Pligggggggg?

The past couple of days, Pligg has been plaguing me. To answer your question, Pligg is not a very fat and jolly boar, but instead a content management system similar to digg. Basically, content is posted and people vote on the most popular item to raise it to the top of the heap. Pligg is currently a freeware version of this as it’s still in beta. And what that means for Pligg is that it doesn’t have the most user friendly method of customizing things. This is mainly because I am no PHP expert by any means (though I just might be after finishing up with ol’ pliggy).

Round 1- I create a MySQL database, upload files, and change the CHMOD according to Pligg’s install instructions. There’s a little bit of guess work as they don’t spell it out and have neglected to update the instructions for the 9.9 version. It’s a little bit difficult mainly due to my inexperience with installing databases, but eventually it’s complete. I log in, everything looks great, I change the password, and Pligg promptly locks me out of my own website for no particular reason that I can figure out (Yes, yes, I’m one of those irrational people that tend to blame the technology and not my brain-but I’m working on it. And seriously, Pligg had it in for me). So I uninstall, reinstall, and swiftly establish an account. All is well.

Round 2-The person I’m working for wants some modifications. Should be pretty simple, right? No. The optimist inside my head keeps saying, “Well, there’s got to be a simpler way….” and the pessimist tells her to shut up and help her surf the Pligg forums. Though there’s some great people on there that offer a variety of solutions, they are winding and not very awesome when you do random searches. So it takes me a little while to find some tutorials/modifications/hacks for the system. I implement a few. Pligg breaks and gives me an error message that I cannot decipher, despite surfing the forums. After putting the default settings back one by one, testing and still having a broken site, the pessimist wins. I’ll reinstall tomorrow.

Round 3- Reinstall, carefully do the most necessary changes, find solutions in random places (who would’ve thought you change tab text by going into the languages section?), and finally start putting content up on my functioning site, relieved to be done with customization.

In short, unless you know php, Pligg is rather difficult. Or maybe you just have more patience than me. If you want a free CMS, have at it, but if you can, wait until they release the 1.0 version that I can only hope is less buggy and more user friendly. Then again, Pligg 1.0 may not be free, so I guess it all depends on how much you value your time versus your money.