Critical advice for TB staff.

[rubben1985]

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.

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!!!!

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 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.

• 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.

[dynambee]

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?

[rubben1985]

@dynambee said in Critical advice for TB staff.:

worded a bit harshly

my intention is not at all to offend no one. It is maybe a little bit direct because this type of messages has been told by a few members since months, but it seems TB does not change anything in this aspect, and a very kind writing style maybe do not create the same effect. In the opposite hand, development has improved and it was the first I said but people have to be able to notice it when they enter for the first time.

Think that all the points I just said come from a very superficial analysis. There are dozens of mistakes and marketing have to make a change of 180º

Anyway, I just want to say that all advice are not for my own benefit (no specific feature request for example) but for the future of the project because I love the philosophy and I appreciate a lot the effort of a lot of people here.

[rubben1985]

ah I forgot! If you want people to contribute to Patreon, Show a visible banner in a common space of the web inviting people to contribute. Youtubers for exampe invite people at the end of each video because people are not going to figure it out by themselves.... (the only sigh of patreon are actually peoples signatures)

[lesley]

I missed that the Elastic Search module was not on the store. I have added it now. https://store.thirtybees.com/shop-modules/front-office/elastic-search-module

Honestly posts like this are discouraging to the whole team. I don't know what illusion you are living under. We simply do not have the money to hire a designer to handle the design of the site. Sure, it would help I imagine, but we don't have the money.

Having to address posts from users every month or two telling us what we should be doing gets old. If we were making a bunch of money and not doing things maybe you would have a point. The whole team sees these types of forum posts and just avoids the forum for a few days because they are senseless.

[rubben1985]

@lesley I think you are totally wrong. You should be proud of having people in the community that cares about the project and take his time to tells you what you can improve. Do you think it will be better not to say anything and go away? I would literally pay money to my customers to give me honest feedback. When I was testing our prototype, I "forced" people to tell me what they did not like. If they said: " Nothing, I like how it is" I answer: Well, what would you improve for the next version? and they gave me ideas that actually were critics of the actual one. I have to say again that I recognized that you have improved things but other ones, you have changed nothing in months (mainly marketing). These things are so critical for the future that I think I have to insist.

About the money to pay a designer. I know how hard is to have almost no budget (believe me, I have a startup and I did not have a salary in 2.5 years) but I already told you a solution: exchange services by a part of TB project or look for an investor to have money to pay services. We have exactly made this last week. We gave a part of the enterprise to an investor for money. You will not have the 100% but the project will grow up.

[wakabayashi]

@rubben1985 nobody doubt's that a lot of things could be improved. But this is really a question of money and manpower.

There is very little support for @lesley, @mdekker and @Traumflug . Right now only @yaniv14, @gonssal and @datakick come to my mind, who regularly submit some code stuff. There is also non-code stuff. But I may ask: - How many translations have been done by community? - How many blog posts have been written by community? - How many people like the tb facebook posts?

I believe, I don't have to go on...

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.

[dynambee]

@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.

[doclucas]

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.

[colorful-ant]

@doclucas said in Critical advice for TB staff.:

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.

I'm not sure if I understand one thing or another correctly. A paid version? In addition or in general?

I would like to have better understood this statement, not only for me, overall.

[doclucas]

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

[colorful-ant]

Thanks, but this statement has been very strange. Similar to here https://en.shopware.com/
prices https://en.shopware.com/editions/

[rubben1985]

@doclucas I am agree with all that you said. As you are the second to tell me my language was harsh I think I should have apologized with TB Staff. My intention was to be direct and honest but never impolite. Maybe not being English my language, make it pass from direct to harsh. Sorry about that.

I know there is no money so the best way is to find a partner: I am sure some young agency with some free time would be interested in working design/UX in exchange of a % of the project (normally you need to create a company that holds TB intellectual property or at least the property of it). Like a partner or investor: they give you money and you give them a part of your business. Most of the startups do this as they do not generate money yet.

I can not recommend you a designer because A) they are working in my project b) they do not speak English but https://www.behance.net/ is full of them. Also, you could find motivate people here: https://angel.co/ A lot of startups find people there.

I would love to contribute my self or with my designer but during next months that will be actually impossible: we launch a product internationally and I am already working 14h a day, 6-7 days a week to arrive on time...

I totally understand 2 men can not do everything. So If 2 men can't do it, it is because you need more men. Can not you pay for it? Pay them with a part of the project. It is what it happened to me. We needed money to manufacture thousands of units, pay some salaries and do massive marketing: we found an investor that now has a part of our company.

[rubben1985]

@lesley I just realized, Did you think about opening an internship offer? It is a free worker and maybe it can help you. With programmers may not be a good idea because they can break things but designers can always help you with their insight.

[doclucas]

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.

[rubben1985]

@doclucas said in Critical advice for TB staff.:

I am not sure I understood the ending . You ask me personally if I can’t pay for the work? Or did I misunderstand something?

No no, that was addressed to the staff. If they can not afford to pay someone, bring working partners. A so good project like this should be able to find them

@doclucas said in Critical advice for TB staff.:

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 (“demands”), as the team here is also very busy.

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.

[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.

[rubben1985]

@doclucas said in Critical advice for TB staff.:

@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.

Im starting to think that my english is even worse that I thought hahahaha They can enlarge the team without money (in exchange of a part of the "company/project")

[Traumflug]

You should be proud of having people in the community that [...] tells you what you can improve.

Proud? Certainly not. Because we know (almost) all of this already.

I love the community if I wake up in the morning and see stuff like this:

https://github.com/thirtybees/thirtybees/pull/573 https://github.com/thirtybees/thirtybees/issues/551#issuecomment-414070564 https://github.com/thirtybees/community-theme-default/issues/61

This actually helps.

[rubben1985]

@traumflug said in Critical advice for TB staff.:

Proud? Certainly not. Because we know (almost) all of this already.

I meant proud because you have people that take care of the project. We are not all programmers to solve bugs btw, and code is not the only important thing to do. I use my formation to point some specific things to solve, as a programmer do telling you specific code to repair.

What I already recognize it is that maybe I was harsh. Next time I will do it better and more gentle.

[doclucas]

@rubben1985 you have to remember that most developers are not very good in business or have a good business sense and most business people are not very good at software development or have at least a good development logic so don't worry about every forum comment directed at you. I know the word "proud" was probably not the best here and I agree with you that software development is not the only way to contribute. I guess what this project needs the most at this time (except for money) is a lead who got a great business sense, very good programming background and programming logic and who is easy to get along with and can inspire & motivate people. Not an easy or cheap commodity to find.

[Traumflug]

I meant proud because you have people that take care of the project.

Can't see any care taken in this thread. Just blaming, without any work towards a solution.

Remember @alwayspaws ? She wrote a nice little welcome message to everybody joining this forum. The helped translating from the developer to the merchant perspective, for getting shops into production. AFAIK she even wrote outside this forum to tell the world about how helpful thirty bees is. This is taking care.

[dynambee]

@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.

[rubben1985]

@traumflug said in Critical advice for TB staff.:

I meant proud because you have people that take care of the project.

Can't see any care taken in this thread. Just blaming, without any work towards a solution.

Remember @alwayspaws ? She wrote a nice little welcome message to everybody joining this forum. The helped translating from the developer to the merchant perspective, for getting shops into production. AFAIK she even wrote outside this forum to tell the world about how helpful thirty bees is. This is taking care.

I do not even remember how many people I have talked about this project in my environment, I just did not make a blog post about that. I do not have a salary for 2.5 years and still, I made my small contribution to everything you launch. I started with elastic search and I am Patreon since some months. 5$/months. A very small amount but without salary or income, it is not easy.

I was direct (you call it blaming) because I think it is something that needs to be changed if the project wants to survive (not just improve). I will not answer any more reproach messages. I wrote what I thought correct. You do not agree, I can accept it. But this is a community and I have to say what I think, not what you think. No project has success with only developers or only business minds. If you do not understand, I can not do anything about it.

That said, thanks for your incredible contribution to this project. Without doubts, you are one of the pillars that makes possible TB. Not agreeing with your vision, doesn't change that fact.

[DaoKakao]

As usual "the truth is somewhere near"... As it seems to me now it is unique chance for people like you, @rubben1985 , to became a marketing leader. TB lacks marketing/desgin? Try to develop something on this field for them. IMO, a personal contribution to coding/desugn/mrjeting, et c. sometimes even more important than funding, especially at the very begin. Just remember a Linux story - this was made 'just for fun' initially. And they got a lot of funds much much later.

BTW, i like your site design. This is another pro foro you to try yourself in marketing/design :)