Security fixes

• Exclude disabled users from Top Users
• Fixed the “Edit user data” admin feature
• New weight parameter for modules, allowing modules to control what order they are called in.
• Search groups by group name
• The Tag Cloud page is now disabled when you have tags turned off site-wide
• Human check (anti-spam) module fixes
• Localized a few new phrases
• Add feature to subtract a value of user score for removing a story vote
• You can now use PHP in page content.
• Left open HTML tags in the story content area will now be automatically closed.
• Users can now select a site language file from their edit profile page. This will only change the Pligg language file, not the content being submitted to the site.

Read more: Pligg CMS 1.2.0 Release

We have also added a new anti-spam module titled “Human Check”. Its job is to make life harder on spambots by using an array of honeypot fields and randomized field names. The module will operate on both comment and story submissions.Another new feature added to Pligg CMS is live story previews. You can now simplify the submission process to a single page and users can see an ajax preview of their story displayed as they fill in the submission fields. Check it out at http://pligg.com/demo/

How to Enter:

Submit your widget to the Free Widgets forum. All new submissions are moderated, so your post will not appear immediately after being submitted. Your widget should appear within a few hours of submission, once a forum moderator has approved it. We reserve the right to deny widgets that do not offer any features that we consider to be useful. If your widget offers some type of meaningful functionality it will be approved, we just don’t want to see some mindless “Hello World” type widgets.

* Adult female human hand not included.

At the time of this contest announcement, there is no set deadline for submitting your widget. We will alert everyone when we are nearing the end of the contest deadline and give developers a week long grace period to submit their work before starting the poll that determines the winners.

How Winners are Chosen:

Once the competition period ends, we will host a poll where users can vote on their favorite widget. The widget that receives the most votes by the time the poll closes will be announced as the winner.

Prizes:

The following prizes will be given out to the top 5 widget authors:

• First Place – An Amazon Kindle reader device.
• Second Place – A Seagate FreeAgent Go USB hard drive (or similar).
• Third Place – A SanDisk Cruzer 16 GB USB flash drive (or similar).
• Fourth and Fifth Place – A $25 Pligg Pro gift certificate.

* Black electronics are wicked awesome

The Fine Print:

1. The developer must be the original author of the code. When using third party open source code as the basis of your work, you must properly credit that code and consider it for your own widget license.
2. The widget must use un-compiled, open source code.
3. Widget authors may choose from a number of open source licenses when submitting their widget to the forums, including:
   • Apache License, 2.0
   • Simplified BSD license
   • GNU General Public License (GPL)
   • GNU Library or “Lesser” General Public License (LGPL)
   • MIT license
   • Creative Commons License
4. Contest winners located outside of the continental United States must provide shipping costs, unless a local supplier is able to provide the same prize at equal or lesser value.
5. Authors are limited to only receiving 1 prize, given for the highest rated widget based on poll results. If you develop the #1 and #3 widgets, you will only be given the #1 prize. The #4 widget author would then receive the 3rd place prize.

From the announcement:

We are pleased to announce that ImpressCMS has won the Most Promising Open Source CMS Category in the 2009 Open Source CMS Award.

While ImpressCMS took first place in this category, Pixie and Pligg weren’t far behind and settled for a tie in the first runner up spot.

ImpressCMS has featured in the top three in this category for the second time in a row, and has lived up to its reputation this year by winning the top spot.

Pixie and Pligg, on the other hand, featured in this category for the first time and managed to impress a lot of judges with their quality and support.

ImpressCMS has been awarded a prize of $2000 with runners up Pixie and Pligg getting $1000 each. Congratulations to all of the winners!

Pligg

The purpose of the competition is to foster new Pligg templates and to give Pligg designers an opportunity to earn both prominence and money for their efforts.

Pligg’s recent Design Gallery addition to Pligg.com has been a great resource for Pligg designers. It showcases the best Pligg templates and lets users comment and vote on Pligg sites.

This contest will bring some fresh styles to Pligg CMS for others to work from and hopefully make it easier for designers to find a template closer to their specifications without having to alter much.

All templates entered into the contest must select an open source license so that others will be able to re-use the template on their own projects.

Every qualified entrant will receive a $20 Pligg Pro gift certificate to spend on Pligg modules or templates.

Winners will be announced shortly after the October 11 deadline. See the contest announcement page for more details and official contest rules. http://www.pligg.com/blog/610/design-a-template-win-cash-prizes/

This new release offers the following new features:

New Features.

• New Template
• New Admin Panel
• More Spam Prevention Tools
• Advanced Search
• Category Authors
• Admin Help Documents
• Story Comment RSS Feeds
• Fully Anonymous Mode Module
• Votes by IP

One of the major issues that was plaguing Pligg based sites was the amount of spam they had to deal with. This new version claims to have address these issues somewhat:

“The first feature is a simple user email activation system. When users sign up to your site you can now require that they verify their email address. This is a rather basic form of spam control, but it does work to stop some spam. Most forum CMS software use this method in combination of CAPTCHA as their primary spam defense. Now Pligg does too.  If a user has an issue activating his account it’s a simple one-click activation from the admin panel to validate their account for them.

The second spam-stopping feature is the Submit Antispam Addon (http://forums.pligg.com/pligg-modules/13972-submit-antispam-addon-v-0-1-a.html) by AnAlienHolakres3. Alien has designed what is probably the most advanced Pligg module ever to be made, and it is a very interesting method for dealing with spam and users who don’t publish quality stories. The module works by limiting the number of submissions an author can add to a site within a given time frame. The more votes the story author receives in a time frame, the more stories he will be allowed to submit. This is probably one of the harsher methods for dealing with spam, but it doubles as a method for promoting only quality stories to your website.”

You can download or read more at Pligg’s website.