So it’s 1am on a Sunday night, not much more has happened in term of exciting stuff ever since my latest week-end update (no more earthquake, no tsunami, no godzilla…), I am busy debugging code written by a maniac who apparently thinks that picking random combinations of three to six letters is a perfectly acceptable naming convention for all functions and variables in a multi-thousand lines program (and yea, I’m aware that this last bit means absolutely nothing to a rough 90% of my beloved readers: please color me equally stumped, albeit not for the same reasons)… It’s time for…

Techie Update of the Month

I have been putting in a bit of long-overdue work into wp-plugins.net, the ultimate WP plugins repository.

Namely:

• No more ridiculously long loading time of the index page. No annoying clicky-clicky browsing either: thanks to the magic of AJAX (some fancy JavaScript stuff), plugin descriptions are loaded dynamically, without refreshing the entire page each time.
• I finally made the permalinks google-friendly (well, human-friendly too, actually), as well as added permalinks per plugin author. From now on, a plugin can be accessed directly by using:
  http://wp-plugins.net/plugin/your-plugin-short-name/
  (e.g. http://wp-plugins.net/plugin/SK2/)
  and an author’s complete collection, using:
  http://wp-plugins.net/author/your-account-login/
  (e.g. http://wp-plugins.net/author/drdave/).
  Old permalinks using IDs still work.
• Finally added Google Adsense contextual ads.

Before you start pointing out that Adsense isn’t exactly an “improvement” to the site, let me explain:

I am no huge fan of net advertising in general, not even when used to support a “community service”. If anything, I’d rather see such services supported through donations, as I don’t really buy into the general idea that covering everything in advertisement in the name of free service, is an acceptable trade-off for the loss of a mercantile-free landscape (whether a real physical one, with grass and billboards, or its online equivalent, with html and click-under banners). But that might be the idealistic tree-hugging in me talking.

Anyway, while very targeted projects like Spam Karma have been getting a small but steady flow of generous donations, a site like wp-plugins and its thousands of daily users has yet to generate so much as one spontaneous thank-you email. Note that I am not complaining here: I see the logic perfectly well, considering that, unlike a specific plugin which may do a lot, for few people, this site does a little, for many people. I wouldn’t personally think of making a donation as a casual user of such a site.

Hence: advertisement it is.

So far (from this week-end’s reports), it seems worth the unnecessary clogging of screen estate, in that it should pay entirely for my hosting bills at the end of the month, maybe even a Sapphire & Tonic and a bowl of ramen in Omoide Yokochou… which, when you think of it, is about what I would be paid for my hours in the fields, if I was an indentured servant and the year was 1705.

Which brings us to why this should be taken as an improvement:

Being an extremely venal ilk of Genius, I was starting to consider putting a brake on wp-plugins.net development. While closing the site was out of the question, spending any more time developing and enhancing it, became increasingly hard to justify, in light of my current schedule and alimentary necessities. In that regard, placing ads was/is an experiment, and the fact it seems able to sustain it own cost, means I shall finally be spending some time working on miscellaneous improvements in the near future. Which ought to make us all happier.

In conclusion, feel free to go have fun with wp-plugins.net, hurry up to add your WP plugin if that’s not already done and don’t hesitate to click through the ads if you see something you like (happily ignore them if not). Also don’t hesitate to contact me (through the form or in the comments) for bugs or feature requests…