Acer

Thanks. I believe he should also be added to the private Forum thread that Lesley created. So he can get a background of some of the ideas that was discussed. @lesley

Hi @musicmaster your comments are interesting and right on the mark, especially in terms of leadership and headless ecommerce. There is currently a thread and Discord chat server going between Lesley and the community regarding a way forward for TB. @lesley @AnnaLisik please add @musicmaster to the thread and invite to the Discord discussion. Also please add @Occam as well as he may be interested also

Cool & Smart answer honestly 😎

Hi there I added a special price to a product (worked before) and suddenly I'm getting the error below: In classes/Link.php 155: if (!is_object($product)) { 156: if (is_array($product) && isset($product['id_product'])) { 157: $product = new Product($product['id_product'], false, $idLang, $idShop); 158: } elseif ((int) $product) { 159: $product = new Product((int) $product, false, $idLang, $idShop); 160: } else { 161: throw new PrestaShopException('Invalid product vars'); 162: } 163: } What I don't get is that it worked before, and removing the special price did not resolve the error. Please help. Your help is appreciated

So why don't all of us that are interested have a meeting with @lesley to discuss and come up with some ideas? Surely the company doesn't have to be hundreds of thousands in debt? Maybe there's a different way to approach this without selling the company? Maybe Lesley stays on as a shareholder or something? So can we all have a meeting @lesley?

@AnnaLisik same reason as @zen with the addition of existing revenue from Supporter base + Partners. If we can help it. Hopefully the TB Company and leadership issue gets resolved...

Nice to know 😀 Very Nice Site & Compliments, well done! 😃

Lesley mentioned that we can do with TB what we like - so if we want to fork it - it's no problem. Nowhere has he mentioned a "certain amount of posts make you qualify" - lol 😁 Besides, Anna wasn't saying that she wants to take over, merely that she'd be willing to fork TB if we wished. And imo, forking it is not the ideal solution here.

Hehehe - in your opinion. I suggest we have a meeting with @lesley and take it over as a Community - together we should have way more than 650 posts 😉

Interesting, thank you. The facts I was referring to was money related and how the TB company actually works, especially in terms of cash from Supporters and Partnerships / how that works etc. I think TB can be driven forward by a "professional company" that is funded by the Supporters etc, that drives the Project forward according to the "Vision" decided by the "TB Company / Leader" and decides on and implements features towards this Goal. However, I think that the Community can also help and contribute towards the code base and fixes and should also be able to vote on a "Select amount of new features" per term, over-and-above the Features determined by the "Leader" and "TB Company". Thereby utilising the "best of both" - Company + Community. That's pretty cool, thank you. Hopefully it doesn't come to that - would be nice to take TB forward. But good to know nonetheless...

@datakick @lesley @everybody concerned. Is it not time that we have meeting to discuss this?? Can the community not create some sort of "TB Foundation" / Committee and nominate a leader + we all figure out the rest together?

Magento, OpenCart, PS and many others all have a free version so this model can work. The ideas here about subscriptions can be a solution, but TB should remain free (as it is now), imo. Once again, money is coming in and until we have a proper meeting with @lesley and know the facts, all we're doing is speculation. We need facts so we can actually come up with ideas that will work in relation to these facts. And bytw, there are many ways to "skin this particular cat". Ideas that can be discussed in a meeting. Some quick ideas that come to mind: Ubuntu / Canonical (full free system + paid support). Another idea is perhaps a really great paid theme with awesome modules, responsive - like Panda, just built by TB. Everyone can come up with some ideas in the meeting and we can discuss and pick the ideas that we believe will work. Once again, after we know the facts. And yes, @lesley I'm sure all of us that are interested in finding a solution will be willing to sign a NDA - so you may as well draft the mail so long.

The thing you guys don't seem to realise is this: There's already money coming in from the Supporters (including from many of you). So the points about different subscription models may be valid - but misses the point that money is already coming in. What is happening with this cash? Also, there is a big question about Partners? Do they contribute and what is the deal with them? What is their interest and how is that being looked after? There's already a Thirybees company that handles all of this (supposed to) While I agree with the idea that a larger subscription qualifies you to have a say in the direction of the platform, it should not be a 'pay gate' policy where it locks out normal users from being able to use the 'full TB' and ask questions and get support in the Forums. Having a 'paid platform' will be to the detriment of the growth of TB and against the original 'open / everybody welcome' ethos - imo Being FREE (the full package) is one of TB's strongest points - and is inline with many other main eCommerce platforms (OpenCart, Magento etc., even Oxid CE) Yes, TB needs more users, and that's why many of us have mentioned a strong marketing drive to attract more @lesley needs to come to the party please - and maybe all of us that are interested in the future of TB can have a call with him to discuss? (Skype, Zoom, Slack or whatever) Also, I feel that my previous points are worth mentioning here again. Imo, we need some sort of New Running Committee, Leader, Budget, Marketing and Plan to fix things going forward

Yes, it's worrying. However from experience, that's one of the great things about this forum. If it happens and the module breaks, put the site in debug mode. Copy the error and make forum post. The guys are happy to help and usually it's a line or two that needs to be updated. You may have to sometimes ping the post, but 9.9/10 you'll get help. Alternatively you could always contact @datakick or similar developer to implement fix. A broken module is'nt necessarily the end of the world. Also to put things into perspective, we recently purchased Advanced Search 4. A great paid filter search module. No official support for TB, but the up-to-date version for PS 1.6 works like a dream in TB. Incidentally that's one of the reasons there's such a fuss being made about @datakick leaving (support, looking after Core and pushing the project forward) All effort needs to be made to convince him to stay.

Point is we need some sort of new 'Running Committee' or 'TB Community Committee' , imo. Right now there are supporters, and Partner Agencies already. Where is the money going? And how does it work? Why is this not going to devs? The problem is that the project doesn't just comprise of the development aspect. In my mind we would need to take care of the following: Development: new features, bug fixes Marketing: Active and aggressive marketing campaigns to bring in more and new users, especially from PS Coordination: Organise developers and tasks etc in line with Features and overall goal Money and Admin: What is says on the box. Budget, Plus subscriptions, Partners etc Leader: pulls all of this together. The Master Mind. With vision of future TB and with the motivation and momentum and purpose driving the project forward. With a blood lust to succeed and take on PS head on. This individual will need to be a full time, paid and paid well employee of TB Community Committee: like a board, votes on issues and tasks and advises and guides the Leader Maybe we can have a meeting with @lesley and all concerned to discuss?

That's great that you've had success with Thirtybees. And that you've supported the project. The thing is: yes, TB needs a Master Mind but it also needs @datakick, or a 'Master or Senior developer'. Without this a lot of that 'god like' support will just not be there. And the project will be in trouble. And without the Master Mind or Leader, Datakick won't be here. At least from my understanding. So right now all this equals the project being in serious trouble. Captain-less and Head Engineer-less, this ship is adrift and it's only a matter of time before it hits the rocks and takes all our sites with it... We need to figure out a solution. Fix the Leadership issue with succession planning, sort out the TB Company issue, and get Datakick back + another Datakick clone or two if we can.

So we're at an impasse still. Now, how do we take some action and fix this? Given what everybody knows? No, not everybody is great at everything, so we all have our strengths and weaknesses. Some are better at the Dev side of things, others better at Leadership / Running the show. But maybe if we work together and somehow utilize our collective strengths, we can save this project and kick some proper PS ass? In terms of money, 'the TB company', marketing, direction of the project and leadership? @Traumflug @toplakd @datakick @musicmaster @rubben1985 @Chandra @movieseals @Occam @lesley @wakabayashi @AndyC @haylau @Briljander @zen @30knees @Sigi

It requires us to build more sites in TB and to promote it + an aggressive marketing / ad strategy where the PS users get educated that TB > PS hands-down. Essentially an active resolution to take on and squish PS = PS users coming over to TB en masse. Continuing being placid is not going to help TB's cause. It needs to take the fight to PS and win. And no, with an effective message you do not need to spend big $ on an advertising campaign to be effective. Without this 'active' marketing and promotion drive, it will take forever to build the TB brand. And will probably in time, be reliant on some really excellent TB sites becoming TB ambassadors to spread the word just by their very existence.

Proposed Solution Low Renewable Once-off fee for Entry (renews every year). Between $2 / $5 per year. All existing members pay access fee & get nice 'verified supporter' badge or whatever Aggressive marketing campaign to attract new users - actively take on Presta More users approach galvanizes TB to grow and actively seek out new users (without exploiting them) = Money for developers + new features = Free things are still free essentially = Sustainable growth with "Best of Both" Opensource and Monetizing's Benefits and none of their weaknesses = Renewable yearly subscription 'milks' without overdoing it and works towards the sustainable part

The once off fee will help with that. And yes, you need have an aggressive marketing campaign (and an aggressive go-getter attitude). Take on the competitors heads-on and actively go for Presta - which to be honest, in a head-to-head battle, TB will win in my opinion. Literally squish it into oblivion. Let their users know this and they will come over to TB en masse and funding (even with once-off) will no longer be a problem. I guarantee it. And no need to charge for something that was free before (regarding the recurring and charge module ideas).

For me it makes more sense to draw in more users every month - not milk the existing user base. It helps and motivates the project to grow. By getting more new users to do the once-off fee.

I like my once off $2 fee idea better. Also re modules - there's still plenty of actively supported great 1.6 modules out there - so dropping support = bad idea.

I don't agree with that. For me the subscription model is a rip off basically. Think Adobe Creative Cloud and a million other services. Why pay for something recurrently where a once-off worked and was justified? Also, $5/20 per month might be affordable for some, but for others it just adds up too quickly and eats into important budgets like hosting, security, themes etc. To put things into perspective, I'm in a 'third world' country with an exchange rate that's definitely not favourable (to me). So where Panda may be $75 +- and worth it, it's an expensive expense. I simply cannot justify a recurring expense for the platform. Then I may as well go to something like Shopify etc. which is not great imo. However, what I would be ok with is a very low once-off fee or 'cost of entry'. Like $2. Think about it. The more people you get to come to TB, the more money it makes. 2 milllion users = 2 million dollars. So it's motivation for the project to draw in more users, isn't a rip off and helps to generate good cash for the project and its future development with very low cost of entry.

The issue here is lack of leadership and direction recently, and not lack of money.

Sorry @Mark but this sounds disturbingly like the path to the Dark Side. Like exactly the path PS decided to take. And we all know where that landed up. From what I've seen over here, this is decidedly against the ethos of this project and was stipulated against in the Project's Modus Operandi, where 'we won't charge for modules' and 'won't charge for something that was free ala Presta' is clearly mentioned. So a definite no no.