Ok, lets hope this makes sense by the time I finish.
Is this to "FG" ?
I'm thinking of making the submissions process for plugins/widgets a bit more automated/easier, and at the same time it would encourage plugins to be shipped with a readme which is a good thing right?
Ok, here's what I'm "thinking" of doing. Instead of you filling in shedloads of boxes when you create/update a plugin entry, I can make it so you only need to enter the url to the download zip and it can fill in the rest pretty much automatically ( see readme.html notes below ), although you'd still need to select the correct evo version for your plugin.
An expansion of this is, I can then also offer automatic creation of po files for translations, fancy little flags for all the translations your plugin currently supports and, hopefully, at a later date have some method of showing language updates without having to update the plugin version ( still requires thought though ).
README.html
To make some of the magic above happen the easiest way is to extract the relevant bits from your plugins README.html, but for that to happen we need to have some form of standardisation of README's. This basically means, I'd need you to add some comments/id's to the relevant bits so they can be extracted easily.
Html ( Sample README.html ) :
| <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> |
| <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en-UK" lang="en-UK"> |
| <head> |
| <title>Foo Bar Widget</title> |
| <style type="text/css"> |
| body{ |
| margin:0; |
| padding:0; |
| font:94% sans-serif; |
| } |
| |
| #wrapper{ |
| width:700px; |
| margin:1em auto; |
| } |
| |
| h1{ |
| font-size:140%; |
| } |
| |
| h2, dt{ |
| font-size:120%; |
| } |
| |
| h1, h2, h3, dt{ |
| margin:0; |
| padding:0; |
| font-weight:bold; |
| font-family:serif; |
| } |
| |
| dl{ |
| margin:1em 2em; |
| } |
| |
| dt{ |
| padding:0 .5em; |
| background:#eee; |
| border:solid #ccc; |
| border-width:1px 1px 0 1px; |
| } |
| |
| dd{ |
| margin:0 0 1em 0; |
| padding:0 1em 1em 1em; |
| background:#eee; |
| border:solid #ccc; |
| border-width:0 1px 1px 1px; |
| } |
| |
| .setting{ |
| color:#2b2; |
| font-weight:bold; |
| font-family:serif; |
| } |
| |
| </style> |
| </head> |
| <body> |
| |
| </body> |
| </html> |
| <body> |
| <div id="wrapper"> |
| <h1>Foo Bar Widget from HelloWorld inc</h1> |
| |
| <div id="intro"> |
| |
| <p>HelloWorld Inc brings you the Foo Bar Widget, the widget of all widgets, the one that you truly cannot do without!</p> |
| <p>This widget is so awesomely cool that it needs no introduction, just install it and then stand back in amazement</p> |
| |
| </div> |
| |
| <div id="instructions"> |
| <h2>Instructions</h2> |
| <dl> |
| <dt>Installation :</dt> |
| <dd> |
| <ol> |
| <li>Upload the "foo_bar_plugin" folder, the one that this file is in, to your "plugins" folder.</li> |
| <li>In your admin panel, go to the "Global Settings->Plugins install" sub-tab.</li> |
| <li>Click on "Install new" (right side, near top).</li> |
| <li>Locate the Foo Bar Widget plugin and click "Install" in the "actions" column.</li> |
| </ol> |
| </dd> |
| <dt>Usage :</dt> |
| <dd> |
| <ul> |
| <li>Some witty usage instuctions here</li> |
| </ul> |
| </dd> |
| <dt>Settings :</dt> |
| <dd> |
| <ul> |
| <li><span class="setting">Awe me</span> : Check this to be totally awed</li> |
| <li><span class="setting">Inspire me</span> : Check this to be taken to a level of inspiration normally only obtained via high class drugs</li> |
| </ul> |
| </dd> |
| </dl> |
| </div> |
| |
| <div id="credits"> |
| <h2>Credits</h2> |
| <p>This README file was inspired by EdB, if you wish to show total appreciation for his genius then stop using mydomain.com on the forums, it gets fucking annoying really fast and is about as helpful as an ashtray on a bloody motorbike huh?</p> |
| </div> |
| |
| <div id="links"> |
| <h2>Links :</h2> |
| <ul> |
| <li><a id="home" href="http://wonderwinds.com" title=" better than mydomain huh? ">Authors home page</a></li> |
| <li><a id="support" href="http://forums.b2evolution.net" title=" need more help? ">Plugin support page</a></li> |
| <li><a id="donations" href="http://kiva.org" title=" show your appreciation ">Donations</a></li> |
| </ul> |
| </div> |
| |
| <div id="log"> |
| <h2>Log :</h2> |
| <dl> |
| <dt>Version 1.0 - 1<sup>st</sup> Jan 1970</dt> |
| <dd>Released widget to the eagerly awaiting world</dd> |
| </dl> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| </body> |
| </html> |
The different bits
- <--name-->Your widget name<--/name-->
- This will be used for the posts title and will be shown in admin > tools
- <--description-->Your widget description<--/description-->
- This will be shown on http://b2evo.astonishme.co.uk/plugins.php
- id="home||support||donations"
- These links will be used for the appropriate old boxes, except for donations, that's a new one and should ideally lead to a page for your donations.
- id="log"
- This one's a tad more specific as it has to use a standard html as well, at the moment it'll use the first <dd></dd> as the "reason for update" which is shown on the users admin > tools tab.
Translations
I'm still a bit lost as to how to best proceed with this one. I'd like to encourage translations of plugins, hence the po file creation stuff ( which I *might* be able to convert to a plugin if your server has the required tools, ohhh and suphp because it needs to write the file ), but I still haven't worked out how to version/maintain language files independent of the plugin/widget version. Anyone got any bright ideas ?
Stats
Seeing as how I'd be grabbing all your zips anyway, I could serve them up from astonishme and provide download stats, or I could redirect all download links via AstonishMe and keep the same stats. Not that I know what the hell I'd do with the stats except to maybe show a list of all known widgets in order of popularity? Anyway, it can be done if you want.
Finally
Seeing as you all appear to be mostly happy with the rest of it ( apart from separating installed / not-installed in admin > tools ) I'll probably leave it as it is, although that may change with 3.0 when I get a chance to test it.
¥
Posts : 3
Joined : 12/29/08