After perusing Will Richardson’s book once again, I decided to look for open source social bookmarking tools. After Googling around, I came upon an interesting application: Pligg, a Digg clone.
Pligg is not a push button install. You need to know how to download a file, unpack it, upload it via ftp or file manager. Alternatively, you can load the files to your server using subversion through an ssh connection. You also need to be able to set up a mySQL database with a user.
I decided to give Pligg a look over. First, I logged into my server through ssh so I could install the software using the subversion checkout:
$ mkdir pligg
$ cd pligg
$ https://pligg.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/pligg/branches/9.x/ .
Server to server traffic is lightning fast and the software files were placed on my server in seconds. Next I had to set up the database and user with phpMyAdmin. I directed a browser to “pligg/install” and the installer popped up. The next step yielded two errors. I had to rename setting.php.default to settings.php and libs/dbconnect.php.default to libs/dbconnect.php. After that, it just needed the database information and it installed without a hitch. After installing you need to do a little cleanup and reset the admin (aka god) password. Overall, while it was not a Fantastico/Cpanel install, it was simple and straight forward.
Configuring Pligg within the admin interface was unusual.
A lot of your customization occurs under “Modify Language” and “Configure.” The other areas are pretty self-explanatory. The real weirdness is within these individual areas:
When I first looked at this, I had no idea what to do until I clicked on a value:
Once you have clicked, you simply type in the text for the desired value. The interface is unusual, but certainly simple enough once you have figured it out.
That’s a quick overview of the installing Pligg and a look at the administrative interface. Soon I’ll go over some of the features and customization for educational use.
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