Where do I find help scoping out a plugin?

ry_st_

Our community, (www.story-games.com) is trying to figure out how to get a Vanilla plugin made. The concept is called Marginalia, which allows small side-comments next to posts, along with a thread forking tool.

I have several PNG mock-ups of how the plugin would look (from the user /administrator side).

What I need is to figure out how much work would be required (both database and interface). Once we know that we can do a serious search for help on the various work required.

We're willing to throw some small amount of money at the development (think a few hundred), probably through a Kickstarter fundraiser. But we hope we'll get some help since we think this plugin would be really useful for other Vanilla communities.

But first - am I in the right place?

ry_st_

Oh, we're a Vanilla 1 community, as you can see in the mockup of the general concept:

Mockup 1: Showing Marginalia

However, we'd be willing to move to Vanilla 2 if that's what it takes to get Marginalia working.

Linc

My employer does Vanilla 2 work. http://tmprod.com/web-development/vanilla.php

ry_st_

So we'd have to pay $ just to figure out how much $ we'd have to pay?

We definitely don't have that kind of dollar-sign.

garymardell

I don't know where you got that from, looks to me like you just contact them and explain what your looking for and they will give you a quote for the work.

ry_st_

My bad - I thought he was advertising his employer's services as an answer to my question. I misread it like "well, I COULD answer your question..."

ry_st_

Still, we don't necessarily want to go the get-a-quote-then-pay-for-everything route because
1) we're talking maybe a thousand bucks of resources
2) Andy, the admin, strongly asserted how active the vanilla development world was
and
3) we really, really, really think other Vanilla communities would benefit from this



Mockup 2: Click "Add Marginalia" in the top post



Mockup 3: What happens when you click "Let's talk about this post (new thread)"