When Pligg's Fly – Test flight
I was recently asked by a friend on a tight budget to help set up a small site similar to digg or some of the other social news and link aggregators. I thought it would be easy to find an open source project or three to choose from and adapt to their needs, but I only found one that was active and stable — Pligg. Since I am going to be working on this mini-project on and off for the next couple weeks I thought I would post my first impressions. By no means is this an exhaustive review just a quick overview after a couple hours.
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.
Comments
8 Responses to “When Pligg's Fly – Test flight”
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There should be a new release in the next week or 2 which adds a lot of new features. Here is a forum thread that's a week or so old that explains some of the things that will be in the next version. http://forums.pligg.com/showthread.php?t=5506
Hello,
First thanks for the short review on Pligg. I need to point some things regard to Pligg and your blog entry.
1] Search engine friendly URL – It is already in place – you need to enable URL 2 Method from admin panel and enable the htaccess file – there are plenty of pligg sites that uses such URL schemes you can find many at the Pligg Forum->my Pligg site
2] an "!" causes a 404 error – This is obviously fixed as reported in the SVN – the test case is simple enough for anyone to just try make a post with special characters – And this has been tested by the lead devs, and the person who reported it before the issue closed. To get i working you would need the latest SVN code.
3] save or cancel button – the reason it is that way is that many people wanted it that way – if you feel it uncomfortable you are welcome to change it according to your need. Just an usability question to you here – Isn't that any system should have a mechanism to revert their changes? A simple word document confirms you with a dialog allowing you to overwrite or discard while "Save As" that is an usability issue that many pligg users wanted.
4] voting scheme to revert votes – Most pligg sites are run by small userbase and reverting votes would make immediate effects on front page, which they cannot afford to have. Not every Pligg based site have atleast 1/10th the userbase of Digg.com, and many prefer it the way it is currently, but again you are free to change it the way you want it.
5] voting scheme to vote down/bury – Bury is added to the latest SVN (just after 9.1 was released), many sites use it. Some sites has gone to the extent of modding it to behave like a vote down – check http://memeorlame.com for how it is done. Pligg gives you the flexibility to do what ever you want – all that is needed is that you have to do it. Apart from this, there is also a 5 star voting available.
I would just call this a quick blog without any research – Pligg forums is a good resource for all updates regarding pligg. And Pligg project offers the system usable for every one(in better terms – usable by most people) – if some people need it in a different manner – it is their responsibility to get it program as per their need. And many devs are kind enough to release their customizations in the form of mods too.
You are also invited for contributing to Pligg project with your mods if you have done so.
Kbeeveer46:
Thanks for pointing out the thread, Looks like most of my wish list is already there.
Dollars5:
As I stated when I wrote this entry it was just a quick review after a couple hours. Perhaps you took my first impressions as overly critical. I didn't intend this entry to be criticism, but the points you made are not all valid. I'll address them after I spend some more time with the code. But about the bug concerning certain characters in the story title. It is a show stopper with URL method 2, it was reported closed 2-18 which was the same date as the beta 9.1 release. If it had been "obviously" fixed in SVN it probably deserved a mention somewhere more prominent on the forums or wiki? maybe? probably! Oh and the save/cancel button is not just a usability issue for me its a usability issue period.
I'm eager to read more about your experience with Pligg while you continue with the project. So I hope you'll post that info soon…
Thanks for sharing. Might use this as well on http://php-coding-practices.com
I've built a few sites with Pligg. It's been a while since you posted this, but I still agree that there are a lot of small bugs and problems. The templating system is sort of hard to manage, and the default template has poorly-written HTML and CSS. The software is open source though and you're free to change the code and develop your own social news site with *relatively* little work.
The default SEO isn't great, but there are forum posts and tutorials to fix that. You can see my latest Pligg site, fully SEO optimized and code completely overhauled, at http://www.entirelyopensource.com
It's a new social news site, software directory, and feed aggregating service dedicated entirely to open source software, built on Pligg, DokuWiki and Joomla.
Thanks for the nice share..
Please keep it update..
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