Introducing the Yaga application

hgtonight

Yet Another Gamification Application has its first public release available in the addons repository. Yaga aims to be an easy to use, extendable, localized gamification addon for Vanilla 2.1+. Yaga provides reactions, achievements, and level progression.

I have been using it for the past 2 months on my community site with few issues. I would like to get some broader feedback on the design and implementation. I have a bunch of planned features, but I really need to get this out in the open.

I tried my hardest to re-use existing code, classes and functions where possible. Pull requests and bug reports are welcome at: https://github.com/hgtonight/Application-Yaga

I hope you will try it and let me know what you think.

hgtonight

The following is the short FAQ I wrote to my community

The application is called Yaga (Yet Another Gamification Application) and aims to offer more ways to interact with user generated content while rewarding positive participation.

What are these little icons below some posts?

These little guys are called reactions. Clicking on them records how you feel about a specific post. We keep track of all these reactions and award points to content with positive reactions. If you want to remove your reaction for whatever reason, just click it to remove it.

What is this promote reaction, and why don't I see it?

Yaga fully supports permission based reactions. This means that mods and admins have a different set of reactions available to them. Don't fret, these extra reactions will be earned by leveling up your rank.

I just got a reaction, what does this mean?

Receiving a reaction awards the associated points to your account. Your total points show up on your profile. There is also a total count for each reaction on your profile. Clicking on them will show the latest content that garnered the associated reaction.

I got a notification that I earned a badge, wtf?

Badges are achievements in the context of our forum and give you a boost of points when earned. They are awarded for various things: length of service, social connections, receiving reactions, etc. You will receive them as you go about your normal forum participation when you reach certain milestones. If you want to see exactly what badges exist, check out the full list over on the badges page at: /badges.

What do you mean by version 0.1?

This application is currently under active development. You guys are my guinea pigs. I believe the codebase is to the point of maturity that no data will be lost with updates as I push toward release. I also need your help. If you find a bug, let me know so I can take stock of it and react properly.

R_J

Just out of curiosity: could you explain why you have made it an application and not a plugin? What were the benefits/necessities?

businessdad

Great job! I was just about to make a Christmas surprise gift myself, but you got there first

phreak

@hgtonight: Cool, can't wait to see. It sounds great but i have troubles activating it under 2.1b2. Once activated i get a white screen in front and backend. I checked for the source code. It's empty. Made a ticket on Github. Better to try it with a 2.2 version?

hgtonight

@phreak I responded to you on GitHub. Thanks for the report, hopefully we can work through your issues.

@R_J I had never created an application before. The backend on this really requires multiple controllers. AFAIK, you can really only create one 'fake' controller per plugin. The rule system couldn't really be done cleanly via a plugin. I actually created a non-customizable version of this as three separate unreleased plugins.

I actually noticed a bunch of polishing issues that I overlooked last night, so I am pushing into 0.2 right now.

peregrine

could this be the one

now, we all we need is the casual users who haven't voted to vote

http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/25578/nominations-for-best-plugin-created-this-year

hgtonight

0.2 is now released, you can get it in the addons repo.

Adrian

@hgtonight I wish I would have seen this sooner, but the call to vote was added to the newsletter like I promised @peregrine

hgtonight

0.4 is now released, you can download it here: http://vanillaforums.org/addon/yaga-application-0.4

There have been 42 commits since the last release. I want to thank @businessdad for his PR as well as the discussions we had pertaining to implementation.

You can find a full commit list here.

I summarized the changes on the addon page as well.

Pumpkinberry

This looks amazing!

Right now I'm running the latest stable release of Vanilla- but this has made me consider running Alpha! (I shouldn't, because I barely know what I'm doing) but I can't wait until this is available. My tiny little community would benefit greatly from the potentials of this application! Thank you for making it.

peregrine

@Pumpkinberry said:
This looks amazing!

Right now I'm running the latest stable release of Vanilla- but this has made me consider running Alpha! (I shouldn't, because I barely know what I'm doing) but I can't wait until this is available. My tiny little community would benefit greatly from the potentials of this application! Thank you for making it.

Contrary to your belief most plugins that require 2.1 will run in beta version (i.e. 2.1b2) . there are a few plugins and themes that require alpha, but very few.
why run alpha, when you can run beta? 2.1b2 is pretty stable. you can always install a test version of 2.1b2 as soon as you go a bit beyond "barely know".