Spartacus Improvements (Themes + Plugin Categories)

I have prepared a patch which allows the plugin interface to be a bit more intuitive.

It combines the spartacus/external plugins into the same interface you use to install downloaded plugins, so this is now one large list of plugins. The new list also allows to be grouped by one level of categories.

Some plugins in the list, and some spartacus plugins have been given the new "group" property so that you can play with the patch.

For the interface to load faster I have created an intermediate cache, that stores the plugin metadata and makes it retrievable easier on the interface. The upside of this is that the list of plugins is now much faster created.

This may possibly cause a lot of trouble, so do not apply this patch in a working environment. Only use it for fun and report back to me how you like it.

In a future step, the new (localized!) plugin XML metadata can be used easier on a pear.php.net like interface.

The patch can be found here: http://blog.s9y.org/uploads/plugincat.diff

UPDATE: New diff file http://blog.s9y.org/uploads/plugincat2.diff supports Template downloading via Smartacus, uhm Spartacus. :-)

UPDATE 2: New diff file http://blog.s9y.org/uploads/plugincat3.diff contains support for alternate file mirrors. The list of mirrors will hopefully be updated soon to contain some backup locations.

New version of google_sitemap and freetag plugins

I have received new upstream releases for the Tagging-Plugin by Jonathan Arkell and a 0.9 compatible version of the googlesitemap plugin by Sebastian Wiesinger. Thank you very much, guys!

The revamped version of the Tagging plugin by Jonathan now supports easier maintaining of the tags, as well as refactored code and better styling/RSS+Technorati integration. Weightings and Intersections of Tags has also been improved, but there is still some pending work needed to get it to work with postgreSQL.

Both have been committed to CVS and should be upgradable in Spartacus the next 24 hours. If you have any issues with the new plugin versions, please report them here.

New Plugin Google Sitemap

A user-contribution by Boris, Plugin Google Sitemap, allows to create the new Googlebot-compatible sitemap layout for most of all Serendipity links.

I think it may not run smoothly with Serendipity 0.9 and a customized permalink structure, but it should not be too hard to adapt the plugin there. Apart from that I think it's a really nice plugin, thanks to Boris!

Assign Categories Plugin

A new plugin called serendipity_event_assigncategories ("Category Assignment") has been added to CVS. It allows to easily change the category assignemnts of all articles. It can be very helpful if you decide to add a new category to your blog and would like to sort special entries to those new categories.

The plugin will be available in Spartacus soon and has already been committed to CVS.

Staticpage plugin 2.1

The static page Plugin in version 2.1 has been upgraded to allow password protected, static pages. The password is not remembered in a cookie currently, so you have to enter it time and again.

I hope this new feature is useful for somebody. ;-)