[Plugin Pete]

Hi Everyone,

Alfa PMed me about this project, so I would like to offer some information about my background and what I'm working on. It might be a fit for some of you.

For nearly 10 years I ran a successful automotive forum called autopia.org. The new owner has taken it in a different direction, but the original community had a large product review database, product catalogs and how-to articles. I used a combination of GARS, Censura, Price Tapestry and phpMyDirectory to construct my monetized content. I created mashups on the vBAdvanced home page and forum pages to promote reviews, products and vendors. I learned a lot and had excellent income from both sponsors and affiliate sales. The issue was 1.) software support and 2.) maintenance.

Based on my experience, I'm building a CMS called Plugin Pages that works on the idea of catalogs. I'm not using vbCMS to build it because I want portability. My CMS is currently working on vBulletin 3.8 (beta), WordPress 3.x (beta) and vBulletin 4.1.x (alpha).



The primary goals for Plugin Pages are:

1. Generate Revenue for Website Owner
2. Rapid Catalog Development
3. Create Content with Microdata Markup for Google Rich Snippets
4. Import Data from Content Providers
5. Automatic Update of Data Where Possible
6. Smart Cross Promotion Between Catalogs

The base catalog type is a product catalog. I started there because that's where the money is (e.g., promoting products). I have plans to add screens and templates for:

1. Coupon Catalogs
2. Review Catalogs
3. How-to Article Catalogs
4. Video Catalogs
5. Recipe Catalogs
6. Business Listing Catalogs

The Review Catalog will be a special type in that it attaches to other catalog types to create its own catalog. That way any other catalog type you build will instantly have reviews built-in. This has the effect of doubling your catalog pages.

Once I get the core system out of beta I will release an API to allow other developers to build new catalog types, widgets, etc.

I will take the Review CMS features list Alfa created and use it for guidance. If you have any other input, I'm all ears.

Thank you!

Pete