BuddyPress 1.6 support, and the future
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As I mentioned in a previous topic, if the premium sales of this plugin went well I would re-release a free version of Links with some of the advanced features stripped out.
Well, the sales haven’t been off the charts, but there were enough to cover the cost of development to bring the plugin up to BP 1.5 support, and also just recently 1.6 support. I want to thank all of the awesome people who bought the premium version, as this plugin would have died if they didn’t step up to the plate!
Today I am releasing a “community” version which has had the profile link sharing, and groups integration removed. ( These features are still available in the premium version, however. )
Moving forward I am hoping that the additional exposure which the community version provides will lead to enough sales to make continued and active development of this plugin possible. I plan on adding some more content providers (Vimeo, etc) and possibly some alternative theme layouts as an incentive to purchase the premium version. Of course, the premium version also includes personalized support from yours truly
I have just tagged a beta version of Links 0.6 in the plugin repo which supports BP 1.5 and 1.6. If you want to test it out, you can download it here:
http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/buddypress-links.0.6-beta.zip
As of Aug 20th I pushed some changes to the repo (trunk). Here is a link to download the latest fixes:
http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/buddypress-links.zip
Please post any bugs or feedback to this topic!
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I found the topic on the buddypress.org forum under a sticked link in the how-to and troubleshooting section
Anyway, it seems that some links here are not going to right place…I’ll update the FR translation and send it to you as soon as completed.
Perhaps you should consider selling it on http://codecanyon.net as well.
I don’t have a problem buying your plugin, but the thing I’m worried about is that it seems it’s still up in the air if this is going to be supported long term. I don’t want to add feature only to have to remove it later because the developer has moved on. I know that’s a ongoing issue with plugin development, but if you are charging for it I think you should be committed to it. Otherwise perhaps you should just make it opensource to at least allow other developers to take over if it is abandoned.
Anyway, great plugin.
Yeah, its a bit of a chicken/egg situation. Its been premium for about 8 months, and I am now feeling comfortable enough to re-release a free version, so this is a good thing
The tough thing about plugins is they are mini communities within a larger project community. If the developer can’t put in 10s or 100s of hours for free, members of the mini-community have to contribute to the financial health of the project. So its a team effort really, as opposed to the traditional mass marketing model.
There was just a ton of work to bring it up to snuff for 1.5 which was the largest hurdle so far. Hopefully there won’t be such another drastic change to BuddyPress which requires that level of time re-investment.
FWIW, I am involved in the CBox project, and that was a huge motivator to get this plugin to a healthy place because I am a huge fan of education, and I think this plugin could be extremely useful to an academic commons site.
And both versions are FOSS/GPL, so there should be no concerns about the source code disappearing.
@FIQ No worries, I 100% agree with everything you said. My commitment to it *has* been up and down since i first released it almost 3 years ago, lol. http://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/buddypress-links/tags/0.1
Most of the early BP plugins were ahead of their time. The BP community just wasn’t big enough to support plugin authors financially. I am hopeful that this is no longer the case.
Anyways, your honest feedback is good stuff, and appreciated. Wish more people would say what they are thinking instead of just pumping tires
I think this could be the best plugin for BP with a slight change in purpose.
It original was design (if I’m not mistaken) to add a Digg or reddit type service to BP. It’s a cool idea but in time it seems it gets filled with spammy type links and unless you have active voting it can become useless (another chicken and egg).
I think it would work as a perfect solution to image, video and link galleries (separate the 3) for users and groups. If you can then tie it into the update posting box you would really have something. The problem with user galleries is opening uploading of media to your servers by the general public is a disaster waiting to happen. By using image, video, etc embeds it completely eliminates the need for storage. This allows even BP users with shared hosting to have rich media user galleries.
In sort, I think instead of being a “Digg” like plugin it should be a user gallery plugin.
Just a thought.
@mrmaz , glad to see you back with fresh new versions!
I found this plugin around the time you quit supporting it. I was in love with this “Fetch” feature and started fixing issues brought by BP new versions. Over the 2 years, I’ve made several objects around this Featch feature and completely cut off codes related to BP, discarded category, share through CPT’s settings, changed voting to stackoverflow method plus a hell lot of user actions, save and query are following WP’s CPT process. Now, the renovation is nearly complete, the next is design the theme, then, can upload to internet, and you are back
I would consult you before I move on. Do I have the rights to modify and use your codes? (use mainly the media classes and services, modify others).
I have no problem to switch off the Fetch feature in my program if you say no. I would pay if my site will generate profit but unlikely– though I developed many features but it’s just because I have time and enjoy the learning process. I’m not on the position of purchasing a software to do something.
By the way, during the renovation, I learned a lot php and BP from your codes. You deserve much more than people would pay. Hope each of your new versions heading for greater success!
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