Community themes / plugins interface

We in the very early stages of creating a new themes/plugin system for the community site.  Our initial thoughts were that themes and plugins should be housed in a space something closer to a group than it is now.  Ideas include:

  1. Ability to register to be notified of new versions.
  2. Ability to export version info to XML (which might pave the way for in-Elgg updates).
  3. Ability to have more finely tuned stats including total number of downloads, number of download per version, number of installs.
  4. A ranking / usability system -- Much more on this later.
  5. Possible interaction with Google Code / github.

Any thoughts?

  • @Brett

    I wonder - do you remember the discussion in the google groups about December 2008.. which seemed to taper off.. I do believe a lot of similar-like thoughts were expressed then.

    What you've listed above sounds like the right way to go. Might I suggest that we start with a *data structure / *data model for the new PlugIns/Themes/Lang Packs Handler and hammer and argue yyhat angle out before moving onto any processing logic..

    I still have have my notes from back then. I'll try to locate those and post - maybe there;' something in there that might help or trigger even more ideas from others.

    ps: I like the interaction with GoogleCode etc idea... ;-)

  • Please don't alienate Bitbucket.org users:)

  • @Dhrup if you have a link that'd be great.  I did a quick search in Google Groups but nothing came up.  Was it on dev or users?

    The Google Code is "will be nice" but will likely come much later.  It was just an idea!

  • Sounds like a good idea, especially if it allows cross development.  There are a number of plugins I've got from the community but had to tinker with, and with the current setup, it feels a bit wrong, to go re-releasing the plugin as my own work, but there isn't realyl another way to get hte code back out there (especitally when the original developer was someone that has now gone quiet)

  • jQuery and Wordpress are sites that could serve as models. Features that I'd like:

    1. single page per plugin rather than new page per version

    2. categories/better tagging (maybe allow users to add tags)

    3. better search

  • *points to 'featured plugins' discussion in this group*

  • What Cash mentioned is good.

    Even though I have only slightly dipped into making a plugin so far, putting up updates for something left a string of extra entries that were unneeded. would be nice to have a consolidated place for a plug with the exception for when a plug deals with two different versions of ELGG.

     

  • Hmm ;=-( I cannot find my notes ( my most important elgg ext backup drive fell and broke ) I will have to remember what was posted before and rewrite it.

    aha ;-)

    http://groups.google.com/group/elgg-development/browse_thread/thread/80109d995a0bd71d/9bdd1c27e530c123?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=elgg+plugin+version+numbers#9bdd1c27e530c123

    http://elggtest.ensci.us/plugins/  -- is where i put my generated master plugins listing so that i can do quick searches. that is produced by parsing all the pages ?offset=##, storing the items in an array, which can be sorted by date, names , made array_unique... to do diff reports so i can see "versions" and so on...

Feedback and Planning

Feedback and Planning

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