If I was to create a jQuery plugin site, I would make it a "shopping cart" system where you can pick and choose all the (curated) plugins you want and the site will package it all in a nice zip, provide you with a snippet of code to run it properly, and optionally give you a (paid) hosting of the customized code on a CDN. It could eventually have paid plugins available for further monetization.
I agree. When I wanted to make a new jQuery plugin site (until this post!), I planned on being able to view the plugin source online, like on GitHub. Aside from viewing the code and its quality immediately, it would also let us copy-paste plugins that are just one .js file. It's a bit bothersome to have a .zip in that case.
Actually, that is a great idea... why not just make a site that links everything to github? The plugin pages could just be github pages and downloads. Issue tracking? github. Pull requests. github. Makes perfect sense to me.
I've been toying with the idea of doing something like that as an optional way to download packages from the site I've been building. I like the way you put it, as a "shopping cart" type system, that's a good way of thinking about it.
