Geeklog - My First Premium Plugin: Books

My First Premium Plugin: Books

Sunday, February 06 2005 @ 08:00 PM EST
Contributed by: amckay
Views: 9,705

Hey folks,

I've written my first 'premium' plugin. i.e you have to buy it. I only decided to do that since it is a plugin that can make you money, so I figure if it makes you a bit, it might as well make me a bit, too.

The plugin is simply called 'books', and it allows you to manage a library of books from your website, that automatically link through to that book on any number of online retailers like Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The site admin can enter as many online retailers as desired, as well as their own affiliate ID for each site in which case books purchased by clicking-though automatically get credited.

Users can add books, and rate the books that are already in the system.

I've got a fair bit more in mind to spice it up. Right now i'm looking for a few alpha users who can test it for free if they like. Then I'll spruce it up based on their feedback, and finally release it.

If interested in Alpha testing, send me email with details about your site.

Try out the plugin on my website, but please only add books on beer and brewing.

http://www.bodensatz.com/article.php?story=20050206160419631

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Authored by: amckay on Monday, February 07 2005 @ 10:45 AM EST

BTW, for anyone who may be interested, I'm considering only a nominal fee for buying it. $32 USD or $40 CDN or 25 EURO. I think that's a fair price.

Authored by: knuff on Monday, February 07 2005 @ 12:07 PM EST

Looks Cool !

Sent you an email and surely willing to test.

Best Regards,
Boris

Authored by: scrat on Tuesday, February 08 2005 @ 02:50 AM EST

Hiya.

Great plugin - definately interested in this as I was wondering just how best to get my new associate links sorted.

One suggestion is that I'd like in the initial screen to define more detail - image and short description would be cool, as well as the rating and also the option to order by rating.

Cheers,
Aled.

Authored by: amckay on Tuesday, February 08 2005 @ 08:15 AM EST

The rating is tough to do with a simple query since it won't show books that are not rated (unless I use MySQL 4.1 and subqueries). Though I'm thinking of some alternate approaches that should work (e.g. a button to show only books that have been rated)

Authored by: grizel on Monday, February 21 2005 @ 05:28 PM EST

I'd like this for my macentor.org install!

Authored by: Stranger on Friday, April 08 2005 @ 04:26 AM EDT

Nice try.

When you want to make money on others job - like making deal with book retailers and probably getting paid for it from them.

And now trying to sell your need to the GL users?

I wonder how the Earth might be sad to bary such people.

You are abusing concept of Open Source Community.

Sell your crap to your parents and let them to "make money" for you!

Authored by: amckay on Friday, May 06 2005 @ 09:20 AM EDT

You know, it's idiot, uninformed comments like this which make a guy just want to pack it up and call it quits. And after reading this not only did I stop working on the books plugin, I came very close to taking down all of my plugins and ending support for them, because it obviously just isn't worth the hassel.

So Stranger, what have you done for the Geeklog project lately? In addition to writing several free plugins, I've also written a a fairly comprehensive beginner's guide to programming Geeklog. And not only have I not sold a single copy of the books plugin yet (it's only in beta, afterall), I've also been having reservations about the whole idea of selling it (even though my price was only going to be 10 or 20 bucks). To learn more about my contributions to the spirit of a free and open internet, read this.

One of the things I've been mulling over w.r.t. my books plugin, is giving it away to anyone who has made a donation to the GL project. So I'll probably follow up this post by emailing someone on the GL team to see if they want to do this. It will mean some extra administrivia for them, so maybe they won't want to, I dunno.

Oh, and Stranger, if you've ever even read the GPL, you clearly didn't understand it.

Authored by: ScurvyDawg on Friday, May 06 2005 @ 12:25 PM EDT

Ignore them and keep plugging away with your great projects there will always be people who do not get it.

Thanks for supporting GL.

I know I enjoy the fuits of all of our labour and will continue to give back to the project and thats all any of us can do is to support the project in any way we can. We all end up benefiting from it in the end don't we.

OSS is not always free and thats just fine people need to make a little cake to live and thats just the way it is.

Authored by: amckay on Thursday, September 22 2005 @ 06:14 PM EDT

Well, at long last I've had time to come back to this and (I think) clean up the installation. I've decided to give it away for free, but before I do that I'd like to get a couple of people to test the installation for me. Please email me if interested.

I support the plugin on another website, and have just begun a thread for support of beta-3.

click here

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