Mark Fleming (@GoNorthwest) and I will have responsibility for the plugin market this year. We worked together on some thoughts to share with you about the market and our plans for it. You may contact either of us with ideas you have. In addition, we plan to develop additional opportunities for you to participate in decisions regarding the ongoing development of the Plugin Market. The buzztouch Plugin Market is an important tool for extending the functionality of apps created using buzztouch. The market was launched in September 2012 and has already provided exciting new functionality choices for buzztouch apps. With time, the market will play a key role in the ongoing success of the buzztouch platform. Creating an environment that is favorable to you as plugin developers is critical to the mission of buzztouch. In January, the process for accepting buzztouch Plugin Market submissions will enter a new phase. We want to maintain a high quality of plugins to complement the high quality of the buzztouch platform. It has been difficult for buzztouch to manage the submissions of plugins and respond to submissions within a reasonable timeframe. We understand that the process described below represents a change and we will make every effort to work through the backlog of submitted plugins as quickly as possible. First, new plugins must be submitted in a complete form. Before submission of the plugin, the plugin must correctly install, be connected to the control panel, and all features must work in a test app. In addition, the visual design of the plugin (graphics) must be complete as well. We are drafting a Plugin Checklist tool to help you to remember all of the required pieces of a plugin. In addition, we will support your ongoing work. Let us know what plugins you have in progress, and we will support your efforts. If we see that plugin developers need certain types of skills to progress on their plugins, we will arrange Webinars with David Book on those topics or try to identify other training resources. In addition, we may be able to match up developers with different skill sets to work as a team on a plugin. buzztouch will base plugin decisions on the following guidelines. Not every plugin is a good fit for the buzztouch Plugin Market. When reviewing plugins for placement on the market, we will consider the following: Does the plugin do everything that the developer describes in the documentation? Are there any potential problems that could arise with user’s overall app by installing this plugin? Is the documentation as clear as it can be for the user? Is this a valuable plugin to the buzztouch market?  There are a number of reasons for this new approach to the Plugin Market. The market is young, and we feel it is important to support the work of plugin developers who are committed to the mission of buzztouch.  In addition, the learning curve is steep because developers need to use Android and iOS for plugin development, and Web programming for tying the plugin to the control panel. At the same time, the plugins need to integrate well with the overall buzztouch system. We also need more plugins that work for Android as well as iOS. We are very excited about these changes to the market and would love to hear your feedback. Please contact us with any questions or concerns. If you are interested in participating in developer training or committees, let us know that as well. Thank you for your patience as we work through the backlog! 2013 will be a great year for the plugin market!

Thanks Susan! Thank you MARK!!!! Lot's of hard work will pay off! Excited to spend my credit!

Thanks Susan and Mark. Good stuff in this post! Good luck with reviewing all the plugin submissions! Best Regards, Danny

Thanks! LA

Thank you Susan and Mark!

I can merely echo the sentiments of my cohorts. Thank you both! This takes a bit of personal obligation and commitment that hasn't gone unnoticed by the rest of us! Cheers! -- Alex

Not much I can add to what Susan's already stated. Plugins are super important to the buzztouch community, and we all (developers and users) believe they should be of the highest quality. What will really help get plugins through the market much faster, and into the hands of actual users, is completeness of the package. Everything should just work before you consider submitting your plugin. If you meet that very basic requirement, we can much more quickly get to actually reviewing and possibly approving your plugin! Looking forward to seeing what people bring to the market! We've already seen some phenomenal entries! Mark

Super awesome! It took me a little while with the help of David & the team to understand fully how plugin submissions had to be submitted, what makes the approval process go smoother and faster, and such. These changes will definitely help me and others submitting plugins - thank you! In light of that, perhaps you guys could link up iOS plugin developers with Android plugin developers (a page listing developers based on OS, with contact details, or some form), one develops a plugin, the other ports it for the other side, and royalties get split. In that case, the plugin market will need to be updated to support "2" authors of a plugin, and payments would need to be split between two accounts. I don't ever see myself making android plugins, but I'm totally up for android plugin developers to port my plugins and share royalties. What do you think on that idea? Just a thought for the future, I think it could help more multi-platform plugins show up in the market. :-) Cheers! David https://buzztouchmods.com

Thanks Mark and Susan - and congrats on joining the Buzztouch team! Who should be the primary contact for questions about the plugin development process?

I echo David's thoughts - I've learned a good deal about iOS recently, and am close to finishing my first plugin, but have yet to touch Java.

Susan should be the primary contact, but feel free to PM or email either of us with questions. We'd love plugins that work for both iOS and Android, but we absolutely understand that not all developers are proficient on both platforms. That's not a problem at all. If you have a plugin for just one platform, that's still cool, and we encourage you to submit it! Mark

Excellent!

I'm trying my best for Android. LA

Congrats Susan and Mark

I would add that we want buzztouch to be cross-platform, but at this stage in the game we can't expect plugins to be available on both. I love the idea of forming partnerships. In some countries iOS really doesn't have a foothold. So to be a global company we need to do more with Android. But all in good time. Seeing the gap we have in Android developers, I transitioned to studying Android instead of iOS the last couple of months. From what I can tell, once you know one object-oriented language well, it isn't hard to learn the next one. The real challenge is in learning the first one.

Good Stuff!

Let the plugins commence. You guys are in for a treat

@Susan @Mark sounds good! David https://buzztouchmods.com

Awesome stuff Guys. One point with reference to "Is this a valuable plugin to the buzztouch market? " I would think if there is one person that could use the plugin then it would be valuable to the market. Would be great we could have a WIP ( Work in Progress ) list somewhere showing what plugins are in various stages maybe design, development and submitted for testing. I am also keen to see the revenue split option available for multiple developer revenue share. as per @MrDavid's suggestion. As you say I think the main idea is to get a load of good quality plugins available for the market. Exciting times, I believe we are in good hands !! LOVE YOUR WORK GUYS !!!!

Congratulations to you both on becoming members of the buzztouch team. This year looks like its going to be more awesome every hour that goes by!

The "Is this a valuable plugin to the buzztouch market?" is certainly something that will need to be nailed down a bit. I've seen other app building sites where people have crammed it full of "plugins" that really don't do anything, and don't contribute anything to the functionality of the app. I've seen them where they're just team logos or something like that...functionality that could be done with a current plugin. That's what I think we're talking about. If it provides a new or improved function, and it seems like something that somebody would find useful, it's likely to get approved. We're certainly not looking to exclude anybody, just want to keep the quality level as high as we can. I think everybody can appreciate that. Mark

Another wishlist idea: the ability to select which plugins to download with the app source code.

I will start up a wish list for plugins. Once we have a list, then we could vote on which ones we want the most, and maybe provide some feedback on how much we are willing to pay. I am also considering a list of plugins in progress, so we know what is in the pipeline.

Fantastic stuff. I agree that a work in progress list is essential so developers are aware of plugins being worked on and can make an informed decision on whether or not to spend time developing for the same function. I have to say I love the way in which BT evolving; great credit for all the hard work.

To be a Plugin Developer, one must learn about and comprehend: - BuzzTouch frameworks - iOS - Android - PHP - iOS coding - Android coding - PHP coding That is a LOT of things to learn! :-( Yet once you've learned either the iOS paths or the Android paths, one starts to feel the adrenaline. To help the new Plugin developers, lets find, create and organize these things: 1. Timestamp the Webinars into sub-topics 2. Screenshot, annotate and document the topics taught in the Webinars into PDF format 3. Create how-to guides by re-using and referencing the things from #1 and #2 For example, one of the Webinars already has #1 as a Comment to that Video. I am doing #2 (and should do #1 at same time) for the JSON webinar held in Nov-2012. The goal would be to reduce the duplicative research done by every developer by giving them the ultimate how-to guides in both Webinar and PDF formats. Each person comprehends and learns different things with both formats (video and PDF). Susan and Mark, thanks for spearheading the Plugin Developers! -- Niraj

Well put, MacBoy. I know exactly what you're talking about. We've acknowledged that additional and ongoing training will definitely help the whole process. Great ideas about organizing the training that David has already supplied.

Nice news Susan and Mark!! Looking forward to updating and uploading new plugins.. Thanks for all!

Congratulations Susan and Mark! Exciting time to come, I am sure! :) Farcat

A special email list or RSS feed (or both) for plugin developers would be welcome too.

@dusko whats a special email list.

Great stuff, very exciting to see how the market will develop. As a Developer, all I really want to do is spread my code to help/aid as many people as possible. And BT defiantly helps me do that through Plugins, so that in mind, I really cannot express my excitement for these developments. Personally, I don't like Web Programming, I prefer the meaty programming parts. So I love the idea of collaborating on plugins. Would love to see more development on that idea. Thanks guys! - tM

I like the idea of a special mailing list for plugin developers. The plugin developers are a key and distinct part of the community. I will put that together too, but I will check with each of you individually to make sure you want to be on it. Give me a few days...there are a lot of lists to make!

Thanks for taking on this task you guys, pretty heavy duty stuff. Having been thru the process hope I can add some decent input. Lots of stuff to consider and I hate to make TLDR posts. but kinda critical now with all the changes.... I would venture to guess there are less than a handful of people here than can build a working plugin. Only you guys know looking at the submission list. Is there another David or Kittsy out there in the BT 'slient' sector? I don't know but I do know that it took me a good 6 months to try to reverse engineer BT to build a 'my first plugin' screen that talked to the Control Panel. I then spent a couple of months determined to make XIB files work with my BT apps. This was necessary to be able to follow all the turtorials I kept reading. I was stoked when I figured it out and showed it to David. Now we can all use XIB's and are really still learning how. I love that David writes code using with XIB's now :) But all that work produced very limited actual plug-in functionality. The amount to resources and training from David has picked up major steam since the PIM opened in Sep with David essentially saying 'send me your code, in any shape and i'll fix it' I'm not suprised if he got slammed with stuff because that's an amazing, generous free resource he offered. He has really reveled some key information and secrets the last few months. My brain is just saturated with ideas I'm trying to sort out. I want more dynamic data in my apps, he has shown us ways to do it. Stobe discussed it in a buzzcast and has a great approach to it - he made screens for his app and if he realized a screen could be useful to others - he might advance it into a plug-in. and then you also have the approach by Kittsy who has developed a great knack for turning viewcontroller code he sees into BT screens. He's AMAZING at it, I would def reach out to him and take advantage of his skills if he's willing. The real reality I see is that when you build apps you probably look at plug-ins like this- a) I need this core functionality or b) How can I add this screen/functionality into my app? The majority of forum posts here are people using the standard BT screens and wanting to mod them. such as 'I want my menu buttons screen to do this' or 'how can I make my buttons do this instead....' and that is really plug-in "modification". That is my biggest hang-up with plug-in development. You build the plug n to do this - but inevitably someone will ask - can it also do this? I've seen posts where folks buy a plug-in and then sell an app to client and then discover the plug-in doesn't do exactly what they want or might have issues. So there is a area of plugin 'support' that I rarely see addressed and is something more often than not that requires some assistance from David to resolve. no one understand the BT core like him, no one can (maybe kittsy if he keeps at it). and plugins that require mods to your app delegate - that's another area to discuss.... I love the idea of an Applits type and crowd sourcing approach - people submit ideas and then developers can work on code. Since this doesn't seem like a 'competitve' market a list of plug-in that are in the hopper is also good idea. I would make sure each dev has the ability to opt out of having it listed. Collaboration is great - but that has its own set of issues as well.. Plug ins really do need to go thru a more serious system of checkpoints like you guys are discussing before it hits the market. Lots of little pieces to the package. Details are critical. We don't discuss things like threads and optimization of plug-in code either yet because the majority of us are still learning. I also think each plug-in should have a 'scope' of what it can do and what OS's it's supported/tested on when the developer releases it. state it's intended use and make it clear that use outside the scope is not part of 'standard' support. Some devs may be happy to mod it, other devs may not be capable of the mod. Sme mods are not possible. This is when we need David's help. The more I work with BT the more I appreciate the 20 or so original screens and code. Those are solid and work on the majority of devices and os's - but that's only because David spent years developing them and is still modding and supporting them today! I could go on, but there's some great posts in this thread that cover a lot of the other stuff. Teamwork, patience and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of testing are the key. LOTS of testing on different devices/OS's....

@ATRAIN Wow thank you for this high praise, especially being quoted in the same sentence as the Mighty David Book (bit of an idol / role model) I agree with all the points made by my pal ATRAIN. Plugins of any really worth duplicating other apps functions are an absolute nightmare to code for Buzztouch. I've said it before when David created this wonderful and amazing service, it was designed for people with NO Coding experience to build fully functional iOS and Android apps. It also stresses the value of plugins to make this work great and as easy as possible to non coders (which I was 10 months ago, not a line of code or language known). Due to a majority of the users of Buzztouch who come are of the noob status, code virgins, whatever it makes sense for this approach. The problem now is that we look at other people's apps (professionally produced) and think I want my app to look like that. The big difference is other developers use a different view controllers, they also mainly hard code mainy of their features. We are truely lucky that if we want to change our background colors or views on the fly, not many developers have the ability to do this. (This is why I get constant IPhone app updates so the developer can change his background image to a more festive theme) I have posted various tutorials, swipe gesturing, customURL schemes, simple revmob integration and still have people complaining that, that feature isn't working, the problem mainly being they are targeting iOS 3. Now I think this is our biggest problem as a community with designing. We think targeting the earliest iOS will give us a better market. This messes up plugins developed by myself, if you want nice 3d effects, if you want truely dynamic views it need to be a recent frame work. I've checked out various stats it says that the percentage of ios 6+ is between 71% and 75% very high. iOS 5 and iOs 5.1 is 23% and I bet a majority of them are jailbreakers. the remaining few percent are iOS 4.2 to 4.3. There is no or at least neglible use of iOS 3. I might have waffled a bit there. If you have an idea for a plug in, drop people who make them a line, not the Buzztouch crew they are busy enough. I believe a big problem was you have an idea that'll make a good plugin, download the blank plugin give it your name and then say hey David I want it to do this and that, you make it but I'll reap the rewards. I've asked david and the forums for a few pointers, but if you want to start coding, get asking/reading questions on stack overflow. (Asking questions about complex coding for plugin development on the buzztouch forums isn't going to be very prosperous, as I said before 90%+ are noobs and have no real coding knowledge.) Somebody posted saying swiping would be cool, I though yes it would, researched it came back (20 similar questions on Stack overflow) found the easiest to understand, tweaked it Buzztouch style, and posted a quick a tutorial. Checkout Github download example code see how it works. Google how do I do this because I bet you you are not the first person to think of it, and if you are your onto a winner. If this seems like too much hard work then plugin development isn't for you. Sorry for the long post blame ATRAIN his positive post put some fire/passion in my belly.

Totally agree with what you said. And your right. Google is your best friend when it comes to errors and coding. most if not all of my errors have been solved with using google to state my issue and hundreds of stack overflow results with the answer to my problem

I try and help as much as I can (as it will probably help me in the future or inspire me) but DIY is the future.

Since I'm finishing up my first plugin, I thought I'd weigh in too. I started with BT at the end of last Summer (mid-August if I remember correctly). At that time, I had basic knowledge of HTML and JavaScript and nothing else but an idea. I found Buzztouch and realized with a bit of learning I could do something great and make some money too. For me, that's what Buzztouch is really for:not the lazy developer who wants an easy wysiwyg solution, but to help noobs like me learn to develop apps. I started by learning php. I Googled a lot, read a lot online (w3 docs were a lifesaver!), and downloaded an ebook on php. That ebook introduced me to the concept of classes, which eventually led me to take a stab at iOS coding. Last month, I got to the point of wanting/needing to create my own plugin. About the time the plugin market shut down, I upgraded my account to be able to create plugins. Then I saw how lost I was. I started with a book suggested by Susan (Beginming iOS development), but quickly realized it was the wrong approach. It started by teaching how to create xib/nib files, which don't translate to BT very well. (they work, but it doesn't tell you anything about integrating into the code). So, I switched approaches and picked up a book on learning Objective-C. I plowed through the book over the holiday break, and gained a decent knowledge of how the language works. From there, analyzing an existing plugin was a piece of cake. I started by adapting and and Googling along the way. But now I have a plugin with several class files that relies on JSON to do some really cool things. My point is that Buzztouch can be great for someone wanting to learn how to code, and for someone with some time, passion, and commitment, plugin development is not out of the question. I still have a lot to learn, and we'll see what the response is when my plugin goes live, but to accomplish what I did in about a month should give hope to others.

@chris1 exactly what I meant mate. You need to have time, passion and commitment to make it work. Buzztouch ain't a soft touch if you want to make something truely different. Without Buzztouch I would never have started to learn code, if I was to use appMaker or whatever it's called I still woiuldn't have learned anything as you would never see the source code. I'm a firm believer and have been since I was a kid. To find out how something works break it and fix it.

@Kittsy -- ditto on this >> "I'm a firm believer and have been since I was a kid. To find out how something works break it and fix it." anything you can break apart, you can put back together (and most times better) :)

Not my thumbs though (football/soccer injury) they always be goofy. lol

@Susan- I agree that a plugins wish list would be great. David

I used to attend a WordPress MeetUp group session every month. Fairly soon, the WordPress Dev people and WordPress User people realized that they needed to split up. Now the WP Devs meet a week before on their own. Then they join the WP Users meeting to have the all-together MeetUp. Things work better when Dev conversations are separate from the User conversations. Having a sub-forum is not sufficient for such separation. Why? Because the Dev talks are mixed in with all the other talks on the Forum's home page in the Newest Topics section. Perhaps think about creating a Developer.BuzzTouch.com sub-domain? Don't lump in everyone together into the same "space". Or a BuzzTouch.com/extend/plugins -- for new functionality And a BuzzTouch.com/extend/ themes -- for new presentation styles such as BlackWhite's recent apps Yes, it's modeled after WordPress because that is what people respond back to me when I describe BuzzTouch to them, "Oh, it's the WordPress for mobile!" Anyhow, munch on that popcorn for a bit ... -- Niraj

I like that idea Niraj. It's intuitive and clean. Also would be nice if the forum was updated a bit. (i.e., better searching/sorting; thread pagination for long ones like this; etc) We have to remember - Buzztouch is still in its infancy - so much to work on. Glad to see they hired on several more people to help with it all!

Great ideas, everyone! We can do a lot with the plugin market. I think it is key that David also assigned me to work on Developer Relations as well as the Plugin Market. I see us building a strong set of relationships among the plugin developers. I'm not sure what that looks like yet...it could be email lists or GoToMeetings targeted to plugin developers or partnerships to work on project together. We already have our own section on the Forum: "Plugins, Customizations, and Source Code" We need to train the developers we already have and give them the tools to make awesome plugins. We also need to create an environment that is positive for the developers--good support, good turnaround time, clarity of instructions, and fair rules. The overall goal is for the plugin market to support the overall mission of buzztouch by allowing users to make the best apps they can. There is a lot to do!

Not sure if this would be in Buzztouch U or somewhere else, but at some point I think Buzztouch users who aren't developers would want a way to learn how to make a plugin.