No links in description of the plugins

It seems all the links from the descriptions of the plugins were removed. I think those links are usefull. The project's URL link is not visible and hard to find. Furthermore, very often you need to use more than one link - eg. for presenting project's page, link to the plugin in action and link to the plugins related to the one that was just released.

 

Just today I got three e-mails and comments from a clients that couldn't find the link to the commercial versions of my plugins, even though the project's link were filled in. I would be gratefull if ability to place links in plugin description would be restored, or at least to make the link of the original project more visible. (eg. near the download link)

 

In my opinion link to the project's page is simply not enought. If I won't be able to link free plugins to the commercial versions of the plugins efficiently, it won't be proffitable for me to release free versions of those plugins on Elgg.org.

  • Wordpress has a similar design: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/

    I agree that the layout/design could be improved to bring more attention to the links in the sidebar. Labeling the link "URL" is not helpful for many people.

     

  • I just read the Brett's post in News. I agree that spamming the site with donation buttons is untastefull and I don't use them myself. I don't like though that I'm feeling the consequences of those donation buttons being banned very heavy right now.

     

    I don't put more than one advertisement link in the plugin's description, I also contributed a lot to the community without advertising, not to mention donating to Curverider itself (which I plan to continue to do). I would appreciate if you could find a better system of filtering the untastefull descriptions.

    You could give trusted developers ability to place a link to the description of the commercial version of the plugin near the download link, or simply allow them to place links in the plugin's description, and take away this right in case they abuse it.

  • I am open to suggestions on this, especially from the devs who, like Vazco, have promoted their sites tastefully and do contribute back to Elgg.

    Before making this decision I had investigated other OSS projects: Wordpress, Moodle, Joomla, and Drupal.  All are quite restrictive in limiting information to text-only, though most allowed predefined links to demo, support, and author sites.  All of these projects are larger than Elgg and went through this growing pain already, but Elgg hasn't.  I don't think it's coincidence they've created their plugin repos to be restrictive.

    If it's a matter of interface on the plugins page, that can be easily solved.  Should the homepage link be somewhere else?  "URL" doesn't mean much, but would "project homepage" mean more?

    I'm always open to feedback about the community site...

  • I started a thread in the Community Action group about improving the plugin repository: http://community.elgg.org/mod/groups/topicposts.php?topic=414130&group_guid=211069

  • Cash, I just put a comment on your discussion. To avoid confusion I wrote only there.