Maintaining your skin / plugin / widget is as easy as 1,2,3

Plug-in and Skin Developers

Right about now, you're probably wishing that you could add this type of functionality to your skins and plug-ins. Well, you can! We built BOPIT with developers in mind.

The first thing you need to do is to request a login for BOPIT, just grab one of us on the forums or requet one in the comments to this post. This login will give you access to our special blogs which control the BOPIT files, allowing you to easily maintain the version information for your plugins and skins.

Creating / Maintaining version information

The post screen for both the (b) Plugins and (b) Skins is exactly the same, so I'll just talk you through one of them, for skins you need to do a tad more work which I'll explain at the end. The first thing you're going to notice is that the post screen is pretty different from the normal post screen, this is just to make it easier for you to enter the required information.

Your users can see all supported skin / plugin / widget

List of fields and what they're for ( see screenshot ) :

1. Name : This is the name of your skin / widget / plugin and is shown in the users BOPIT list (a), this can be any name you care to choose
2. Version : This is the version of the skin / plugin / widget that the zipfile contains and is shown in the users BOPIT list (b), this field is kinda important ;)
3. Code : This is your plugin/widget $code and is needed to enable BOPIT to connect version information to the correct plugin, for skins you need to make one up ( see below ).
4. Notes : This is a swift one liner ( text only ) to explain why the version information was added to BOPIT, this is shown in the users BOPIT list (c) IF they have your skin / plugin / widget installed and it's out of date
5. Description : This is a brief description of your skin / plugin / widget which is shown on the version information post ( screenshot 3 ). Please note : it must be valid xhtml strict, otherwise we'll be a tad miffed when you break our skin. Also note that we don't have auto-p installed so you have to add those tags yourself.
6. Homepage : This is the link to your skin / plugin /widget homepage, it's shown in the users BOPIT list (d) and allows users to read up on your skin / plugin / widget before they decide to try it
7. Support page : This is a link to your skin / plugin / widget support page, it can be the same page as the homepage or the forum thread if you provide support there. Again this is shown on the users BOPIT list (e) and allows them to easily find support.
8. Download link : This should be a direct link to the zipfile, it's shown in the users BOPIT list (f) and allows the user to easily download the zip
9. Categories : These are the b2evolution versions that your skin / plugin / widget supports for the zip file that you have linked to.

All available versions of your skin / plugin / widget in one location

Different zips for different evo versions

If you have different versions of a skin / plugin / widget for different versions of b₂evolution, like the weather plugin which has a 1.10.x version and a 2.x version, then you need to make two posts, one for each zip file, as long as your skin / plugin / widget code remains constant then BOPIT will link them all together when displaying available versions ( example : download the weather plugin ) to the user. You can also use this feature on your skin / plugin / widgets home/support page by linking to the BOPIT blog with the code as a search param

Code:

Updating version information

If and when your skin / plugin / widget version changes, maybe you've added an enhancement, or fixed a bug, or whatever, you just need to edit the relevant bopit post to amend the version number to the new version number, and change the note to reflect the change, and hit save. All the relevant BOPIT files will be automatically updated and the changes will be seen by users immediately in their BOPIT list. Easy as huh?

Enabling your skins

Whilst we can automate the plugins side of things it requires a smidge more work on your part if you wish to add versioning to your skins. Basically you'll need to add an XML file to your skin folder which will contain the relevant BOPIT information. As we haven't got any supported skins yet we haven't decided on the final construct of the file, so if you're a skin designer give us a shout and we'll talk to you about the kind of information / functionality you'd like the file to support

Questions

If you have any questions regarding BOPIT and how to use it then just leave a comment and we'll try and answer them as best we can. If you wish to have a BOPIT login then let us know and we'll set you one up ;)