dynambee

@yaniv14 said in The version 1.0.6 release has happened!: @MockoB 2 shops running with v1.0.2 with manual bug fixes fetched from github. 2 shops running with v1.0.4 with manual bug fixes fetched from github. 1 shop running with v1.0.5 with manual bug fixes fetched from github. A couple of followup questions, if it's okay: Do you plan to migrate all shops to 1.0.5/1.0.6? Which PS versions are you running? I assume there are some issues that stop you from migrating those shops to thirty bees?

@traumflug I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank you for the work you are doing on thirty bees. You're contributing tremendously to this project, something I can only wish to be able to do. Thank you.

@wakabayashi said in Critical advice for TB staff.: If we (including me) are all so clever, what has to be done, we surely are very successful with our own online stores. Then it shouldn't be hard, to find shops, which donate 100$ a month to develop this system seriously. I am not joking. I am ready to donate 100-200$ a month, if 20 others are too. Then we could really make progress with this system. I am finally back on working on the automation I need to launch stores. I seem to make some progress and then get sidetracked by other things that just can't be delayed. :( Bit by bit I am getting there. Currently I donate $20/month on Patreon but as soon as I have a store getting sales I intend to increase that to $100/month. As the number of stores and sales grows I will donate more.

I think you have some valid points but your message is worded a bit harshly. I'm surprised to see that the Elastic Search module isn't being marketed at all and isn't even available in the 30bz store. @lesley, any plans to rectify this? What needs to happen before the module can be in the module store and part of the 30bz marketing?

The only catch is you have to periodically check and update the number of supporters. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be going up much. :(

@dosbiner I don't mind, the more exposure for the project the better.

@dosbiner I like your sig. ;)

The two biggest things non-developers can do to help 30bz are to spread the word about the project and to donate a few dollars a month via Patreon. Enabling the Donation Miner module in your site's back office would be good too.

I vote to stay on 1.0.x and maintain PS 1.6 compatibility for another year or perhaps longer. Doing this makes it easier to attract new users and makes the platform attractive to developers who already have PS 1.6 themes or modules. Existing users also have investments in themes and modules that the move to 1.1.x will break. I would also suggest, as an aside, that the eventual move to break compatibility should be a bigger version number increment. Instead of 1.0.x to 1.1.x I believe it should go from 1.0.x to 2.0.x. The breaking of compatibility is a fundamental change in the way 30bz works and IMO should be reflected by a major version increment.

Thanks for the reply. That's....interesting. Might be a good idea to make it so that the existing updater displays a message about this, or at least doesn't offer to "update" 1.0.4 to 1.0.3.

The "update" has completed and indeed it is now 1.0.3. When I go into the Updater module it nows says, "Going to update to thirty bees version: Your thirty bees installation is up to date!" Did I do something wrong or is there a setting wrong somewhere?

I created a new installation of 30bz 1.0.4 on Cloudways. Fresh install, no changes made. Logged into the 30bz Admin panel. Updated the Updater Module to the latest version (1.3.3) and then tried to run the update to 1.0.5. However the updater says it will "update" my fresh 1.0.4 install to 1.0.3. I then tried updating all the modules to see if anything changed but the update version is the same. I ran the updater just to see what would happen and it says: "Archives will come from https://github.com/thirtybees/thirtybees/releases/download/1.0.3/thirtybees-v1.0.3.zip and https://api.thirtybees.com/updates/packs/extra.zip" So I guess it actually is going to "update" 1.0.4 to 1.0.3. I've attached an image showing the version numbers.

https://xkcd.com/1597/ https://xkcd.com/1296/ Don't forget to hover to get the alt text. ;)

I agree, it makes sense to have the bulk actions at both the top and the bottom of a list. Sometimes you need to look through the data before deciding what to do, other times you already know what you want to do and just need a way to do it quickly. Since the bulk actions are there to help people do things quickly it seems odd to make changes that result in quick actions taking longer. There have actually been examples where I thought bulk actions weren't supported on 30bz because there was no indication of the bulk actions at the top of the list. Only after scrolling down, clicking each item in the list, did I find the bulk actions at the bottom. That's bad UX. I think there are some other UX issues with 30bz as well. For example, during the checkout process all (almost all?) the buttons are "30bz yellow". With PS this wasn't the case, they colored the "proceed to next step" buttons green but the "update", "edit", "add", etc buttons were a different color. This makes it very easy for the user to see quickly which button to click to go to the next step. When all the buttons are the same color it defeats one of the great UX reasons for using color -- to help users tell one type of thing from another.

You seem to have badly misunderstood much of what I wrote in my previous reply, and you have quoted parts completely out of context in a way that makes little sense. Please go back and read my previous reply again, but more slowly and more carefully. I’ve certainly have read about it, but I can’t remember it. Here is my post from July 2 that talks about selling the crowdfunded modules. It also talks about various issues with licensing and trying to stop others (PS in particular...) from using the 30bz code in a commercially sold module, but those parts are not important our current topic. The ideas were somewhat more complicated that what is being discussed here but many of the same points were also covered. Covered points include selling the module to non-contributors, using the money to fund module fixes & updates, and the idea that selling the module would encourage more people to contribute to the crowdfunding projects. Following my post you can see further discussion between @lesley and myself. In particular @lesley said: @lesley: Selling it would be against what we have said we are going to do as a company, I don’t think that is something we are going to do. and @lesley: The whole point in the beginning was to make an open source module. Having paid or closed source modules is a conflict of interest with our companies principals. and @lesley: One thing that we are trying to guard against with not selling modules that we create is the idea that we leave features out, so we can charge for them. Basically like a freemium type software. That is something we are fighting against. I have seen other packages do that and it is not something I want us to get tangled in. If it means we make less money and grow slower, so be it. These are not my ideas, they are statements from one of the owners of 30bz, and as far as I am aware the stance of 30bz on the idea of selling modules has not changed. This is why I say that 30bz is unlikely to be willing to sell the modules. If we as a community want to sell crowdfunded modules then the crowdfunding and development would need to be managed outside of the 30bz project, as also mentioned by @lesley in the earlier discussion. So, unless something has changed within 30bz (and I would be happy to find that is has) then the modules will not be sold. In the end I think none of this actually matters. The 30bz community will grow, and as the community grows it will become easier to fund new module ideas because there will be more people to contribute to each project. If we find that I am wrong and that even with a 10x larger community it is difficult to fund module ideas then perhaps the topic can be discussed again.

My own actual personal opinion on this is that the crowdfunded modules should never be released for free to non-contributors. The modules should be sold for a reasonable amount, $20 or so perhaps. This money should be set aside to fund the upkeep of the modules as that is going to become an issue eventually, especially as more and more modules are released. Development is expensive, both for new projects and for maintenance & upgrades. If the amount of money coming from these module sales exceeds the cost of the upkeep then it can be used to fund new modules, or the price can be lowered. $5, $10, whatever it actually costs for upkeep. I wrote quite a long post about this at one point during the earlier ES discussions. However 30bz has made it clear that their core beliefs are that anything produced by 30bz itself will be open source and will not be sold. If 30bz can find a way to be flexible about this situation for the crowdfunded modules then charging a small amount for the modules for a period of time, or even charging a small amount in perpetuity, is something I would certainly support. However if there was no way for non-contributors (new users, etc) to obtain the crowdfunded modules for a period as long as a year I think that would be harmful to the overall project and fundamentally unfair to those who didn't have a chance to contribute during the funding stage. Not that my opinion matters, but I would be very strongly opposed to such a plan.

@30knees said in 19 Patron ?!: OK, but that's a problem for people who don't have a github repo/don't know how to use it. Github is freely available for open source projects so anyone can have a repo. Git itself is not the most friendly of systems but I think anyone who develops in PHP should be able to master the basics. If nothing else, learning how to use Git is very important for any developer in today's world.

The main thing about having modules for download in the forum is they get lost, not updated, and no one can contribute. SO TRUE! I can't count the number of times I've found something that looked potentially interesting on the PS forums only to find that it was posted years ago and the person has long since abandoned the idea.

@briljander said in 19 Patron ?!: But the main concern is what will happen in the future if I change platform. These days PS is on rather shaky ground on many different fronts. There is no guarantee that staying with PS will result in a stable future.

It's really not a matter of opinion as there are two key facts: 30bz has been very clear that they will not sell their own modules. Even the crowdfunding was a bit of a stretch for 30bz, though I'm very happy they decided to try it and I hope they allow it to continue. If a crowdfunded module is not available to the general public then the general public won't see that module as a reason to use 30bz. Only once the module is available will it help attract new users. The only matter of opinion here is if short term financial benefit is more important than modules being available to help grow the community. You believe that short term financial benefit is more important. I believe that attracting new users is more important.

@davidp Interesting with the BigCommerce sales tiers. I don't think they had those limits when I last looked at them. I'd need to use their "Enterprise" tier, lol. Not bloody likely! Volusion is another one I looked at long ago and they don't seem to have those limits. Still, at the $30/month level they'd have to compete with Shopify. As long as the store uses Shopify payments there are no transaction fees, and most small to medium sized stores would probably be fine with that or even prefer it. My point really is that if 30bz was to start charging a required monthly fee it puts them into an entirely different market. Not only would they still have to complete with all the free options out there but now they need to be able to compete with all the well funded options that are also charging ~$30/month. Regarding Magento cloud, I think a lot of the problems were because it was quite feature limited. There were good reasons for that (much easier to support) but it also limited their success due to the lack of many important features. Imagine though a 30bz cloud system with ES already running and all the key modules to be able to compete or beat Shopify, but at $50/month with no transaction fees. That would be an appealing option to a good number of people. It's a long way away still but it's certainly not impossible. In the meantime, the addon store will be a big help in earning the project money and as the community grows so will the number of people who contribute to Patreon. Right now most users don't even know the Patreon page exists. That will change after it's displayed during the install process and in the back office. It will still take time to grow but I'm sure that as the number of users grow so will the number of supporters.

@vincentdenkspel said in 3000% funded !!: Whatever the reason, the fact remains that the ES module takes much more time than anticipated. Also, @mdekker mentioned to me in a chat that is was clear upfront that the ES module would cost more than the current campaign price but that they thought if the price would be twice as much the campaign would not succeed. It's possible that if it was priced at $5000 that it would not have been fully funded with the very small community we had at that time (and have today.) It doesn't surprise me to find that @mdekker knew it would take longer to develop than the funded price would justify. Most experienced devs know to take their expected time estimate and double it, especially for a project involving technology they haven't worked with much in the past. So I don't understand how you can say it won't contribute to the overall growth of TB If the module is not available to people for one year after it becomes available to contributors then for that one year the module would not contribute to the growth of 30bz. I think my post was pretty clear about that. ("for a year after the module becomes available it contributes nothing to the growth...") Simple, they wait until it is released for free or they can buy it in the store for let's say $30 until it is released ( in case of ES module still much cheaper than the € 299,00) Waiting for it to be released to the general public leads us back to the module not contributing to the growth of the project for the time that it isn't generally available. As far as selling the module in the store is concerned, 30bz has been very clear that they will not sell the 30bz-developed modules. They do not want to head down the road of PS where it becomes tempting to withhold core features to make money from module sales. Maybe you can convince them to make an exception in the case of these crowdfunded modules but I suspect not. I think my suggestion will do exactly that. Based on what 30bz has said about not selling their own modules your suggestion would mean the free modules would not contribute to the growth of the project for one year after they become available. Crowdfunding is not a perfect solution but I think it's a good solution to fund key modules at this stage of the development process. I'm happy to contribute $ to these modules and will continue to do so. Every month $5000 is needed for fixed costs etc. In case of the ES module campaign, $2000 was raised, so $3000 to cover the cost for that month. The developer had to take on other jobs for that. If the campaign was funded by 150% the developer had to work less to cover the costs. That extra time he could have spend on TB. So I definitely think my suggestion can benefit the TB project as a whole. Yes, as I said before from a short term financial perspective your idea has merit. However from the longer term goal of the modules being helpful in attracting new users and growing the overall 30bz community it would be counterproductive.

@dynambee that’s why I stated $20-30 with no support and being able to buy support hours at $$ - there’s still the community to help you out with advice so you only pay for the hours if need be. In fact the jobs board could be used for people to offer their services on the support, like the people per hour platform. So you want people to pay $20 or $30 per month for something with no support and no hosting when they could pay $30 a month to BigCommerce that includes hosting and support? That doesn't seem like a great way to attract a large community. In fact it seems like a sure-fire way to drive away potential new users. There is no way for ThirtyBees to compete with Shopify or BigCommerce today. I think once 30bz gets to a big enough size they may wish to offer a "cloud version" where people can pay a monthly subscription if they wish, or they can download the free version and host it themselves if they wish. That would be following a very well understood path along the lines of what Magento has done. Speaking of Magento, the reason v2 has gone the way it has is that they were bought by eBay. eBay has always had code quality problems and been overly profit-driven so it doesn't surprise me at all to see the free parts of Magento going to shit.

It's very possible to have a Patreon account earning $10,000 a month or more. It's all a matter of having a large enough community willing to donate a few dollars per month each. The Patreon account isn't the only method for 30bz to earn money either. The main income earner will be the addon store which hopefully will be launching soon. 30bz will get 15 to 20% of the price of each module sold. This is less than PS or other similar stores charge but still enough that as the community grows so will the project's income. The affiliate channel you mention is related to sales from the addon store, I believe. I don't think there are any problems with the way 30bz plans to conduct business.

The problem with charging a subscription is that once you start doing that people understandably expect a certain level of customer support. In order to provide that level of support the subscription fee needs to be more than $20 or $30 per month. At that point 30bz would be competing with some major & very well funded players like Shopify. There are many websites and YouTube channels that survive mostly on Patreon contributions, even moderately sized channels. People who want to contribute do so, those who don't want to contribute (or can't afford to) do not. It's not a perfect system but it works well for many people. I think 30bz is on the right path. Next step is to get the store launched to provide more income and to attract more users.