I’m always glad when new web startups send me notice about their site. This said, lately I have been getting a lot of mail from new social content Pligg-based sites based on a very slightly (or not at all) altered basic Pligg design template.
I won’t go into individual sites, but you can find many of them here.
I know Pligg is notoriously hard to customize (this deserves an entire post, and I’ll get to that someday). But still, making a new site on a widely available design template is a horrible idea, and you’re likely to get little or no media coverage for it. If you cannot visually distinguish your site from hundreds of other sites, it seriously cripples your business - even if you have the best business idea in the world. Would you visit a Digg-like site that looked exactly like Digg? I didn’t think so.
This said, here are a couple of ideas that might help a young entrepreneur with a Pligg based site distinguish his site from the rest.
- Choose a minimalistic, simple design template for Pligg, like this one (have in mind that this template isn’t yet available for the latest version of Pligg), and then modify that. On a simple design like that, small changes like a logo or a different font might be enough for your site to establish a different visual identity.
- Reduce a template. If you’re not on good terms with PHP, creating or even changing an existing Pligg template might be a very hard task. But simply reducing some of the graphical elements might be enough to make a difference. Here’s a site that did a decent job by simply removing some elements of one of Pligg’s default themes.
- Buy a template. Here is one designer who is selling Pligg templates. You might be able to find others on the official Pligg forums. The cost might not be as high as you’d expect, and many people are ready to help for a small fee.
- A variation of the above is to design a template in Photoshop (or have a professional designer do it for you) and then post it on the Pligg forums, offering to pay for someone to turn the design into a full template.
- Join forces with a coder/designer. Many people like to operate alone (me included), so they like the idea of having a platform that enables them to build a site from the ground up with little or no programming knowledge. Pligg is not that platform (yet). It works out of the box, but almost any modifications you might want to do will require a lot of time and effort - especially if you’re not a PHP expert. *This is what I’m doing as well - I have ideas and half-finished sites but no time and PHP knowledge to do all the modifications I deem necessary to make the site really great. If any web coder/designer is interested in helping me building a Pligg based site or perhaps even implement a completely new Digg-like platform, maybe we can join forces and create something together. Contact me at franticindustries (at) gmail (dot) com.
I aggree, i have a CS degree and have a pretty good knowledge of PHP and i still found pligg obscure and frustrating, and yet out of the digg clones it has the best features. I think the first step is to move away from smarty templates.
They need to either go completely down the CMS route ala joomla or make them a series of scripts that we can adapt into our sites. This middle ground that they are inhabiting just leads to a bunch of sites that look the same. Ugly.
I think videosift.com are about the best around. But they had a team of about 7 developers working on that thing.
@richard: I myself am working on some social content sites, and I’m trying out Drupal 5.0 atm. If I find it good, I just might give up on Pligg, at least until the next major release.
I’d have to agree with Richard as well. I’ve been working on an alternative and renewable energy news site, alternativee.org. I have a CS background and it took me a while to understand the Pligg templates and code well enough to make changes. I also don’t use several Pligg features, but it appears that a large chunk of code still gets executed with every page load — if my site every got popular I’d be concerned about the effect of all that extra code execution on the server.
@Greg: One approach I’ve recently heard of is to use an older version of Pligg. Less features, but faster, less bloaty, and easier to configure.
What about mine?
I changed the colors on a stock template and tried to minimilize it a bit. I think I have a good name, considering how hard they are to come by these days. I would appreciate any suggestions on the design or the content.
Oh, it didn’t take my link. You can click my user name to get to www.favester.com
As someone with very limited PHP knowledge/experience, I’m finding Pligg to be VERY difficult, even impossible to customize. For some reason, it pulls only half of the CSS info and there’s no pattern. Also, the use of template file upon template file upon template file upon template file seems to hurt it. For example, why have the structure template (pligg.tpl) call the meta.tpl file? The answer: to make meta configurable template-wide. Of course, if you put all that meta info in the pligg.tpl, it is still a one-step process to edit for the whole site. Also, the “center” stuff seems unnecessary. The code looks messy and, from what I’ve read here, is not user friendly, even for experts.
It seems it’s designed not to be customized, but for templates to be purchased from those who already know the pligg system. I’m open to other CMS systems like it, where visitors can submit/vote on articles. Can you recommend any that are stable and don’t require a PhD in CS to implement into a template (like ones found on oswd.org? If so, email me (webmaster@faithtag.com).
I have experience with php and got some job as cms implementor but for me, pligg’s template is not easy. Move away from smarty templates … I agree.
Very good post… true… Pligg is very difficult to customize… even if you’re a well-rounded php’er.
Why Pligg guys pay less attention on template. Like joomla and wordpress, they could make it more friendly. Language file should be separated for different locale. Most of the pligg templates are craps. I see Pligg code is broken for XHTML and CSS but Templates should follow css and optimization. After researching and analyzing different site I got only one good company named Moonrank USA (http://www.moonrank.com)who is fully dedicated for pligg. Also one Australian guy is doing good work.
I would be happy to help anyone with customizing their pligg site with an entirely new look.
Just head over to the (nearly ready to launch)www.pliggskins.com and get in touch.
I just started a pligg based site and have to completely agree. The learning curve was rather steep, and I am still trying to wrap my mind around some of the code (in an attempt to remove the bloat).
Actually Pligg isnot hard to customize at all. Once you figure out where everything is located, it doesn’t take long to make your own design.
I have a bunch of FREE templates for Pligg at my website for anyone looking to grab a template that isn’t the default.