Serendipity Forums

It has been a long time since I saw any new plugins for Serendipity. I have been using it for over a year and can recall only a very few.

And while Serendipity is the first blogging platform I have used to any great extent (tried Word Press first and didnt like it) I did use VBulletin when I was an admin for a discussion forum and there was a constant flood of new plugins. I could never even keep up with all the new ones.

Is this the way it has always been for Serendipity? Are new plugins expected any time soon?

Plugins are updated fairly regularly, and new ones trickle in when someone identifies a particular functionality that is not addressed by any of the existing plugins. Anyone is welcome to write a plugin. Is there something in particular you need a plugin to do?

Hi!

We rather try to improve current plugins and add new functionality there instead of having tiny new plugins that server little other purpose.

This has the benefit of a small plugin listing (if you consider roundabout 200 plugins as small) where people can easily pick the ones.

In my opinion, our portfolio of plugins is quite "feature complete". If you are missing precise functionality, please discuss it here, and We'll happily try to add it.

Regards,
Garvin

No, I dont have a 'request' for a specific plugin. Its more like looking to see what is already available and how I can use that to make my blog better.

Let me make an analogy: I go to a store to see what new accessories are available for my computer. It might be a faster DVD burner or an external hard drive or larger flat screen monitor. But if I get to the store and it has the exact same products it has had for the last year am I going to ask them to special order me something specific or am I going to go to the store next door that has shelves full of shiny new accessories all the time?

Yes I appreciate the ongoing updates for existing plugins and I do update them when they come out. But dont you think that a regular flow of new plugins would make Serendipity more attractive to bloggers?

Just my two cents.

Hi!

A flow of new plugins that deal with similar technology would make Serendipity clumsy and ugly like Wordpress. This is exactly the opposite of what we strife for.

So, let's make another analogy: You buy a book about building a house. You really like that book, but it does not cover specifics about things you might later want to add to your house.

Now, each time you go to the shop, you see a variety of new books, which all cover "new floors", "new doors" etc. - all of which you've already learnt in your old book. Instead you're looking for a second revision of your original book, or simply the spin-off of that book which deals about "Enhancing your house" and that one has new chapters. You can buy those new chapters and put in your existing book, so you have everything at hand.

Without swamping your bookshelf with duplicate books and ugly books that you'D better not bought at all because they were not well written or stopped right in the middle, or were teaching you things differently you already learned the right way in your first book.

Regards,
Garvin

Generally speaking I would let the "customer" make the decision as to exactly what works best and looks best for him. I wouldnt presume to make that decision for him. But thats just me.

Hi!

But the customer has the decision to choose the product he wants to trust, right?

We obviosuly cannot offer both options, low but versatile plugin count, or high but low-quality plugin count.

Regards,
Garvin

I agree with Garvin, we have most things covered by existing plugins pretty nicely. No need to clutter everything. There's always room for improvement, though, and - just to let you know - I'm currently working on a couple of my old plugins.

On the other hand, I have some new plugins in store. They are almost ready to be released, but it remains to be decided if we add them to Spartacus. One plugin will add bibliographic and semantic information to blog posts (oCOinS, unAPI) which might come in handy for scientific blogs. Then there is this "lifestream" plugin that lists all your activites in the web2.0 chronologically, but I tend to think that we don't really need this. However, more and more people seem to add a feature like this to their blogs, so I might embellish it a little more and release it. No fixed dates, but I hope I can finish them this year.

I might offer them for download on my site, we'll see.

- Mattsches

Hi!

Talk to Robert Lender about that Lifestream plugin, I think this is what he currently wants

About the bibliographic/semantic information: Wouldn'T the microformats-plugin maybe suited for being enhanced with this?

Great to see what you're working on, keep us posted

Regards,
Garvin