So far, we’ve introduced the simple BioGPS plugin interface, and shown how this interface was used to construct an extensive plugin library.

Browsing the BioGPS plugin library, you’ll undoubtedly note that the vast majority of plugins we’ve hooked up go to established third-party standalone websites — sites like STRING, MGI, WikiPathways, and OMIM. Importantly, we didn’t need to ask any of those site administrators to implement any new protocol to be included as BioGPS plugins — the web interface they’ve already implemented is exactly the same interface that BioGPS uses.

The data content providers and website developers out there will quickly see the advantages of this simple setup. Do what you’d do anyway to display your data to the world, and hooking it up to BioGPS will likely take five minutes or less. Take advantage of the existing BioGPS user base to draw more eyeballs to your data and your site.

Technically speaking, BioGPS “plugins” are not plugins in the typical computer science sense. We don’t host any of your code, and we don’t interact directly with any of your content. BioGPS plugins are rendered in IFRAMEs, which are simply browsers within your browser.

To summarize, gene report layouts allow for customizability, and the simple HTML interface allows for easy extensibility.