Recently we have received a lot of mail’s and a few comments asking if we plan to update a few of our Pligg Templates like SocialVantage and PliggBroadcast to be compatible with v1.0.0 of Pligg. Regrettably the simple answer to this question is No we do not plan any upgrades to v1.0.1 or support for our pligg templates.

Some of you may be disappointed with this announcement and to users of any of our Pligg Templates thanks for choosing to use them in the first instance. The reasoning behind us no longer releasing, upgrading or supporting our previous pligg templates is a simple one. Creating and maintaining pligg templates effectively is simply too time consuming due to the nature and number of files within Pligg’s Templating system.

Even although the Pligg project has moved on slightly in development terms this year it’s template structure which uses Smarty basically remains the same and contains a huge amount of files. Below is a breakdown of the number of files in the simple default Wistie template that comes supplied with the Pligg install.

Wistie Template Files

• Wistie Main Template Folder = 44 TPL Files
• sidebar_modules folder = 6 TPL Files
• Total TPL FIles = 50 TPL Files

Image Snapshot Of The Pligg Wistie Template Main Folder

As you can see to create a Pligg Template you need to work through/create at least 50 separate .tpl files and this is not including any Javascript, Images or CSS that you will create. Compared to other OpenSource systems like Drupal and WordPress Pligg is lightyears behind with it’s implementation of templates and how it’s template functions and hooks work.

Compare Pligg’s Wistie to the default template of Drigg for Drupal which only has 8 main template files and is a far more robust system overall when it comes to developing templates.
Image Snapshot Of The Drupal Drigg Template Main Folder

Many template developers have also found Pligg a headache when it comes to template’s as every update thats been released of the pligg system more often than not requires some changes to the template files. Even one of the most popular template authors CMSTheme have eventually run into problems which has all but stalled their premium pligg template business model.

Pligg’s small community footprint and uptake compared to other systems means that a lot of designers will continue to overlook Pligg when it comes to designing templates, us included.