create new tb release eg 1.0.3.1 ?

[colorful-ant]

I do not know if it makes sense and how big the effort for it. If I understand correctly, it will take a while until 1.0.4 is officially released and can be used. If so, would not it make sense to upgrade to eg 1.0.3.1? Theoretically, I think this would be useful for new and old TB users, among others. Since the last release 1.0.3. in August 2017, further bugs were fixed. Anyone who downloads this version is not quite up to date, only from August 2017. If that person tests the system and must first look in the forum or at github for problem solving. Probably loses the desire to test further. The last release is about 8 months old. This question should not arise as a new discussion in the forum, but only a question of whether it makes sense and helpful to possibly win more shop owners with the TB system.

[Traumflug]

The problem is actually making a release. Any release, 1.0.3.1 or 1.0.4 or whatever. Making a release should be a matter of running a script, but actually it's a lot of handcrafting, where some parts are more guessing than applying well known procedures. On top of this, the updater module is bit-rotten enough to make a rewrite easier than fixing it.

thirty bees is currently collecting a list of required features and evaluating proofs of concepts for an entire new updating mechanism. New packaging scripts, new updater module. A solid solution is needed and it's worked on.

[lesley]

We will have an announcement about the updater this coming week.

[lixotuka]

Hi @lesley, any estimated date for v. 1.0.4 or should we continue waiting indefinitely?

Many people wait for the new version to leave PS definitely. I think the new version could also bring more revenue to TB through Patreon. In my case, I give a small contribution that I would like to expand when I start using TB (I hope soon).

I was very excited about TB at the beginning but the wait for this update is being so long that I am already quite sad. My PS store needs many improvements, that's why I want to migrate (also because I want to leave PS), but 1.0.4 never comes.

I do not want to be demanding, I know TB is free. In addition, I'm not a developer and I can not contribute as much as I'd like, but I think a lot of people think the same. We have been waiting for many months to the new version to leave PS and improve our business.

[lesley]

We are actually talking about making new releases now, but having manual upgrades for them.

[rolly1975]

I just want to share my current opinion. I have been following TB's forum and content for a good year. I've been testing TB since that time - improving the performance of PS 1.6, since the PS 1.7 is totally ineligible, I just love it and I'm generally thrilled. For quite some time, there are many negative aspects before I officially switch to TB.

When I mention "you/r" in my text, it mainly refers to @lesley, as he seems to be the head of TB, and only from a business point of view he is commenting on some things.

Absolutely many, many, many people are waiting for improvement. Not just for a month. An announcement on TB 1.0.4 in the fall of last year, since then has been just talked - we ask you for patience, etc., that there is a solution soon. On requests there are problems and problems. Even the last request from @ colorful-ant will update to e.g. 1.0.3.1 to allow new members / prospects to take advantage of an updated version that fixes bugs since TB 1.0.3. Blah, Blah, Blah ......... .. (And just because the official update to 1.0.4 could take even longer - hmmm, the rest of the answers from the TB team, well - very bad.) Info, we will announce an info within the next week. A few days later the request of another forum member to the state of things -> the answer: Um, we're just discussing it.

You complain about income to finance the work for the project. As an an example: You say you have an agreement with payment providers. You moan and complain that you have not yet reached the limit of paying providers. Why? Hmmm - too few TB-LiveShops that generate revenue.

You want to achieve revenues by force such as Patreon. But with your answers and your stalling tactics, you only harm yourself.

How many have left in the last few weeks or lost interest in TB? Some members were also disgusted.

The work and performance of the improvements over PS 1.6.xxx is great. It does not help either the TB team or the sellers if only the base system is running. The offered payment modules are difficult. The other native modules get a higher priority. The creation of business software is no picnic, but it should work well and not only at 50% or so of the Liveshops including the native modules - also the test shops with TB of new prospects want to convince you?

At first it was like a hype for you and others, new forum members, etc. Only what has become of it in the last few months? You can count the daily forum visitors on two hands. I think you've lost track of what you set out to do at the beginning of this project.

In the blog post If I remember correctly, Kennedy once said "Ask not what you can do for you, but what you can do for thirty bees". But I ask: What can TB do better in the next few days, so I can do more for TB.

EDIT: I know it's a free ecommerce shop software like many others and I do not have to use it if I do not want it !!!

[lesley]

I have tried to be honest about things at thirty bees and I am still going to follow that line of dealing with people.

Here is what is going on. We are going to do the final tests on 1.0.4 this week and release it. With only a manual upgrade path. Then we will take the bug reports from it and make try to make another release in a couple weeks, again with only a manual upgrade path.

We might have gotten a little too ambitious with some of the features we were trying to add to 1.0.4, like webp images and other optimizations. We are rolling those changes back and releasing a bug fixed version.

As for the deals we have made with payment gateway, we have a few in place. Unfortunately they are EU gateways which charge an insanely low rate as compared to US gateways. Their transaction fees average about $.25 a transaction and we get a couple cents per transaction. The US gateways we have talked to require at least $500k per gateway per month before they start talking. With so many different gateways, it is hard for us to send that through.

As far as shops that have left, I am not familiar with any, other than one larger shop that went out of business.

As for this"The work and performance of the improvements over PS 1.6.xxx is great. It does not help either the TB team or the sellers if only the base system is running. The offered payment modules are difficult. The other native modules get a higher priority. The creation of business software is no picnic, but it should work well and not only at 50% or so of the Liveshops including the native modules - also the test shops with TB of new prospects want to convince you?" I cannot tell what you mean, so I cannot respond to it.

[MockoB]

Great post @rolly1975, I'm happy there are ppl here who are not scared to tell the truth as is! After almost an year waiting, there will be realeased version without any new features (eventually lazy loading), with some fixed bugs (not all as may be seen in github). The only neat new feature after all was the webp images. Great news ...

[lesley]

There are several hundred bugs fixed actually. There are open issues in github, some of them are bugs, some of them are feature requests, but none of them are blockers. Some bugs / issues go fixed without reporting. For instance I was writing the article I am going to publish in about 30 minutes and I noticed an installer issue with Digital Ocean droplets. I fixed the bug and committed it without an issue being created.

We are not going to add too many more features to be honest. Webp would be a nice feature, we are leaving the ability in the software, just disabled on the front end. You can ask @SLiCK_303 for the webp to work it is going to take a huge rewrite on the product page. A rewrite that will likely only make it into the default theme.

[nickon]

This a classic it/developer problem: Always trying to perfect things. I myself am an IT guy and find myself many times trying to perfect things and not releasing the final product. A good example these days it to make transformer theme safe upgrade enabled and although it can/should be go live to our eshop I have not done it yet. Last "excuse" is the click on carrier row selection I am trying to add. So I can for sure understand @lesley & co. The main difference here is that this only affects my eshop and my bussiness. TB affects a lot of ppl. I do understand that the devs are trying to maximize the performance of TB. But for me that is no more the main issue anymore. TB is great in performance already, and for ppl comming from PS this will be the first things they note. TB for me should attract more shop owners and developers. Instead of focusing on performance I would add features already approved in the feauture request section. No I don't mean adding them to the core. That would be to risky/time consuming. I mean adding them as modules. A few examples: https://thirtybees.com/suggestions/much-better-reviews-system/ -> Already done by @datakick https://thirtybees.com/suggestions/multiple-features-values/ -> Already done in tips and tricks (can this be added as a module and simply select enable/disable?) https://thirtybees.com/suggestions/deleting-orders/ -> Exists as module for ps. So it can be added in TB as well without breaking anything https://thirtybees.com/suggestions/product-mass-edit/ -> Exists as module for ps. So it can be added in TB as well without breaking anything

The list could go on and on. If I was @lesley I would do only bugfixes (and fix the upgrade system:-))and add a goal of adding these features on a specific date eg 1-2 months. depending on the module. This could be done together with the community on a delevopers forum (witch I still don't understand why it does not exist) Then do a montly status update closing features that are done.

Just my 2c

[wakabayashi]

@nickon your point of view is interesting. About two things I am not sure.

1. "Deleting an order" thats for me clearly a core thing. I really see no sense, to make a module for it.
2. What do you mean with developers forum? We can discuss everything here?

[Traumflug]

This a classic it/developer problem: Always trying to perfect things.

Very true. "Can we make a release now?" ... "Oh, wait a moment, let's just fix this one thing before doing it". And these moments eventually added up to months now.

Another one is: pretty much all developers run code from latest Git, so they have a tendency to forget that many others simply don't have all the new bells and whistles yet. There are 805(!) commits between 1.0.3 and current master, none of them in a release. Ouch!

That's why there are plans to make shop installations less dependent on actual releases. Just update to latest Git without a newer release happening. Easily roll back if a new feature doesn't work as expected, just to update a few days later again, this time with the regression fixed.

Bright plans? Certainly. And I hope we're bold enough to make it happen, step by step, with your support. Next step is the 1.0.4 release: https://github.com/thirtybees/thirtybees/milestone/6

[DRMasterChief]

@nickon - i absolutely agree with this.

I really can not understand why some people ask for new versions every month, or an "new" 1.0.4 and so on.... TB has so many benefits compared to PS and most of the shops can use it out of the box, i am wrong? So why do you bother the team about the new version? I really think they fix a lot of things in the background and a new version is coming when time is ok for it. In the meantime you can use 1.0.3 or use it not and stay with PS, it´s your decision.

Honestly i would also like to ask if some more things from the community here can be implemented. There are a lot of asks and ideas here and the thing is, that the team has to discern them and make the best with this.

[Traumflug]

What do you mean with developers forum?

I think he means a forum section for developer talk. About all of the forum is talk on the user/merchant level. If one posts code or a shell script, some people here tend to freak out :-)

[nickon]

@DRMasterChief The problem isn't really the new version it's mainly what you promise. @lesley & co have given the impression that 1.0.4 is around the corner. I seems it isn't, that with some bad communication (the lack of it) causes the problem. That's why it is my opinion to keep the core as small as posible and use modules for all other things. So the core developers can focus on the core and release bug fixes or core improvments and maybe a community member (or anyone else) can take care of a specific module. @wakabayashi Develpment discussions is not something that fits in the General discussion forum. A shop owner does not care about code or development issues that arrise. @Traumflug many project have died on "great plans" it is best to deliver what you can and when you can. There should be a roadmap of things and surely users can wait a couple of days of weeks but not months.

[nickon]

@wakabayashi I think that the core should be as small as possilbe. Eg for deleting orders (and mass edits) it is true that these could be core features. But many ppl don't need them. And a possilbe bug could cause the core to not function right or breake some module that works with PS. So having a seperate module for this would not break all eshop but only those who uses those feautues, or you can push an update to that module if a problem arrises. A good example is android. Google is trying to keep the core as small as possiible even removing the keyboard from the core. and there is nothing more "core" than that :-)

[wakabayashi]

@nickon I agree with your point in general, but not with the specific example of order deleting. It should be there, where the orders are handled... I don't know much about android, but I think the keyboard is a bit misleading. There are 1000 different keyboards you can use, so it makes a lot of sense to make it modular. But for other deleting thats just a function. Or do you want to delete products also in a module? But actually I think our opinions are almost the same ;)

In general I am surprised, that so many people are waiting for 1.0.4 like it would be 2.0. What are you expecting from that version? What does not work out for you in 1.0.3, which does in 1.0.4?

[DavidP]

A release creates a defined point in space that can be evaluated & tested on it's own merits, going with the latest version from GIT hub means introducing potential issues on previously tested sections of the code unless each submitted new bit of code has regression testing performed before it's allowed on the main branch. OpenCart suffers massively from this with most problems caused by bugfixes elsewhere.

Even creating milestones in GIT hub to signify a release point in time that's been fully tested would allow people to grab versions that should work in an ideal scenario, without the need to work on the autoupdater. With regards to the 805 updates, the 1.04 on GIT has 13 open and 2 closed items, not 805, is there documentation & tests available for those 805 changes?

I think the problem though for a lot of people is that TB is going down the route of developer orientated whereas some people coming from PS tend to be business / shop orientated with a lack of developer skills. They don't want to risk breaking their store with myriad changes, they just want the latest version that works and from the click of a button. Those type of shop owners will most likely stick with PS (even though it does tend to break stuff anyhow) because it gives them the safest route to keep their shop making money in their mind.

[wakabayashi]

I am really surprised this things come up again. In the last weeks @mdekker invested a lot of time, to improve native modules. @Traumflug joined the team and is working on the updater. That was actually great news and shows that this project is active.

I still wonder, what is so bad about 1.0.3, that people need 1.0.4 so much. If you feel more comfortable with PS 1.6, thats ok. It's your decision.

[yaniv14]

@wakabayashi 1.0.3 still contain bugs that related to code cleanups such as switching sql queries to dbquery function and stuff like that, and other stuff like missing quote or having extra quote or even one small bug I've found and fixed that was preventing installation of beesblog module. I think that v1.0.4 should have been like v1.0.0. I wouldn't spend time in adding features to v1.0.4 before fixing all these "ridicules" bugs, just to make sure that you have a solid bugs free replacement to PS. I currently doing 2 new stores on tb and I wouldn't use v1.0.3 for them, I am using the latest github updates for it, but not every one capable of doing it.

[rubben1985]

@wakabayashi said in create new tb release eg 1.0.3.1 ?:

I am really surprised this things come up again. In the last weeks @mdekker invested a lot of time, to improve native modules. @Traumflug joined the team and is working on the updater. That was actually great news and shows that this project is active.

I still wonder, what is so bad about 1.0.3, that people need 1.0.4 so much. If you feel more comfortable with PS 1.6, thats ok. It's your decision.

My opinion:

@mdekker is much present now, I can assure that. This has been the reason to become a patreon (even if my contribution is still small) because I see a little bit of light. @wakabayashi the reason people want 1.0.4 is because it feels like things are going on, and the software is alive and growing. A merchant has to feel that updates are coming and his shop is better each month. If they do not feel this, they will nor trust you. It is like it is. If early adopters (that normally are the most optimistic and enthusiastic) are feeling this way, it is better not to ask normal users...

But as I said before, things are changing and I see things improving! :)

[rolly1975]

just discovered by chance I think it's a great info. some positive feedback from other forum members, as well as other reasons from the forum to make the TB Team a long overdue update - thank you. This thanks goes to the members with their helpful answers - so that it grows and thrives. I thank the TB team for taking this step further and listening.

I myself had actually guessed that a 1.3.x version is created with the errors resolved and then the version 1.4 is released. Of course I have not installed the new version yet. But I just noticed by chance when looking to a module update and hope that now more sellers will switch to TB to support the project of TB in any way.

if for one or the other person, my only comment so far in this forum seemed a bit coarse - ok, then it should be so. sometimes it has to be painful. thanks to lesley, for the information in advance and in between. the last info regarding the next update to TB by you, was from my point of view the best info of the last days to understand. The current hint from you that you have stiffened into an improvement and take a step back is awesome. I myself would be happy if the improvements in small steps according to your ideas and of course also the needs of the TB-user brings forward. if it somehow or sometime is possible, the TB user without a long search or by possibly guessing can see what is currently on the todo list, so that there will be less doubt. But all one after the other.

In addition, best thanks for the negative upvotes to my first and only comment, before this one. -> -315 points or so I think that I have insulted no one condescendingly.

IMPORTANT!!! READ !!! Please note the upcoming notice of the update of traumflug. New user / or reinstallation no problem, but wait for an update to the info from him or the team and then implement / update / test.

https://github.com/thirtybees/thirtybees/releases

[lesley]

We have discussed things internally the last couple of weeks surrounding releases and the release schedules. We are going to start releasing more frequently and have the releases require manual updates until we can get an updater finished. We will have some news and an update on the updater next week. Today there will be a blog post about the new features and bug fixes in 1.0.4

[nickon]

@lesley Amen! :-) Hope this brings some piece of mind to everyone requesting this. Now lets see the bug reports and comments on all of the users who are going to use it

[lesley]

You can give it a go and see what you think. I just released the blog post about the new features and information about the release, https://thirtybees.com/blog/version-1-0-4-has-been-released/