After writing our article on Pligg winning third place in the “Most Promising” category of Packt Publishing’s CMS awards we received several emails and messages from readers alerting us to the fact that Pligg may not have been eligible for this particular award. The entry criteria from Packt own rules depending on how they are interpreted could indicate that Pligg is in fact not eligible to be entered into the “Most Promising” CMS category.

Firstly lets address the question as to why some thought that Pligg may not be eligible for the “Most Promising” category? Each year Packt sets particular entry requirements for systems with their Awards Rules for each category and this is where several of you picked up on a possible detail that could make pligg uneligable for the award. The particular rule in question is no.6 in the “Most Promising” rules section as shown below.

From Packt 2009 Award Rules Link to rules at bottom of Packt’s awards page.

6. The most promising category is open for Open Source Content Management Systems whose first release was under two years ago as of August 3, 2009. CMSes that entered the 2008 Most Promising category, that are still eligible for 2009 are invited to enter.

A few readers pointed out to us that what could be considered a stable and widely used version of Pligg titled v9.9.5 was released on the 29th April 2007, this date is four months in front of Packt’s entry rule criteria. Those same readers also hinted that the use of the BETA tag on Pligg’s releases had been overused and the system had been stable and usable since v9.9.5, therefore v1.0.0 was not the first stable release and the project did not now meet Packt’s entry requirements.

More so even if Pligg had entered the “Most Promising” category for 2008 it’s release date still does not allow it to be entered for 2009. The fact Pligg had also been selling paid Modules and Templates from their own Pligg Pro store since around 2007 also seemed to confirm that the system was indeed stable enough for the developers to commercialize since this time.

A List of Pligg Versions and Release Dates

We contacted Packt to get their view on the subject and received the explanation below.

The Most Promising category is, for obvious reasons, the most difficult one to administer as its very difficult to say for certain when the first stable release of a CMS is, just from viewing the project’s website and other research. With this in mind, we contact all CMSes that make the final to establish this date of their first stable release.

We agree with Packt on this one that the first stable release should be when the entry date requirement begins, this is where things are hazy with Pligg though after being developed for nearly three years.

Our Opinion

We feel Pligg should have been included in the awards and if taking the release date of v1.0.0 as the stable release they are entitled to enter. We do however see the point made by some of you that Pligg may have overused/misused the BETA tag over the years on their releases as versions including v9.9.5 previous to v1.0.0 were definitely stable enough to run some fairly large sites. Stability hasn’t really been Pliggs problem since the release of v9.9.5, users main gripe with the system over time has always been spam submissions.

Whats your view, is Pligg eligible or not?

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