Archive for the ‘Open Source’ Category
Web 2.0 Expo 2008 Meetup and Call for Developers
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008I will be attending the Web 2.0 Expo this year in San Francisco April 22-25, 2008. I thought that it might be a good opportunity to learn about some new technologies and meet and greet some people I’ve looked up to and perhaps in the off chance someone who might look up to me. If you live in the San Francisco area and are attending the Expo please leave a comment if you want to meet with me. If you aren’t planning on attending the Expo I will be setting aside some time outside of the Expo to meet and greet Pliggers who might be interested in learning more about the project. You can also leave a comment if you are interested in meeting me for coffee and I’ll try to plan something out ahead of time.
We’re looking for some new developers with a variety of skills to contribute to Pligg in their spare time. If you have any skills in PHP, MySQL, Javascript, XHTML/CSS, Template Lite, web server admin skills or many other similar talents please contact us by leaving a blog comment or by joining the Pligg Developers Facebook Group. If you have any friends who might be interested in helping out, don’t hesitate to forward them a link to this post or the Facebook group. Being part of an open source project like Pligg provides a lot of programmers with experience and skills that transfer into other projects and jobs. It also will look great on your resume. The biggest joy in becoming an open source developer are the connections and friends that you make along the way.
Free Tools Pligg Developers Couldn’t Live Without
Thursday, January 17th, 2008IRC Software
Colloquy (Mac and iPhone) / Trillian (Windows) / Konversation (Linux)
Communication is key when you work with a team spread across the globe. None of the Pligg developers have had a chance to meet in person, so it’s even more important that we have a tool that allows you to communicate with the group whenever we need to. Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is “used by millions of people, and thousands of organizations, to communicate, share, play and work with each other on IRC networks around the world. Serving the Internet community for over a decade, mIRC has evolved into a powerful, reliable and fun piece of technology” (mirc.com). We have used IRC since we started Pligg two years ago to communicate with the developers and Pligg users, and operate a room (#pligg) on freenode.net’s server. You can join the room without any software by logging in to our java web-based room.
FTP Software
Filezilla (Stand Alone) and Fireftp (Firefox Plugin)
Everyone needs a way to publish files to their web server, and my way is always the free way. Filezilla is available for Windows, Linux and Macintosh platforms and is a stand alone client. Fireftp is a Mozilla Firefox plugin that operates within Firefox.
Browser Testing
Browsershots.org (Web) and MultipleIE (Windows)
Most designers without a lot of test computers have used Browsershots at one point or another to double check that their work is coming out the same on most browsers. “Browsershots makes screenshots of your web design in different browsers. It is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl. When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server.”
One problem that most web designers have is testing on multiple browsers. Not only do you have to design for the latest browser versions for Internet Explorer, but you have to accommodate the several previous versions of IE that are less friendly to deal with. Unfortunately the world isn’t perfect and a lot of systems are still running IE6 and below, to help test for these older versions of Internet Explorer I use MultipleIE. This software lets me run Internet Explorer 7 all the way back to Internet Explorer 3.0 all on the same operating system. For some reason I never heard of this software until recently, so I’m a bit hesitant to suggest it even though it has been an essential tool that I use almost daily.
Miscellaneous
HelpDesk Software Hesk (Web)
We use this software over at the Pligg Pro Helpdesk, where we support our shop products. The software gives you an easy way for users to submit support tickets and category administrators will receive email alerts whenever there’s a reply. It’s well organized, easy to install and simple to maintain. Most importantly, it helps us streamline our support system to let us fix problems faster.
Winmerge
The ultimate tool for those who customize Pligg in any way. Winmerge compares files and directories and helps organize the data so that you can merge two documents together in sections or as a whole. One recent example of how I use Winmerge is when I needed to update my Pligg 9.8.5 templates to the latest format for Pligg 9.9. What would normally take me a couple days took me only a few hours.
Notepad ++
Not everyone uses Dreamweaver for designing sites. If you are fluent enough that you can write without the assistance of a program like Dreamweaver, you might want to try out Notepad ++. It organizes data well and is a great replacement for the standard windows notepad. I find it to be a cleaner interface with fewer distractions.
Pligg Presentation at UTOSC
Tuesday, September 4th, 2007A reminder to all you Pliggers living out west. Pligg module developer Jesse Stay will be speaking at the Utah Open Source Conference this week. Jesse will be doing a presentation on developing Pligg modules and has created some great stuff for Pligg. I’m sure this will be a very informative presentation.
Here are the details from his site.
I’ve been asked to present on developing Pligg modules at the Utah Open Source Conference, September 6-8, 2007. So if you’re in the area and would like to learn how to write one, please be sure to attend! I’m thinking of going through a 15 minute or so walk through of creating a simple module to show how easy it is. This also means I’ve got to get my Email_Latest plugin fully functional and maybe make the Digg plugin a little better. Also, expect a Facebook module here shortly that will allow you to tie Pligg into Facebook Applications. What would you like to see in the presentation?
Thanks Jesse, and best of luck from all of us here at Pligg!
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