When you install Pligg, a “God” account is created in your database automatically. The username for this account is “God” (minus the quotes of course) and the password by default is “password”. After completing the first install of Pligg you should log into this account and change the password and email for the account. The God account is given the highest level of priviledges on your site, so you should make sure that the password is strong enough and contains a mix of letters and numbers. You should avoid using common words for the God password. You might even want to read this page about how to choose a good password for some tips.
I realize that when you pick a very difficult password it can be tough to remember down the road. This is why Pligg has password recovery built in. When a user requests a password by entering their username into the password request form, it will send an email to that user’s email address with a password change request code. The problem is, no where along the way will the user be able to see what email address it’s sending the password change request to. This is for security purposes and it will remain this way because it would be unwise to expose user emails this way. But if you are trying to retrieve the God password and you don’t remember changing the default email address you’re in trouble. By default God’s email is blank@pligg.com, so you’ll have trouble recovering your password because that email is nonexistant. So how do you change the password if you can’t do it by password change request? If you have PHPmyadmin you can edit the password manually using this guide. The guide is designed for Wordpress, but it is pretty much identicle to what you would do for Pligg and it will point you in the right direction.
TWIT Episode 43: Old Yeller mentioned Pligg a couple times during the show. Leo brings it up and keeps calling it Pigg, perhaps it’s time I write him an email to correct him. You can tell that Dvorak and the rest of the crew are completely ignoring the subject. Dvorak like usual is just trying to get the others to listen to him, he’s such a hog for attention. Kevin joins in a few minutes after they first brought it up and they retouch the subject and talk a tiny bit about Digg.de. Good news is that Kevin mentions that he’s not so afraid of open source projects, just sites that infringe their trademark.
Download the episode here:
http://aolradio.podcast.aol.com/twit/TWiT0043H.mp3
Fast forward to 31:00 and listen for a couple of minutes.
When they stop talking about it fast forward to 38:00 and listen to Kevin talk about it for a short bit.
We are about a week in to the new template and already planning the framework for the next template. Instead of writing the next template from scratch we have decided that the best idea would probably be by using a generator to produce a very stable frame for the site and make modifications and addons as needed. There are two template CSS generators that we are testing out right now:
The new layout will only have one left sidebar starting with the user panel on top, followed by a custom link area, then the navigation area and finally the google ads. I think that I will also design it so that the google ads could optionally be placed in a box above the articles in the main content area, since this was requested by a user in a previous comment. I have always been a fan of verticle ads, but I see why someone might want to lay them out horizontally and I would like to keep everyone happy
AshDigg is also working on figuring out how to make changing templates easier by adding the ability to have multiple layouts in subdirectories and selecting which template you wish to use from the admin panel. This idea is really only in a conceptual stage right now, I don’t believe that he has started working on it just yet. The next template will hopefully also include a revamped administrator menu to make it easier on the eye. One of the areas that I think Pligg really stands out from the original Meneame code is the ability to act as an administrator through a simple interface, and I think we should really focus on making it easier and nicer for admins to access and maintain their data.
Lastly and perhaps most important for some of your aspiring web designers is this fun bit of news. Pligg will be hosting a template design contest for Pligg’s default template. We will feature the template in a future release of Pligg and the top three designers will be given cash prizes. First place will be given $50, second $25 and third $10 via Paypal. I know it’s not much, but we’re still a pretty small project and that pretty much maxes out our Pliggy Bank. The money given away for the prizes is coming from our donations that we have been given over the past few months, and I would like to take a moment to thank those who have donated to Pligg. We have collected about $250 in donations, $100 of which was my own money used to purchase a vbulletin license and domain name. I have recently added a link to the donation page to my signature in the forum to hope that we receive some more money to help pay for competitions like this one. I hope to hold more competitions in the future for things like Pligg mods, templates and integrations.
Back to the template competition… Here are some rules that all authors/artists should follow for the competition:
- All work submitted must be original (by you alone), or the code/imagery must have written permission by the original author to be used for the Pligg project, acknowledging its use in a competition and for free public distribution. The written permission must also have the original authors and your own contact information including a telephone number and current address. This must be scanned and emailed to me. If you choose to have a partner in this project you must do the same and both of you should sign and scan your information.
- All work submitted must be copyrighted by the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license. This will allow anyone to use, modify and distribute your work even commercially.
- Three winners will be selected. The first place winner will receive $50 via Paypal and his/her template design may be used in a future release of Pligg. The second place winner will receive a $25 dollar prize via Paypal and his/her template may be used in a future relase of Pligg. The third place winner will receive a $10 dollar prize via Paypal and his/her template may be used in a future relase of Pligg.
- All winnings will be distributed via Paypal. This means that you must have a Paypal account to accept the winnings.
- All designs submitted are giving away their rights of ownership and will stand a chance at being used, or parts of their design being used, in a future release of Pligg.
- The template should NOT link to your own site anywhere in the template, including the footer. It may however link to pligg.com in the footer and/or the admin panel.
- We aren’t looking for something that looks just like an existing site. Be original, be creative, make us proud. Please don’t be a copy-cat.
- You may use CSS generators to assist you in developing a template, but DO NOT copy any CSS from existing sites.
- You may include Javascript in your templates, but it must be put in the /js directory with the existing Pligg Javascript.
- You may include any portions of Pligg’s current 6.0 template CSS or image files. This does not include the meneame1.css file.
- If you need help, ASK! You can contact us either through the forum boards or the IRC channel. Please remember to please try Google first if it’s related to CSS.
AshDigg rolled out an update to Beta 6 to help fix a few bugs and add a few features. This is an essential upgrade because I forgot to include the .htaccess file with the 6.00 release. 6.01 does not include a /libs/dbconnect.php file, so please be sure to grab that from the 6.00 release or if you have a previous install of Pligg you should use your old dbconnect.php file.
Includes
- The .htaccess file :)
- Support for Gravatars (the user profile page needs some formatting done if anyone has some time)
- Support for /category/{categoryname} instead of the category number.
- Tags are split up so you can click on individual tags for searching instead of having to search all.
- Ability to allow HTML tags (you choose which tags) in a story submission
- This feature has been around, but not really mentioned… When an admin clicks on “Admin: Change the status.” there is a link to “Ban this URL”. This will prevent anyone from submitting another story from that domain. Example: Digg doesn’t allow links from Shoutwire.
- Misc bug fixes.
Download 6.01 Here.
Well, it’s finally out there. I’m still not happy with where Beta 6 is when it comes to compatability and features. We are going to start working on a more web standard version of the template with just 2 columns. For now this will help everyone out who wants to get away from the digg layout. There will still be a lot of bugs with this release, after all we are in Beta release still, but they will soon be resolved with yet another template release. I still have to fix the problem form position, enable the magnifying glass image and add the negative vote functionality.
I am also introducing a new pligg.com homepage design. The root page no longer shows Pligg’s demo, instead we feature a nice welcome page with some handy links and news. It will show the latest 3 blog posts, last 3 bug reports, and last 3 forum replies. This will help keep users up to date with the latest information. The main page also links to a FAQ and License page. I will update the FAQ in the future to have tutorials and such.
Man am I getting annoyed of myself. I know I’ve been putting this off longer and longer, but the guys in the IRC room have been some great beta testers. I also have to thank everyone who has left a comment to report bugs. We have most everything working (including sneak) and we are now working on fine tuning the CSS and double-checking as many pages as we can for errors in IE and Firefox. I have to thank podigle for his lending a hand in fixing and checking the template CSS. I am handing out copies of Beta 6 in IRC for testing purposes, but there are still a few areas that need to be finished. I handed Podigle an archive of the files tonight for him to check over and tomorrow morning I plan to wake up, ask AshDigg a few questions, and finally finish this thing assuming that nothing else comes up. I’ve been sleep deprived the past few days, so I look forward to getting a decent amount of sleep tonight and starting the day rejuvinated and ready to Pligg.
I spent a huge amount of time working on the template for Beta 6 today. It turned out that the other author converting it into tables wasn’t such a great idea so I decided to personally finish this wretched thing. I’m at the point where I can no longer tell if it looks good or not because I have been staring at it for so long and it’s lost its freshness. The final design is amazingly close to what I wanted, even better in many ways. This was my first time trying to write my own CSS code and I’m amazed that I was able to pull this off. The code isn’t the neatest or most streamlined out there, but it gets the job done.
I am very glad to say that the template is VERY near finished. I have tested several of the pages in IE and they all come out well. There are some minor differences between the Firefox and IE renders of the site, but nothing bad. Opera doesn’t like the placement of the search bar last time I checked, but I’m sure it’s something that can be fixed by someone who knows some CSS. The release should come by this evening, if I’m able to keep awake. I have been lacking sleep lately and it’s getting tough to keep up and work on Pligg. Right now all that is left to be done are some of the secondary pages, things like register and profile pages. I got about two thirds of the way through with the secondary pages tonight, they usually don’t take long at all to edit. This evening I will finish doing the secondary pages and testing some of the pages for bugs. The good news is that the overdue release will finally come to the end in the next 24 hours… I promise. If it comes down to me releasign it with a couple small bugs left over I will, I’ll just tack the words “preview release” onto it. But hopefully that won’t happen because it looks like it’s pretty clean as is. I definitely think that I could spend another week polishing parts of the template, but I won’t torture everyone with that, it can always come as a template download.
It’s a few minutes after midnight now and I’m sad to say we didn’t make our release date. The template has a lot of IE bugs that need to be sorted out and the designer has a router that keeps cutting of his connection. The release has been postponed another day. The good news is that I have had enough time to redesign Pligg’s welcome page and I’ll release the new page on Pligg.com when I release Beta 6. The bad news is that everyone will have to wait another 24 hours for the release. It seems that this is an act of God…. killing someone’s internet connection. More on this tomorrow as things develop.
