plugCubed

Represented by TheDark1337

How did you discover plug.dj?

Discovered it via a Facebook post from Muzzy in November 2012 advertising his room to party.

What is plugCubed and what are some of the main functions of it?

plugCubed adds a whole new dimension to plug.dj with the ability to customize a room, autowoot, autojoin, inline images, AFK response, a ton of moderation tools such as ability to see deleted chat, online user IDs, chat logging, afk timers, song unavailable notifications, song in history, and song limit plus a ton more.

What inspired you to develop an extension for plug.dj?

I was not the original author of this script. Technically, it was Colgate & TAT also known as Chikachi, that created it way back in 2012.

What do you enjoy about developing an extension?

Honestly, learning all the fun new features of javaScript and learning better ways to program is what keeps me going. Plus the knowledge that my code is being used by a ton of people to better their experience on plug is a huge motivation boost.

What more can plug.dj do to support third party developers in the future?

I wouldn’t know how to answer how plug can support it better to be honest, maybe more transparency with what is updated and API docs.

What new features can we expect to see in the future for plugCubed?

Currently I am working on a brand new control panel (the original menu will stay of course) . New features will include: autocomplete for emoji. Tooltips for all emoji custom or not. Adding in all the other emojis (Tasty, FrankerFFZ, BetterTTV, Twitch Subscriber)

RCS

Represented by xBytez

How did you discover plug.dj?

I got introduced to plug.dj by a friend who I’ve known for a long time. He came across it via Monstercat. We joined Tastycat together and we stayed there for a bit. I joined plug.dj on the 29th of July 2013. Been hooked since day one.

What is RCS and what are some of the main functions of it?

RCS? A must-have extension for plug.dj. I cannot use plug.dj without it anymore. Our slogan/tagline says exactly what RCS is. The fastest, most sophisticated extension for plug.dj.

It’s hard to talk about main functions, we have so many features around, which is why some call us the powerhouse of plug.dj. One of the RCS-specific features that I personally love a lot is SmartVote and the many moderation features we provide.

What inspired you to develop an extension for plug.dj?

We used to be very plugCubed based but it was slacking. After the update (note how I started to work on RCS not long after the 2014 update?) plugCubed just didn’t function as I liked anymore.

The idea came up and we wanted to change the game, we wanted to work on our own thing but still available for everyone to use. We tried our best and we tried to listen to our users and get their feedback and rely on their support.

What do you enjoy about developing an extension?

Making something useful. We have quite the userbase for RCS right now and I love it. I love working on something that ends up being used, something that gets people excited and something that’ll truly enhance people’s experience on the website.

To make things easier, more fun, prettier, what not.

What more can plug.dj do to support third party developers in the future?

Since I am working for plug.dj as a full stack developer, I kind of already support myself where needed. I don’t think this is a question I can answer. If I need something, I’ll add it in.

RCS has become one of the most popular extensions used on plug.dj, what can we expect from RCS in the near future?

Good question! We do have some things on our roadmap but that’s not quite done/planned. We honestly just throwing ideas around as of now and working on small things here and there as we fit. There’s not really something huge that we have planned/not announced. We just keep doing what we do, and that is hoping to truly enhance your plug.dj experience.

MikuPlugin

Represented by RubyChan

How did you discover plug.dj?

I don’t know exactly anymore how I discovered Plug.dj but I can remember that it was a long time ago and that I joined in to see what it was like but never really got into it, that was the old version with a tiny chat on the top right.

But since I didn’t really get into it, I stopped using it, but then later on when I was talking a lot with friends and tried to watch some videos together I looked up on Google for websites to watch videos together and found Plug.dj again, and figured out that I used this site some time ago and my account details still worked. I was happy that I could use it again, and since I was slowly getting into Nightcore, I thought “maybe there is a nightcore room in here” so I looked it up and found Nightcore-331 in which I stood in and enjoyed my time in.

What is MikuPlugin and what are some of the main functions of it?

MikuPlugin is a plugin like all the others, it has the main features it should have like seeing who grabbed, wooted or mehed a song, custom afk messages, custom mentions, history check, max. mehs for pinging the user, etc.

What inspired you to develop an extension for plug.dj?

I got inspired to develop an extension for Plug.dj because I like being able to create certain things that I can use myself as well as share it with others, I just felt like I wanted to have my own plugin that could do the same kind of things like the others and maybe even more.

What do you enjoy about developing an extension?

Well, I enjoy developing an extension because I like to be able to create my own things, and learning new things that I could use later.

What more can plug.dj do to support third party developers in the future?

I have no clue what Plug.DJ can do more to support extension creators, maybe adding a custom role for “verified” third party developers (“verified” meaning that they had filled in a certain form with their plugin etc, and being checked by the PlugDJ staff and giving them also access to better and faster support with BA’s/Admins.

Whilst on plug.dj what has been the most effective way to showcase your extension?

The most effective way to showcase MikuPlugin for me was just trying to make things, and showing my friends what I made and how it worked, allowing them to use it as well, and use it in the main room I was in and giving it more features in there its features based on what the room needed. That’s why MikuPlugin has a Max Mehs (1/10th of room features which is a feature that lets the user know when 1/10th of the users in the room have downvoted the current playing video.

ExtPlug

Represented by ReAnna

How did you discover plug.dj?

I first heard of plug.dj in 2013 from a friend, but only occasionally used it at that point. I really got into it in early 2014 when I found a k-pop community, then called “Girl Generation Fanclub” which later became WE ♥ KPOP.

The WE ♥ KPOP community has since moved on from plug.dj, but I still do some plug.dj-related things 🙂

What is ExtPlug and what are some of the main functions of it?

ExtPlug is an “extension framework”. It provides developers with tools to more easily create customizations called “Plugins” for plug.dj. Users can install and remove plugins using the ExtPlug control panel.

One of the tools provided by ExtPlug is “plug-modules” (https://github.com/extplug/plug-modules), which gives plugins access to almost all of plug.dj’s client-side internals. This means that plugins can integrate extremely well with plug.dj. One example that I’m really happy with is the user-profiles plugin (https://github.com/extplug/user-profiles#readme), which allows you to view profile pages of other users inside plug.dj, without opening a separate tab. These profile pages use plug.dj’s own UI elements, so they look and feel as if they are really a part of plug.dj.

In hindsight I should perhaps have picked a different name because “ExtPlug” is really hard to pronounce.

What inspired you to develop an extension for plug.dj?

I used to have all kinds of small custom scripts on plug.dj—one for full-size video (which is now a default plug.dj feature), one for autowoot, etc. At some point I decided I wanted to be able to control all these scripts through the plug.dj user interface directly, and started writing what would become ExtPlug.

What do you enjoy about developing an extension?

It’s really neat to make a thing that works. I also really enjoy figuring out how the internals of the plug.dj website work, which can be a bit tricky sometimes because the code is very obfuscated.

The coolest thing is when people other than myself actually use it. Weirdly, I really like getting bug reports because it means people are actually running a thing I worked on.

What more can plug.dj do to support third party developers in the future?

The #coding channel on the Discord is already a really good place for developers to connect and learn. It’s easily accessible and reasonably friendly. Outside of opening up the front-end source code, which probably isn’t going to happen, that’s the most important thing to have.

How do you plan on improving ExtPlug in the near future?

So far it’s been quite tricky to search for and use plugins–you’d have to know to find them on Github and copy URLs from there into plug.dj. ExtPlug as a whole has been mostly geared towards developers so far. There will be a new version out in the next couple of weeks, that adds a plugin search engine right inside the plug.dj UI. That’ll make ExtPlug a lot easier to use for everyone.

After finishing the new version I’ll focus on making a simple website to showcase some of ExtPlug’s features, and writing more documentation that’ll hopefully help other developers get started with ExtPlug too.

Interviews conducted by Brand Ambassador, Clannad