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The plugin system gets better by Fabien Potencier – August 16, 2008 – 4 comments

The plugin system gets better every day. During the last week, we have made some great enhancements to the system. Here are the main new features:

You can now associate an image to a plugin. This image is used in the lists, the plugin information tab, and in the RSS feeds.
When you want to join a plugin team, you now need to explain the reasons. Before, plugin leaders only received the request without further explanations. Now, they can accept or decline, based on something.
You can now list the plugins by categories from the homepage. There is also a link to list all plugins, even those without any release yet.
The system is now able to parse the changelog information from the package.xml file. This information is available in the new "Changelog" tab for each plugin. I have also added a FAQ to explain how it works.
The RSS feeds have been redesigned to provide more information. The "recently updated" feed also have the changelog if available.
Each user is now represented by a gravatar.

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#1 Craig Mason said on the 2008/08/17 at 03:22

Great news Fabien. Just what we need to push for more 1.1 plugins (and existing plugin compatibility).
#2 Stephen Ostrow said on the 2008/08/17 at 08:48

Great to see more improvements, we really needed this. I have two questions:
1.) Who receives requests for "developer" if there is no "leader" yet?

2.) Is there eventually going to be a "wiki" tab? I still think this was a great addition to have the plugin wiki pages where people could communicate about caveats of the plugin and give examples, tutorials, and other information.

I guess a third would be will every plugin be given a category in the trac tickets?
#3 fabien said on the 2008/08/17 at 10:48

@Stephen Ostrow:

1/ if there is no leader for a plugin, then you can't join the team. The first step is for the leader to claim its plugin.

2/ We are working on these items. Each plugin will definitely have a wiki and a dedicated ticket system and SVN repository.
#4 halfer said on the 2008/08/22 at 10:51

Some great changes here.

Just so you know, I am playing with a "collapsible" forum system at the moment, with the possibility that we could have one forum per plugin. I am asking for opinions from the community in the General plugins forum now.

If this idea is popular, perhaps we could have a link from each plugin page to its dedicated discussion page?