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Needs for "OFFICIAL MARKET"

+14 votes
1.5k views
in Q2A Core by

I want OFFICIAL MARKET PLACE for downloading themes and plugins in the official site.

  1. Information of add-ons page is very few and old.
  2. There is no important feature in add-on page (Preview, Last-updated, Version compatibility, Downloads, Ratings, Support forum, etc...).
  3. There is no commercial highly functional parts in add-on page.
  4. There is no guide line and quality check about parts development.
  5. Since each developers are selling parts in each site, is low convenience of users.

I want really fair parts repository such as WordPress.

by
+1 yes there is very high need for a market like that to accumulate all the addons at one place with all the necessary details.
by
edited by
You have my +1. I agree with you.
A central "marketplace" where all free and commercial plugins are exposed is needed.
Furthermore, for every "product" there should be the possibility of rating and reviewing it (and not asking questions or support, of course... there's already q2a -or the owners' websites- for this purpose). Now all these infos are scattered everywhere.
But it should be clarified what is meant by "official".
I'm thinking for instance to Ami's post :
http://www.question2answer.org/qa/41939/store-new-q2a-store-with-many-high-quality-plugins-and-theme
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Yes +1.........
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I 100% agree with @max' comments. I think everybody wins too. However, and probably I'm wrong in this one, my understanding of the word "official" in this context would be "Developed and maintained by any core developer". If that is the case, then this will be a no go, because there will be a lot of time invested in developing and maintaining that platform that won't be invested in the core itself.

Regarding ratings... I'm somewhat opposed to that. You can always create a bot to rate a product or it even won't be clear which users will be able to rate a paid product.
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I think what sama55 means by "official" is that the *site* would be official, not the plugins themselves.

3 Answers

+4 votes
by
It's a nice idea and something we can look into. One possibility would be to create a page plugin for this site, that way it's linked to the users and permissions system. Rating plugins could be limited to users with some points to prevent spam.

The problem is really how to ensure quality? We'd need some people checking and approving submissions, which is time consuming and could require some advanced knowledge (to check a plugin doesn't have malware and so on). Then they would also need to go back and check old submissions in case they disappeared, or don't work in the current Q2A version. I wouldn't be able to spend much time doing that since my time will be mostly spent on the core.

Regarding your 5th point, are you asking for plugins/themes to be sold through the official channel? I think that would be unlikely to happen (and since you linked to Wordpress, note that they do not sell any premium stuff themselves). There are plenty of commercial Wordpress themes/plugins and they do fine on separate sites.
+2 votes
by
edited by

I thank for many opinion. I will explain the meaning (rules) of my word ("OFFICIAL").

  1. Official site provide a place to publish themes and plugins to the Q2A developer.
  2. Several features are provided in OFFICIAL MARKET (Preview, Last-updated, Version compatibility, Downloads, Ratings, Support forum, etc...)
  3. There is rules (agreement) page for publishing parts at OFFICIAL MARKET.
  4. All parts must be published in accordance with GPL license or any compatible license (MIT, BSD etc).
  5. Developers can freely set the price of own parts.
  6. Settlement is performed at each developer's site.

In summary, developers (parts publisher) have all responsibility of own parts (update and management, etc.). And, official site is only provides location and functionality. It is desirable that the official market is operated autonomously.

I will show another good example (CKEditor addon market):

+1 vote
by

I'm going to throw some thoughts out here for brainstorming purposes.

Why not modify Q2A to serve that purpose?

Make another Q2A under question2answer.org/store:

  • It shares the same database for users and points as /qa, except for user rank.
  • Questions are renamed to topics
  • Answers are renamed to comments
  • Comments are removed
  • Only developers can post new topics
  • Trusted developers are moderators
  • Anyone can vote and comment
  • Anyone can suggest edits

Important plugins

  • eCommerce features such as Shopping Cart, Checkout and Paypal support. It's not essential to work but it's one less bureaucracy for developers and buyers.
  • Suggest edit. Allows user to edit a topic or comment. The modifications have to be approved by whoever posted or a moderator.
  • Moderation log. A new moderation tab including every edit moderator action. They can be reverted by an Admin or Superadmin.

Benefits

  • It takes less time than creating something entirely new.
  • The store is updated by people who are most interested in preserving the data accuracy: developers who want to sell goods and Q2A site owners.
  • List maintenence is needless due to tags organization.
  • Any plugin developed to improve this store is an addition to the amount of Q2A plugins.
Snow Theme by Q2A Market
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