More Features are needed

More features are needed in elgg, like chat, and fully functional audio and video.

There should be efforts to standardize plugins to work well for site once installed ,like the default plugins.

 

  • +Contact importer because all the plugins submitted have issues with them.

  • Well gents if you want to step up and contribute these plugins and solve some of the bugs in other plugins I'm sure everyone would be happy.

    There already is fully functional audio and video available, you just need to know a bit about how elgg and php work. Not knowing php and wanting to run a complex elgg site with a lot of plugins just won't work smoothly.

  • @Trajan:so where can our questions concerning the difficulties  we experience with  the plugin be answered. when i post questions no much assistance

  • Granted to ability for many plugins to work well with others is not great and some devs don't reply as often as the downloaders would like. 

    What you would find as a dev is that you tend to get people asking the same questions again and again without reading other comments or the readme files or the instructions/description of the plugins before they use them.

    Further, no one plugin can be created by a dev to work for every elgg site out there. I'm sure your site is very different to mine, and as such a plugin might work perfectly for you, but doesn't work for me.

    At the end of the day, devs get so little back for their effort/time they tend to feel that it's no longer worth it. Look at the number of downloads for Tidypics or Profile_Manager. Over 15,000 each, yet look at their recommendations, less than 100.

    If downloaders in general want it all on a silver plate I think a number of devs would say that they need to "earn" it. 

    On an off-note I would like to plead with devs to please talk to each other when developing plugins. So many overlaps that cause problems, which could if talked out could create even greater and widely useable plugins.

  • @trajan: tanx for you highlight.the thing is that elgg is a common engine we all run on, so the plugins should work commonly irrespective of the theme we run differently.

    Most downloads are for testing the plugins and some are not used bcos they do not work afterall.

    I think that if the devs could add these plugins for free, they can accept $0.50 donation for each use, provided it works.so they can be encouraged by these 15,000 users to improve the plugins.Elgg is free and $.50 donation for each plugin, is just for us to maintain the system and the free suppliers of plugin.

    he community should be structured in a way to make all these duplications have difference that will make them distinct themes or templates.

     

     

  • Elgg is one of the best developer communites there is,and very powerful plugins,there's also a group that offers proffesional help,or if you want the same power set up a ning site and have their ads or spend a lot of money per month.All of the things you mentioned are available.Or you can learn code and give it away like all of the fine coders here...

  • @kxx4: your idea is great, but here are a couple of stats for you. My last 2 major plugin releases are robust groups and robust blog.

    Robust blog is available to non-loggedin users and has a download count of maybe 700 or so. Robust group is only available to loggedin users and has a download count of maybe about 100.

    Most downloaders don't even bother to login/register on this site but will still download all the plugins they can find. So how can you make those unregistered users donate $0.50 for each donwload? Further, elgg foundation doesn't currently allow commercial selling of plugins on this community site. Donations can only be optional.

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    In regard to the plugins should all run commonly irrespective of themes etc. I've not seen any plugins/coding from you so I'll chalk this up to ignorance (no offence meant). If it was that easy to do, it would be like that. So I'll let you in on the secret that coding a plugin to cater for all elgg versions and work in perfect sync with all other plugins is just a ludicrous idea. If you pay the dev 5 times what you would normally (or perhaps more) you could get it. 

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    The reason for all of this...devs don't work together, but usually against each other to some degree. 4 or more devs will release their own versions of the same feature. Go to the plugin repo and search for forum. See how many come up. The reason for this? the major devs prefer to work individually and release an array of their own plugins because they are commercial devs and that's how they make money. They want you to buy their plugin package and so they aren't encouraged to work with non-commercial devs. 

    Fair enough if that's how they want to do it, but it produces a really messed up system of plugins that constantly overwrite each other and thus don't work.

    So, if you want what you're asking for you need to be able to organize devs to work together and talk to each other during their development phases. Or better yet, we need a system on here that when a plugin is uploaded the dev can mention which files are being overwritten so that downloaders can check against the other plugins they have and see if there is a conflict. I think 1.8 moves towards this somewhat in the admin backend.

Feedback and Planning

Feedback and Planning

Discussions about the past, present, and future of Elgg and this community site.