So many things in life are obviously broken but how often do you actually look close enough to see these faults with a product, service or design? If your like me it would seem not often enough according to Seth Godin who gave a fantastic keynote speech covering 7 reasons something might be broken.

Why do we think pligg is broken then? Well after DesignFloat’s latest downtime amongst other things it’s simple because we think it is and Seth Godin’s opinion is that if we think it’s broken then it’s broken.

Over the past year Pligg have tried to raise their brand and project from the depth’s of despair, shake off the bad reputation it has gained during the projects lifetime and get back on track. The position Pligg finds itself in today is the fault of less than savvy managerial and business decisions, sub-standard products for quick profit in their store and a poorly maintained, coded and planned system, v1.0 of Pligg however is going to change all this right?

So whats Seth Godin got to do with pligg being broken you may ask? First i would say that you watch Seth’s keynote as it may help you better understand how this post came about in the first place, if you have 20 minutes to spare please do that now as i cannot recommend this video enough very informative and fun at the same time.

Not My Job

Pligg’s Category Administration system could be included in this category for the fact they know it’s broken but haven’t fixed it, drag and drop categories still cause errors like disappearing categories or completely messed up categories when trying to place a sub category. This bug has the potential to really mess up your Pligg based website if you have lot’s of categories and sub categories, considering that v1.0 of pligg will have a javascript dropdown menu that requires lots of sub categories to work this user interface usability bug should have been addressed long ago.

On the Pligg website the download button links to a v1.0 unstable RC4 version of their system? this means that new users are downloading a version that is not ready for general release and should not be used on a live production site. Would you ever have another developer like Wordpress, Drupal or Joomla release a Release Candidate product to the general userbase before a final version, we don’t think so this shows why Pligg have done this instead of linking to v9.9.5 is a little confusing.

Somebody at Pligg should have said hey why don’t we wait until we have v1.0 final in the bag before linking to a Release Candidate from our main download page.

Selfish Jerks

Pligg store – the pligg store could be an item considered in the selfish jerks category for the fact they sell chose to sell low quality items some of which should actually be free, these poorly coded items actually hurt the pligg brand to gain money in the short term. An example of these type of products has been written about here Free Pligg Modules.

The World Changed

Since Pligg was first translated from the Spanish language Meneame codebase the world has changed, for one thing it’s now apparent that not everyone wants to build a digg clone like they did in 2006 – 2007. It’s also apparent that after 3 years of development Pligg has not really evolved considerably in features or stability than it was at time of release, sure the codebase is more refined and has changed but very little has been added or achieved in the way of required features. In 2009 people want more options, support and build quality from an open source script than ever before something which Pligg is still lacking.

I’m Not A Fish

Pligg’s Spam Protection – Pligg’s developers are not spammers therefore they do not think like spammers or seem to consider the complete lack of effective spam protection measures and spam administration features within their system as one of it’s greatest downfalls.

Misc

Development is also broken at Pligg for the simple reason that they have to pay 3rd party developers to progress their system. Whilst other open source projects gain volunteers who donate their time free of charge to contribute towards their projects Pligg has to pay for nearly all development tasks. This development situation is proving a costly affair for Pligg with a recent donation drive being launched to allow the release of v1.0 final to be funded.

Can you add anything else to the list above or do you think that pligg is in fact not broken feel free to leave a comment.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!