Category Archives: Store

Five New Free Themes For Oxwall

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Remember the Darklets social networking template released a couple of weeks ago? It proved quite popular with the Oxwall crowd due to it’s universal appeal and accessibility. But that was only a teaser, since we are ready to roll out another batch of five brand-new free professional themes! What a great way to start the week, don’t you think? Take a look at these samples:

Crayon

Crayon Theme for Oxwall

City

City Theme for Oxwall

Stars

Stars Theme for Oxwall

Silent

Silent Theme for Oxwall

Pastel

Pastel Theme for Oxwall

This line of themes can be applied to a variety of niches, representing a particular mood of a given online community. All five templates are already available through Oxwall Store; enjoy them and let us know what you think in the comments bellow. In the meantime, we are happy to tell you that more regular updates for our collection are planned, and we are already hard at work creating new themes for future releases.

Paid items in the Oxwall Store: price vs quality

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We have a forum user who touched the topic that we are very sensitive about, so in the process of writing the reply I understood we should make our position clear to everyone.

Here’s the original topic: http://www.oxwall.org/forum/topic/6787

Here’s my reply:

Ebony,

You are right. Oxwall needs more free plugins and themes. The long-term project success is based on building enough of a product of superior quality that will enable users run their projects on Oxwall.

The project needs exactly this type of developers and designers — those working for the idea of giving away people excellent software and seeing what happens. That’s how an open source project works before gaining critical mass. Only then people will use software for viable community projects and more people will learn about Oxwall and the demand in software will increase.

But.

All of this is only possible if the resulting product quality is good. Meanwhile, the best developers and designers know the price of their time and only spend it accordingly.

We think the best scenario for Oxwall is to have A LOT of free items and some excellent paid items. So, solving the problem here is not to make bad plugins cheaper but to develop very good plugins and charge what’s reasonable. As for bad plugins, we are on a mission to not let them in and to push them out. If you buy an unsatisftory plugin on the Oxwall Store, give it low rating. Enough low rates will remove the item from the listings.

Too bad, not many of current developers understand that there’s no point in creating a heap of cheap items. Impulse purchases do not create trust and long-term value. Developers and designers should create less items and focus on their quality. It’s just a better business model.

In the end of the day, if there’s excellent free software with necessary third party items of high quality, the end user will not care that much about their price. If price is their only factor of choice, they are not really Oxwall’s target audience. I’ve never seen viable online community projects from people who value the price of software plugins more than their time and their users’ experience. Open source is not about the $0 price tag. It’s about accessibility, options, and trust.

Our position regarding the third party items in the Oxwall Store:

  • We will encourage more free items;
  • No matter free or paid, they will have to be of good quality;
  • We choose “less but better” strategy for the Oxwall Store;
  • We do not plan to drive the item prices down. Open market will decide.

Increasingly, it will be possible to find more plugins outside the Oxwall Store. This is fine, it’s open source after all. It’s just that we plan to maintain the high standard on the official resource for the mainstream users.

Thanks,
Emil

Oxwall Store Revamped

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General Thoughts

The essential changes to the Oxwall Store that we’ve talked about for some time now are finally here. As the Store experienced the increased activity, we couldn’t help but notice the system becoming cluttered. Something had to be done, and thus we undertook the task of introducing some order and organization within the project. It is our belief that Oxwall Store should be a simple and comprehensible place. Here’s what we did to achieve that.

Oxwall Store Revamped

Different Listings

Prior to the change, Oxwall Store featured one single listing of all plugins created for the platform. Needless to say, that wasn’t really convenient or efficient. Instead, we’ve come up with a division into four different listing types.

Oxwall Store Revamped

  • Featured

Items found here will be carefully selected by members of the Oxwall Foundation, as most beneficial for the entire community.

  • Most Popular

The section will show the end-user what the community thinks are the best themes and plugins. The popularity of items here will be measured by the combined score of top ratings, most downloads, etc.

  • Top FREE

Most popular free items will end up in this category.

  • Latest

This is self-explanatory – all the latest items will be automatically placed here.

Reviews

Oxwall Store RevampedReviews are now comprised of three sections – title, short user opinion of the item, and the score (with the maximum of five stars). Also, all reviews can now be rated as helpful by other users. Paid items will be open for reviews only upon purchase. In addition, all submitted reviews will be pre-moderated by the Oxwall Team. Ain’t the democracy a great thing? ;)

Oxwall Store Revamped

Note that all support questions will be separated from the item score, and could be addressed or reported only on the forum.

Oxwall Store Revamped

While converting to the new system we have moved all comments about the item to a separate section of the item’s forum called Support Questions. It is no longer possible to leave simple comments on the item’s page. The scores (without feedback) have been saved as well. So if you browse the Store and see a score without any actual reviews around, that can mean only one thing – this score was converted from submissions prior to the introduced change.

More Items Widget

Oxwall Store RevampedWe’ve added a new widget to item pages, called ‘More plugins/themes from this author.’ It will show other items the user has added to the Store, which is a very convenient tool for promoting specific store items through the ones already achieved popularity. The item list for the widget is compiled by the user through the item edit page.

Minor Stuff

We have also revamped item pages themselves, to allow visitors immediaely see all the necessary information and scores left by other users.

The presentation of each item in the overall listing was made more detailed and informative.

Traditionally, we’ve fixed some minor system bugs.

Conclusion

We hope you will like this latest improvement of Oxwall Store. In our opinion the changes will benefit everyone, including visitors looking for new plugins, and developers displaying their creative output. Check out our progress and tell us what you think. Enjoy!

 

 

Oxwall Store Digest:
Top of the Line

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Dear friends,

With great pleasure we want to present a new section of this blog. After seeing the steadily climbing popularity of the Oxwall Store, as well as general improvement in quality of the items that end up there, we decided to shine some light on the best plugins and themes on display. And today we have not one, but two of them!

Mochi Games for Oxwall

Oxwall Store Digest: Top of the Line

Games are often one of the most thought-after features in social networking and Mochimedia.com presents a wide variety of options in this area. Mochi Games for Oxwall plugin integrates Mochimedia services into any Oxwall website almost entirely hassle-free.

Oxwall Store Digest: Top of the Line

You’ve got everything from Action to Strategy to Racing, to even Classic Nintendo Spoofs, all as part of a huge collection that can make any casual gamer happy.

Among other things, the plugin eliminates all steps requiring the insertion of custom Javascript codes, and allows most games to set up Leaderbords integrated into Oxwall Newsfeed, to keep members posted of new highscores. On top of that, Mochi Games for Oxwall works perfectly with User Credits plugin, allowing admins to charge or award members with credits for using games on the site.

Mochi Games for Oxwall is sold for a one-time fee of $20, and its creator promises frequent updates and support.

Download Plugin.

Try Demo.

Questions

Another top-rated plugin that is quickly gaining popularity is Questions, which allows users to submit polls for others to answer, Facebook-style.

Oxwall Store Digest: Top of the Line

Incredibly easy to setup and manage, Questions are very useful for adding interactivity to any site, and getting the community even more involved in joint activities.

Oxwall Store Digest: Top of the Line

Needless to say, after publishing the created poll will appear in the Newsfeed, and depending on chosen options, members can select a ready answer or add one of their own.

The plugin is absolutely free and has already seen over 1000 downloads since appearing in the Store.

Download Plugin.

Try Demo.

Oxwall: The Progress

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Oxwall: The ProgressLadies and gentlemen,

Today we would like to share some great news with you. Oxwall Foundation has reached several important milestones, which prove that we are moving in the right direction, steadily giving the community tools necessary for our common success.

First of all, Oxwall Software now boasts over 71000 source lines of code. Compare that with 64000 of the very first Oxwall iteration released in August 2010. Not bad, considering that this metric is a very important indicator of a project’s size, and shows the effort the development team puts behind it.

Now, that was the platform itself. Even more impressive is the rapid increase in the number of source lines of code for plugins developed by the Oxwall Foundation. Altogether they now take over 64000 LOC (30% growth from the times of Oxwall 1.0.1), which is really impressive, when you take into account the time-frame and the relatively small team size.

All of that, coupled with the success of the recently released Oxwall 1.3 helped to boost the platform downloads from the 250 per day average in 2011, all the way up to 350 at the start of 2012.

Finally, Oxwall Store also witnesses some stable evolution since its full-scale launch a mere year ago. By now, the gradually growing number of published items have passed 100, adding even more to the progress of the entire project.

With our joint efforts and great input from the international Oxwall community, these achievements have been reached in just under two years. This is the programming productivity and expansion rates we are quite content with, although we’ll be obviously looking to build on this success even further in the near future.

UPDATE

An unfortunate slip made its way into the above text. Of course we meant the DAILY download average (not monthly) in the fourth paragraph. So, the daily platform download average in 2011 was 250, boosted up to 350 since the release of Oxwall 1.3.

 

 

Oxwall Store Update

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We have a new batch of fixes and improvements for the Oxwall Store, check them out:

Improvements

  •  You can now view all of your Store Items on a separate ‘My Items’ tab;

  • You can now see who and when bought licenses for each of your items;
  • You can now revoke licenses for any sold item or theme (useful for when a license is abused);

  • You can now reset the License IP for any bought item (necessary when the IP of a site with the installed item has changed);

Fixes

  • The last file on the list under Item’s Downloads can no longer be unchecked as Main;
  • Main Download option completely revamped under Item’s Download;
  • PayPal account details area is clearer defined while selecting payment method;

 

Oxwall Store Increased Quality Control

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Dear friends,

We are happy to report that Oxwall Store is coming along quite nicely, judging by the steadily growing volume of new items and sales. Unfortunately, quantity does not always translate to quality, and like everyone, we notice the appearance of mediocre-to-poor submissions.

This is not what we had in mind initially. We are also sure most Oxwall admins will agree that Oxwall Store should not become another online collection of second-rate mods of existing plugins and themes.

Oxwall Foundation always strove for improved quality for the end user and we anticipate the community will follow our lead. We all still have a long way to go to reach the desired level of excellence, but with small steps in the right direction we can do it.

One of such steps will be the introduction of stricter quality control for Oxwall Store submissions, in accordance with our Terms of Use. We hope everyone understands that this decision will benefit the project in the long run. Let’s make Oxwall better together.

Oxwall Store Improved

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We’ve got a couple more news we can push out before the holidays.

First of all, don’t forget to check out the updated Development Roadmap to see what to expect from our upcoming release. But while the team is busy with that, we decided to further tweak the Oxwall Store, seeing its growing significance and demand.

The changes are both, cosmetic and functional, streamlining and simplifying the Store’s presentation. We intend to introduce a more significant overhaul to the Oxwall Store in the future, but for now the changes include the following:

  • Store Search added;
  • Themes and Plugins separated into different categories;
  • Items and Listing Items display changed;
  • Item Lists simplified;

Oxwall 1.2.6 & Oxwall Store Update

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Your eyes don’t deceive you. The second Oxwall release in less than a week is indeed here. We thought that it’s worth pushing it out ahead of schedule. Here’s why.

With this release we open the doors of the Oxwall Store to all paid plugin developers out there. As you might know only free plugins were available for download until recently. Now any developer with a worthy product can set a price on their plugins and sell them at our store. Of course, said plugins (or any other goods in Oxwall Store for that matter) must comply with OSCL – Oxwall Store Commercial Licence.

Note that plugins not developed by Oxwall are sold as is – we are not responsible for any trouble they might cause to your sites, so check all the accompanying documentation very carefully.

To make sure everything is working as it should, please back up your site and then upgrade the software to 1.2.6. Alternatively, just wait for the Auto-update Button, which should appear in the Admin area of your network within 24 hours after the launch of the update.

 

Oxwall 1.2 Release

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(Dear users, remember to follow the UPDATE INSTRUCTIONS BELLOW precisely (even with autoupdate)!

Oxwall Foundation is proud to announce the long-awaited Update to 1.2.

We consider this a major step forward, as both admins and users will see the results of the Update across the entire platform.

You might already know that this release brings you an Advanced Photo Upload, More Privacy Options, an Enhanced Newsfeed, and Improved Text Input. (For more details on these features please refer to the wonderful post by Oxwall Founder Emil). Alternatively, you can read on for a point-by-point explanation of the changes we made to the software.

CORE CHANGES

  • Enhanced Text Input

Text Input

  • My Preferences now include subscription options for Mass Mailing
  • Mass Mailing now sent only to active (non-suspended) users
  • New option to create a customizable Welcome Letter
  • Javascript Code now available throughout the site for web statistics, special effects, and other purposes
  • Favicon change in page settings
  • New option to include Avatar Upload and ‘Terms of Use’ checkbox to Registration

NEW PRIVACY PLUGIN
Privacy

Download and install this new plugin from Oxwall Store (but only after you upgrade the platform to 1.2). After the Privacy Plugin is activated in the Admin Area, network members will have several options for setting up their profile and content privacy. All other plugins across the platform will be affected correspondingly.

TWO NEW THEMES

 

          

‘Spring’                                                                                 ‘Grunge’

IMPROVED FEATURES

Advanced Photo Uploader

  • Upload up to 100 photos at once
  • Rotate and auto re-size
  • Add tags and descriptions

Newsfeed

  • Now corresponds to privacy options
  • Improved news item relevancy system (promotes only member-related news items)
  • Improved news item dynamics (shows only recent actions related to news items grouped, as opposed to several news items for every similar action)
  • The long awaited Newsfeed content customization options for admins

Instant Chat

  • Sound notifications for messages
  • ‘Friends Only’ or ‘View All’ modes

Misc

  • Mailbox captchas for sending bulk messages
  • Options to turn off file attachments and set allowed file sizes
  • Newsfeed birthday notifications
  • Various minor bug fixes
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INSTRUCTIONS

Download

The new shiny Oxwall 1.2 in downloads section: www.oxwall.org/download

Update: File Permissions

IMPORTANT: There’s an old permissions problem that can affect your update process. Before you attempt to update your site (either manually or automatically) you need to set full permissions recursively on your ow_static folder. For example in Linux you need to execute chmod -R 777 ow_static command. If you work with an ftp manager here’s an article to help you.

Autoupdate

IMPORTANT:  Upgrade to Oxwall 1.2 before upgrading any plugins! Seriously, you don’t need to end up with a broken website. Upgrading is easy, just hit that button in the admin area. After that feel free to update and install all other plugins. Even if after platform update your site seems to be broken, keep updating plugins. You should be fine in the end.

Manual update

If you want  to update manually, grab the scripts in downloads sections as well.

 

Themes

Keep in mind, themes need to be updated too. ‘Graphite’ and ‘Club’ will be auto-updated since they are in the package but other themes require your attention. Download your updated theme from the Store. If you made any changes in files, you will have to merge them with the new ones since they contain important fixes and additions. If you didn’t change anything in files directly but in admin area only, feel free to overwrite the theme folder ow_themes/your-theme

 

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Oxwall Foundation is truly grateful to the entire community for its support and understanding during the prolonged waiting cycle, as well as assistance and feedback during the actual development. We are really proud of our work and hope that our efforts will improve your Oxwall experience even further.

 

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*UPDATE*: To kill some minor bugs that aren’t showstoppers (but are annoying to know about) we’ve just pushed 1.2.1 update. Apply it with all above instructions. If you already have 1.2 working just wait for autoupdate to popup and press it with no hesitation!