Eric Heikkinen

Two years ago I co-founded Pligg.com, both a popular open source content management system and a website for support. The site began as a simple forum for users to report bugs and bugfixes and slowly evolved into today’s Blog, Wiki, forum and Shop.

Founded on December 17, 2005 by Damon “AshDigg” Wirth and I, Pligg began as an English translated version of the popular Spanish website Menéame. Over the two years since the founding of Pligg it has gone through drastic re-designs and added functionalities. What had begun as what some call a “digg-clone” has developed into one of the most social content management systems available.

The Pligg Blog (pictured above) is where Pligg announces new products, development status, special announcements concerning the site, and other information that Pligg users and admirers want to keep up to date on. The blog runs on a Wordpress installation, with a custom template design by myself.

The Pligg Forum is divided into several sections that organize a large amount of data into a small amount of screen space. The forum is based on vBulletin (commercial license), uses many free mods from vBulletin.org, and was designed by myself with the assistance of Moonrank.com for vBulletin templating. The forum also includes a Wiki area, which is integrated into vBulletin and based on the commercial product nuWiki. The integration allows users to use their vBulletin accounts to submit and edit articles and creates pop-up definitions for words in the forum that have a matching wiki definition.

The newest addition to the Pligg site is the Pligg Pro shop. Pligg pro was designed as a way for users to purchase premium Pligg content directly from the developers of Pligg. This content includes modules and templates that enhance the functionality and give some unique abilities and looks to Pligg sites. Pligg Pro is based on Sunshop (commercial, $249.99) and the template was made by myself in a three day period.