Discourse App Store?

[AstonJ]

Continuing the discussion from Discourse for iOS:

@AstonJ

Discourse App Store?

What does the Discourse team think of an app (plugin) store? So plug-in makers can release apps (either free or paid like the Apple app store) and the profits are split? This way the DC team can checks apps to make sure they are secure and idiomatic, app (and skin) developers get to make some money, and everyone else can be reasonably confident the apps/plugins are safe and relatively efficient.

Not sure if this has been posted anywhere yet, but what does everyone think of a DC App Store? Could be quite lucrative for DC and app/plugin developers..

[downey (Michael Downey)]

Do you maybe mean something like the Add-Ons site for Firefox (doesn’t support paid addons) or maybe something more like the Chrome Webstore (does have paid extensions)?

AFAIK such a platform doesn’t pre-exist, so it’d have to be built. And it’s not a very trivial project. (Unless people want to help contribute to the one we’re building for OpenMRS. :-))

[BhaelOchon (Billy Jo)]

There has been some discussion amongst the community around what this might look like, although nothing from any of the principals:

What is your favorite plugin directory and why?

We’ve got people from all walks of web life in here, so I’m curious to hear some good (and bad) examples of plugin directories. There will be at least one plugin directory built for Discourse plugins, so maybe we can help the developers out with a bit of the prep-work by detailing our likes and dislikes for this type of service. Here’s a short list of plugin directories you might have an opinion about: symphonyextensions.com npmjs.org jekyll-plugins.com wordpress.org/plugins plugins.jquery.co…

[AstonJ]

Sam posted this in the other thread:

@sam

Eventually, first we need to focus on expanding and improving our plugin infrastructure

But basically I would like to see something like the Apple App Store - where developers submit apps/plugins, which are checked to make sure they are secure and in-line with other app rules and regs.

I think this way everyone benefits - devs can make money, DC gets a cut, and everyone else gets secure, efficient apps and plugins.

[downey (Michael Downey)]

I’m not sure the Apple model is a good one for a free & open source software project, but I think I get the idea. The other thread above is a good start at discussing potential features/requirements.

+1 generally for highly discoverable/browsable Discourse plugins.

[haiku (Rikki Tooley)]

@AstonJ

But basically I would like to see something like the Apple App Store - where developers submit apps/plugins, which are checked to make sure they are secure and in-line with other app rules and regs.

I mentioned in the other thread that I like the idea of curated stores, but I think users should have the ability to run their own directories with their own criteria using the same software (would be good for companies like Communiteq (formerly DiscourseHosting)). In this vision, Discourse admins would select whichever directories they fancy, and plugin updates would stream in from whichever directory they were installed from.

I’m basically describing apt-get, aren’t I?

[uwe_keim]

Is there any progress on this idea?

(I would already be very satisfied to have a small themes/plug-in directory integrated into the Discourse admin GUI, something similar to what WordPress has)

[DrewH (Drew)]

ProCourse Installer provided some of the functionality you mentioned, however at this point plugins imported via ProCourse do not persist between rebuilds. If someone were to fix this plugin the app-store idea may be more feasible.

ProCourse Installer

This plugin is designed to make it extremely easy to install new plugins without logging into the server. It adds a screen under /admin/plugins/procourse-installer that looks like this: [image] From there, you can enter the URL (with or without .git) of the plugin git repo and click Install Plugin. Wait a few minutes (about 5 minutes) for the installation to complete and you’re good to go. To see all the plugins you’ve installed through the installer or to remove a plugin, just go to Install…

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

What we have now is Admin → Customize → Themes

https://discourse.example.com/admin/customize/themes

… which has a popular tab:

And Theme Creator, create and show themes without installing Discourse!

[oshyan (Oshyan Greene)]

I agree with the need for and benefit of this. The existing “popular” tab in the installer is something, but not enough in my view. I posted a similar topic recently, focusing more on themes, but I’d love to see better surfacing and listing of both themes and theme components+plugins, or even a “marketplace”/store.

Improvements to theme browsing and previewing

Hi Discourse team! I would like to humbly request some improvements to the theme browsing and preview experience. I searched a bit and didn’t find another topic on this, so apologies if I missed it and this is a duplicate. I also recognize that this could be considered multiple “feature requests”, but I’m including them all here because they’re all related and are different ways of improving things, not all of which I imagine will be implemented, if any. I’m hoping you prefer this to me posting …

[justin (Justin DiRose)]

I’ve always thought there’s an opportunity for 3rd party monetization on customizations for Discourse. I don’t think selling plugins is feasible long-term (complex to maintain, bugs can cause show-stopping issues, hard to sell in an open-source community).

However, there could be opportunity for selling themes/components and creating a browseable place for them to live. I’d feel more comfortable pushing our userbase toward front-end customizations vs. plugins simply due to the many issues plugins can have. Our theme system has matured quite a bit in the last few years since I started working on customizing Discourse, so much so that many customizations don’t even require a plugin anymore.

Nothing’s on our roadmap in this area at this point in time, though.

[Justin_Vega]

Such a system would be more comparable to the new Microsoft Store. It’s already gaining traction due to its new business model.

Building a new, open Microsoft Store on Windows 11

Microsoft Edge extensions show up in the new Microsoft Store for Windows 11

[oshyan (Oshyan Greene)]

@justin

Our theme system has matured quite a bit in the last few years since I started working on customizing Discourse, so much so that many customizations don’t even require a plugin anymore.

Yeah, I’ve been really impressed with what is possible with Theme Components and how easy they are to work with. Not to mention how easy CSS customization often is. I’m really just after a better way to find them and understand their features without installing every one to test, heh.