doclucas

@rubben1985 said in Critical advice for TB staff.: Yes, I know, that is the reason why they should think about increasing the team with people as every startup does. It was not a demand at all but I see your point. It is true that seems that. Yeah, that's what I was trying to explain. They do think about enlarging the team, but - not enough money. Thankfully, there are still some great community members that help, as @wakabayashi mentioned, but that's hardly enough.

Don't worry about the language, I am not too emotionally involved with the project, unlike others, so I can respond to the essence rather than the tone, but you should watch out when you write such posts, because, as @lesley pointed out - they may have the opposite effect (negative effect). I am sure that your intentions are good and that you posted this because you really do care a lot. In fact, I think all of us active members here care about this project or else we wouldn't be here. So as you can see, you are also busy and can't help, so you should understand the situation and be more gentle with requests ("insist/demand"), as the team here is also very busy. Again, I do agree with some points you made nevertheless.

In addition, similar to magento that has one CE and one ENT.

Let me be the one to answer you here, as I guess @lesley might not be too motivated to answer each point you made for obvious reasons, and I think some points are good points indeed, despite the harsh language. I assume you wrote this post publicly and did not send it privately because you also wanted the community to read/support your opinion (or get community feedback), which is a valid reason, I guess, especially for a software that says that it's made for its community and emphasized they want to listen to what its users say. @rubben1985 said in Critical advice for TB staff.: Hi guys, Congrats because development rhythm has improved for some weeks. Said this, I will insist on something: you need URGENTLY marketing people on board. Really, this is not an opinion but a reality and I says this because this CMS is really great and could have an excellent feature but not like this, not only with technical development. You can be sure of this. Some advice (some of them I already told once) Put in the team someone of marketing and UX. Forget about doing it yourselves. The actual website is HORRIBLE. It is difficult to see useful info and difficult and not intuitive to look for. It is years behind actual tendencies... Don't you have money? well, give a piece of TB to a marketing and UX agency/freelance in exchange for taking care of this area. I agree that this forum software isn't the best for this kind of project. phpBB is a great bulletin board and it could be a good idea to consider it or a similar alternative, if it is not too hard for the team to set it up. TB really does not have enough money and manpower at the moment to do everything. They are currently mainly a 2-men show (not counting Michael, who is on a long leave right now). I am not really sure what you mean by "giving a piece of TB" exactly. If you know a good UX agency or freelancer, please let us know and let us know what piece of TB they want. :) Just an example that leads me to write about this again. I rode a post about elastic search. It has been a hell to find the module and the only way has been through Indiegogo that has 1 one link that takes you to a post blog that has a link that takes you to github. I did not find another way!!!! I am not really sure (and I guess most readers aren't) what this elastic search story is all about. Care to explain? Another example: when a merchant come to the page and want to explore the advantages, disadvantages...what they look for? A list of best features, some page comparing solutions (PS vs TB, Magento,....) to show them why they should choose you......and modules and themes!!!! Do you know that majority of the people is going to ignore what is a marketplace? Dont you believe me? ask for random merchants, not technical ones (the majority of the community). Instead of marketplace create 2 sections of "themes" and "modules". https://thirtybees.com/features/ Is this the best way to show features? A lot of text with some icons? This is boring. Where are the images? You are doing the opposite of all marketing tendencies. I think this is a good idea overall, but as you know, the current 2-men team can't do everything alone. Can you, or maybe someone else create some good professional mock ups for that? (if @lesley is ok with that?) This can be a good starting point. As for the comparison chart, this is not a very complex thing to do and I already did emphasize its importance just 1-2 days ago. I was going to write only a couple of things but I will continue. I said it one and I repeat it. Change the home page. It is not beautiful designed, use of colors and photos are not good. An please.....do not use Wordpress....that is totally out of place if you are selling your own platform. If you are in the forum you can not go to the marketplace to buy a module that pleased you. the marketplace is not good looking at all. Not user-friendly (it is like a repository) new versions realeses not visible in the home. New version should be one of the first things people see as it transmits the image of things improving and being a dynamic CMS. include more shops using TB (specially having a good design). You can include mine if you want. The design is not bad (neither perfect) and in about 2 weeks it will be much better when we launch the new version. Marketplace->themes is empty!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Really???? This is horrible. What about compatible themes like panda? Do not they have time to create the "product"? Create it for them! If not, just delete the section (not good but better than being empty) Why not include a video in the home explaining TB? An actracting video is very useful. I will insist: change the home page design. Do you want to join the team and work on all the above, or help finding people that do that on a volunteering basis? Here there is a wonderful community but I already notice some very important contributors/active members not writing anymore or writing much less.... Do not wait until others members will do too and do not wait too much time to react and implement some of the improvement I suggested. New members are needed to replace old members with no free time to be here and you will not attract them only with coding. Marketing is 60% of a business, even if you do not believe it. I am sure everybody here understands how important marketing is, especially for such a project, but marketing requires a) lots of money b) manpower, and since the project has not much of either at the moment, it's not so fair to expect (or even worse - demand) as much as you do. On the other hand, it's a chicken and egg dilemma. The project won't have funds and manpower to do all the above without a large community and it probably won't have a large enough community without doing all or at least some of the things you wrote. Prestashop was smart enough to limit its PS 1.6 support until the end of the year, which is parallel to the time php 5.6 & 7 reaches EOL. They know that once this happens, users servers will start to get upgraded to newer php versions, which will push a lot of users to upgrade to PS 1.7 Which is why (or at least one of the reasons) I emphasized how important it is for this project (30bees - a PS 1.6 advanced & more-stable fork/alternative) to iron out all the php 7.2 warnings/errors (not to optimize it for php 7.2, just to make it compatible), upgrade smarty, and keep or make it fully PS 1.6 compatible (even more compatible, which is doable) to attract all those PS 1.6 owners, as I am sure shifting to TB will be a preferred choice for those sellers than moving to PS 1.7, especially when they know that php 7.2 still has 2.5 more years till reaching EOL, a long time of peace of mind. So I do have a positive outlook for this project, but I agree that some urgent actions (including some things you wrote) are required as I have discussed with @lesley, mostly privately. Then, there is that "minor" issue of making a living and generating revenue. There are several ways and business models that can be implemented for this project to generate enough income for it to grow and succeed. One model I personally believe in the most is to keep maintaining TB as a fully PS 1.6 compatible CE (community edition with constant code updates for newer php versions that will be released), generating income from partnerships and marketplace and working on TB 1.1.x or v2 .x as an enterprise (paid) edition, which is not fully PS 1.6 compatible anymore. Just my 2c worth.

Thanks @lesley

I would love to know the answer too.

@datakick I just tested briefly, no more errors when FPC is enabled. Didn't test thoroughly tho, so not sure if the FPC fully works as intended. Thanks

@lesley please do share what happened there once you get this figured. :)

Full page caching still not fixed?!

That's true too. But, demand can come due to availability. Sometime you gotta take the chance and invest something to see the return. Just thinking out loud. :) I'll try to talk with Tomer, see what he says.

Strange, I'll check this out. This kind of modules are a very important thing for this project. I never tried cart2cart due to their pricing, but I did try some migration modules and never had issues, despite migrating some huge databases. I am sure that most customers would rather pay $120 for a re-usable module (even if they need to re-start the process to continue) than $900 for a limited service that does essentially the same job (and if you are a programmer, you can even improve the purchased module to do even more).

cart2cart are insanely expensive and their product offering is normally a one time deal, so if you want to go through the process while developing, and then re-do it while you deploy, it's gonna be crazy. True story - I contacted them to migrate osCommerce shop with 100,000 products to another platform. They quoted a 2-3 business days work with a $900 fee. I bought a module that did the same exact job for a fraction of that price and I re-used it several times while I did the migration. Now, I totally get you want and need that revenue but don't you think that by offering cheaper migration tools to the community - you are going to enlarge the user base, which is something this project needs the most at the moment?

why the cart-to-prestashop (or cart-to-thirtybees in our case) modules not neeeded?

Did presto-changeo explain why only 10 out of 69 PS 1.6 add-ons they have are available for TB? https://www.presto-changeo.com/28-thirty-bees-modules

You gotta improve your selling skills, bro. j/k :) Did they explain why they were reluctant? It's a complete win-win for them. What have they got to lose by mentioning one more cart name for modules they already created?

@dosbiner said in Update on thirty bees: @doclucas said in Update on thirty bees: I think it would be very wise to: 1) Add a full features comparison table for PS 1.6 vs TB 1.x to the "why us" page. 2) Partner with the major & good quality module developers (such as presto-changeo, Knowband etc.) to add a section for thirtybees on their websites and test their modules for TB compatibility (and adapt them if needed). It's win-win for both them (more revenue) and the platform's success. 3) Add a changelog of all the recent versions, since 1.0.3 till 1.0.6 and moving forward Great ideas, 4) future road map is a must I think A road map is already displayed, or at least a placeholder, but it's not set because it probably hasn't been planned yet. I forgot to add to point 2 - ask those PS 1.6 module developers to report any reproducible compatibility issue with TB so that your dev/s can resolve them. The wider compatibility TB has with PS 1.6 add-ons, the higher chance it has to gain a much wider user base.

I think it would be very wise to: 1) Add a full features comparison table for PS 1.6 vs TB 1.x to the "why us" page. 2) Partner with the major & good quality module developers (such as presto-changeo, Knowband etc.) to add a section for thirtybees on their websites and test their modules for TB compatibility (and adapt them if needed). It's win-win for both them (more revenue) and the platform's success. 3) Add a changelog of all the recent versions, since 1.0.3 till 1.0.6 and moving forward

Sounds like some AJAX call needs to get fixed/modified.

@violinparts IIRC, I think you must upgrade from 1.0.3 to 1.0.4 first

These errors do not seem to be the cause of your error 500. The issue could be http-server (usually Apache) or sql server (usually MySQL/MariaDB) related. If you can fetch their error logs, please post here, or I can have a look at your server for you. Curios.

Sounds good. This also emphasizes why keeping TB PS 1.6 backward compatible is so important. Good luck, @lesley :)

@lesley said in Call for votes for (or against) upgrading Smarty: As for the feature requests, we are not implementing any new features into the 1.0.x branch. If we do, we will never leave the branch and will be at 1.0.187 before we know it, with no real core progress. And what's wrong with that? If the 1.0.x is working very well and well accepted by the community, who said it must be so heavily modified? or even worse - must be upgraded to a core that is no longer backward compatible with PS? Modifying the core components (such as smarty) and refactoring the code for php 7.2+ is already a great move forward. Keeping up with those upgrades while adding more features, modules on the same 1.0.x branch can be very useful for this project and help increase the user base, trust and loyalty.

@DaoKakao well said :)

I know you already read my opinions, but anyway, I am voting for strategy 1: Upgrade Smarty to the latest version (3.1.32) on the 1.0.x development branch. keep compatibility with PrestaShop 1.6 modules and themes by adapting the "bridging" code (such as code in smarty.config.inc.php) to the new smarty version. If done right, no template and modules will have any issues. The issues reported by @lesley were most likely due to smarty being upgraded without adapting the core to it. As I suggested before, you can also look at PS 1.7 smarty bridges and backport some or all of their changes, as they use the latest smarty. Again, just doing the composer update will surely break things. You must modify the bridging code first. I am happy to beta test it for you when you are ready. You already have quite a beautiful core (especially compared with PS 1.6). It needs a few components upgrades (smarty etc.) and PHP 7.2 compatibility fixes, and it can become a great platform to continue building on. Also, as @datakick suggested, it may be good, if not too much of a headache, to keep both smarty versions and let users switch between them. If it's too much of a headache, then just do the excellent 3.1.32 Frankly, without being too dramatic, I think that moving to a core that will no longer be PS compatible may become a death sentence to this project at this stage. Watch out!

I assume you meant php 5.6.23 and not Apache. :) Thanks, please let us know.