new plugin - how to submit it?

[akremedy]

Greetings, new Serendipity user here - it's not even live yet.

I've just completed a sidebar plugin that I'm using with the i3theme to create a panel which contains the site name, logo, copyright, and several other elements. I have incorporated the Sequence widget to allow the admin to determine the order of the elements that appear in the panel.

A couple of questions -
1. how does one make the plugin available here?
2. is there some sort of acceptance testing or peer-to-peer QA that could look at what I've done from a usability perspective?

I'm sure all of these questions have been answered, though I've yet to find a thread which addresses them.

Best Regards,
Adam

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Great, thanks for your contribution to Serendipity.We happily accept and review plugins here,if you can post a link to your plugin.

For a plugin to be put into Spartacus, we need to make sure that the functionality is not yet covered by other plugins, and often we try to put new functionality into existing plugins if it does fit anyhwere. In your case, I believe that functionality is rather new, the only place I would see similarity is the "Sidebar hider" plugin, but that deals with different stuff.

So please post the plugin code or a link to a ZIP file here

Best regards,
Garvin

[akremedy]

Thanks Garvin...here's the link to my plugin: http://www.pigslipstick.com/_product/se ... arlogo.zip

I used Omid Mottaghi Rad's QuickLink plugin as my example. I didn't exactly follow coding coventions as outlined in the post here (4 spaces instead of tab, etc)...I can clean all that up later.

Thanks for any feedback!

Adam

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Basically, your plugin does a very good job for your intended functionality. Some very minor notes:

1. You already mentioned intenting and code conformance: 4 spaces should be used, and also you might wand to remove the ( and ) after your "echo" statements. 'echo' is a language construct and not a real function, so this would increase the readability.

2. XHTML validity for the <img> tag, so that it ends in with "/>". Also add quotes around arguments such as width='...' and height='...'

3. You might want to change the "stackable" attribute in the introspect() method from FALSE to TRUE. This allows you to add multiple instances of the plugin for people that might want to show multiple "badges" in the sidebar.

4. Instead of outsourcing the CSS code to a distinct file, I'd rather place that code within the main PHP plugin file. This keeps the overhead smaller, as no more files would need to be included.


Best regards,
Garvin

[akremedy]

Thanks again Garvin, being the hack that I am, I expected a real thrashing. I'll clean up my plugin code as you've suggested and re-post. Perhaps I'll have my Serendipity installation live by next week if I can find some spare time.

Best regards,
Adam

[garvinhicking]

Hi Adam!

No, no-there's nothing to thrash here

Bestregards,
Garvin

[judebert]

I'd love to see an example of this functionality in action. Got a URL?

[akremedy]

I'd love to see an example of this functionality in action. Got a URL?

Hi Judebert, best I can do at the moment is direct you to the download: http://www.pigslipstick.com/_product/se ... arlogo.zip

This is the updated copy per Garvins four suggestions above (moved the default CSS into the main file, set stackable to true (I'll have to read up on what that param does), closed my IMG tag properly for XHTML compliance and quoted height/width params, and swapped tabs for spaces).

I may have Serendipity live to replace my rewrite of Cafuego's SBS blog in a week or two...trying to relocate at the moment.

I welcome suggestions/comments!

Thanks,
Adam

[akremedy]

Hi Adam!

No, no-there's nothing to thrash here

Bestregards,
Garvin

Thanks again Garvin - I put the revised copy, incorporating all suggestions above, up in the same location using the same filename (LOL - how's that for source control). http://www.pigslipstick.com/_product/se ... arlogo.zip

This one is rev 0.0.2.

Thanks,
Adam

[judebert]

I'll wait until Garvin commits it to the repository. So much to do.

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Thanks a lot for your contribution, I just committed to plugin to spartacus where it should show up in the next 24-48 hours.

Regards
Garvin

[akremedy]

I'd love to see an example of this functionality in action. Got a URL?

Hi Judebert, I've finally flipped the switch on my Serendipity install - I'm using the SidebarLogo plugin that I wrote (top/left panel in the i3Theme).

I've made a couple of minor edits for further cleanup - the latest rev is still available at http://www.pigslipstick.com/_product/se ... arlogo.zip

Adam