It’s been 2 years since inception of Pligg and we wanted to bring everyone up to speed on where we’ve been and where we’re going. When Pligg began back on December 17, 2005 we never imagined how successful or complex the project would become. Pligg is now one of the most popular content management systems available today due to YOU, our wonderful users. Many articles have been written about Pligg, and Pligg has been mentioned (and even used) on many popular tech sites all over the web. The Pligg community forums have grown to over 17,000 members, all sharing ideas and supporting each other. Pligg is now offered by many web hosting companies as a packaged service. DreamHost is one of the largest web hosting companies in the world now offers Pligg through their “One Click Installs”
Many people have requested to have custom modules developed. We wanted to provide a place in which everyone could have the opportunity to have access to these add-ons while still providing benefits to the authors. Thus the birth of the Pligg marketplace aptly named “Pligg Pro“. Pligg Pro allows you to purchase themes and additional modules to enhance your Pligg site even further. We launched “Pligg Pro” in the last week of October and has been an overwhelming success. It has allowed for Pligg to create a new revenue stream and has boosted development as we gear up to come out of beta and release Pligg V1.0.
To celebrate Pligg’s second birthday we’re offering a coupon code for Pligg Pro that gives you 22% off all orders until 12/24/2007. Use coupon code ‘Birthday2′ when making your purchase. Visit http://pligg.com/pro/ soon before the coupon expires.
Since our last release of Pligg Beta 9.8.2 we’ve been hard at work with bug fixes and code enhancements which will provide a noticeable difference in load times and code compliance. We’re quite sure you’ll be impressed, as this will clearly be the best version of Pligg yet. The next release, Beta 9.9.0, will be one of the last ‘beta’ releases before version 1.0. We’ve developed many new free modules that have expanded the abilities of Pligg. Anti-Spam modules that help reduce spam submissions and spam comments. A CAPTCHA module will allow you to choose from different CAPTCHAs or even use none at all. There is a new Template Manager module that allows templates to be installed with the click of a button instead of downloading, unzipping and uploading each file.
Soon we will be launching a new service called “Fraxi” which will allow anyone to create their own free Pligg powered niche community with just a few clicks of a mouse button. For example if someone living in Miami wanted to create a social network for the citizens of their community, they will be able to create Miami.Fraxi.com in a matter of seconds. No hosting fees, no installation process and no time wasted. They can then concentrate on growing their social network instead of needing to learn the ropes of FTPing, monkeying with server configurations, setting up domains, etc. More information about this service and website will be unveiled soon.
Future releases of Pligg will have a new installation process that will allow you to choose from various language packages. It will automatically download to your server the latest lang.conf file for the selected language. We’re asking for help from bilingual Pliggers to help translate these language files in the near future. We’ve developed an online system to try to make the process easier. You can participate as a translator by signing up soon via the Pligg forum. More details will be posted on both the blog and forum in the coming weeks.
Since Pligg has grown rapidly we’ve needed to expand our server capacity a few times over the past 2 years to keep up with demand. Pligg.com receives roughly 5 million unique visitors and 20 to 30 million page views each year. This amount of traffic requires a massive amount of bandwidth and operating expenses. This is paid for by your kind donations and though sponsorships on the front page. If you would like to sponsor Pligg and have your company’s link and logo on the front page, we offer several extremely cost effective plans. So please show your support by becoming a Pligg sponsor today. You can find out more about Pligg Sponsorships by visiting here. If you’d like to make a donation you can do so by visiting here.
We’d take a moment to applaud a site that has used Pligg in an original way. This time we tip our hats to the founders of http://www.RealEstateVoices.com, who have created a site with a unique look and feel that many visitors would not recognize as a typical Pligg site. Like many successful Pligg sites, they found a niche market and appealed to them through clean design and relevant content.
Thanks for a great 2 years! 2008 will be even better.
The Pligg Development Team
