Bailo, you probably remember me talking to you a little bit about this in IRC a few months back, and it popped into my head again today. I tend to see a lot of people requesting plugins that already exist, or using the site search tool and not being able to find it because an author named it something completely unrelated. Anyways, I thought some more about it and came up with a few ideas as far as possible ways to make the approved plugins forum a bit more organized, or even maybe an addition to the site plugin search tool.
Tags:
I have a vbulletin forum, but I dont use it much, but if I remember correctly it does have some method of a tags system built into it. I was thinking possibly something similar to the way you tag a youtube video, a valve server with sv_tags, and so on. Basically different search terms related to the plugin making it easier to find. For an example, hlstatsx (yes we all know what it is, but its an example) might have tags such as rank, stats, and so on.
Categories:
This was one of my favorite ideas, but I think bailo told me with the way the approval system was coded, it would make it semi difficult to implement. Basically just sub dividing the approved plugins section into categories making it easier to browse plugins you were interested in. Maybe options like browse all, or a list of categories like Administration, Server Tools, Fun Stuff, Gameplay Modifications, Miscellaneous and so on.
Gametype Column:
Was thinking possibly adding a column to the Approved Plugin forum where the games it supported were shown by icon type. Such as a plugin for only CSS would only have the CSS icon, and a game that supported both TF2/CSS/DoDS would have all three. Valve game logos are very distinctive so I think this would only be beneficial to the user browsing. Would also cut out the need to put TF2: or CSS: in the title of the thread.
Templated Plugin Post:
This is a so so idea, however it would make for some much more readable plugin threads. Basically add some input fields to the page to create a new plugin thread, such as Title, Game Type, Cvars, Description, Change Log, etc. Some people like the freedom of making it anyway they choose, but sometimes its absolutely terrible to look through for what you are trying to find. A templated design would greatly help with this.
Anyways, just ideas. If they are implementable, would be something nice for a rainy day. I know the SM Dev team is hard at work as usual, so things like this obviously are not necessary, but always prove to be useful.
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