I wanted to register some thoughts about a problem with the current version of Pligg. Not critisizm, mind you.
These are just observations and suggestions to help make the application better.
After working with Pligg for a number of weeks now I have often found Pligg templates that contained full-blown code logic. For example, in template index_center.tpl there are {php} blocks where specific Pligg routines are called. This co-mingling of design and program execution is less than ideal. (OK, it's pure evil!
) If you change a template you'd better have maintained those PHP blocks. Otherwise the application will cease to function. This defeats the purpose of using a template system.
In an ideal Smarty template based application the templates only define HTML and Smarty logic necessary to render the page. For example, a Smarty loop block iterating over an array to output lines from a list. Instead of the template itself invoking code calls directly the application that invokes the Smarty template object takes care of looking-up data and providing it to Smarty. Then Smarty is finally invoked to take care of rendering the output page.
I don't have a lot to complain about since Pligg does work.
But it would be much easier to support template variations if there weren't any {php} code blocks inside the templates themselves.