This idea was born out of one of my hobbies, which is of course, video games. When I decided to run a video game site, I thought it would be nice to provide a reference section for all the games that I would cover. I soon realized that managing a video game site wasn’t for me since it would be too much work just to keep up with entering new information all by myself. The plugin was intended to be used with that site, but since that will no longer be the case, it’s not really doing much right now. And it’s not even completed at this moment. So I thought, why not announce it for everyone to know?

GameLib creates a list of entries that is separate from the post structure, and stores information its own database tables. This makes it easier to install, update, and uninstall the plugin whenever you want. Like most Wordpress plugins, GameLib’s functionality resides in the Admin area, so that administrators and writers can manage entries and options.

With this plugin, you can add entries for video games and include information such as its platform, developer, and publisher. All this information is cross-referenced so that it’s easy to view and filter entries with this criteria. Eventually, this data needs to be viewed somewhere. The data will be displayed through a page you create normally with Wordpress, and you will be able to set GameLib to point to one of these pages to be used as a “template” for displaying the information in a uniform manner. Viewers of your site will be able to browse through the entries, provided that you point them to the page. So if you use a page called “Games”, each entry can be accessed by a URL in this manner: yoursite.com/games/name-of-the-game.

As I mentioned previously, GameLib is still incomplete. I’d say it is only around 60% completed before I would want to release it to the public. I’ve already finished with most of the admin area, so I can already create, update, and delete entries. For the next step, I have to work on displaying the entries with friendly URLs, and be able to use some of that content as a widget.

Once GameLib is released, it will not just end with periodic updates. GameLib will be a stepping stone for a future project, expanding the plugin to be more versatile. A plugin that would deal with cataloging anything you want, not just video games. So if you have a movie site or a book site, it would be possible add your own reference section for movies or books. This should be simpler, once GameLib is completed. So if you have any suggestions on what you want GameLib (and its offshoots) to have, leave behind your thoughts here!