that Pligg is still in beta. So many of the things I note will probably be fixed before final releases.

I wanted the search engine friendly URL option so I took a look at the .htaccess file provided. It is functional but I am not sure its the best solution. A bit too much of a retro-fit that I think the developers will regret when working on later versions.

After adding a few stories I discovered my first bug, adding a story with a title that has an “!” causes a 404 error. I found that the bug existed in the sourceforge bug database but has been closed with a note — “Now that we’ve found a decent amount of characters I am going to close this.” That raises a flag that there are probably no test cases for the project.

The project makes good use of AJAX feature through out but the admin section was a bit irritating when it came to changing settings. The input boxes can be edited in place but they have a save or cancel button next to each input. A better option would be to just change the value on exit. The current scheme causes you to click to change a value, enter the value then click on save. Way too much work in my opinion.

My last issue is with the voting scheme, there is no way to remove your vote once you have given it. Also there is no other option than to vote up, you can’t vote down or some variation of voting down to indicate a negative rating.

Overall Impression

Pligg is still growing up, I am sure that as it matures many of the issues I’ve experienced so far will go away. I needed something simple and thats what it provides “out of the box” and I look forward to future releases and enhancements. As always the beauty of open source is that when I need more or find bugs i can always contribute. After I’ve had more time to work with the code I’ll let you know if this Pligg will fly.