Does ThirtyBees work out of the box?

[funnycamel]

Most free e-commerce software I've tried doesn't work properly out of the box. There'll be a checkout bug or something won't work on mobile, and expensive plugins will be required to create a viable site. What's the situation with ThirtyBees? Does the stock version Just Work (tm)? Are there any show-stopper bugs or plugins that need to be purchased to create a viable site? I've been playing around with it and so far I haven't found any problems, but from prior experience with other software I know that bugs rear their head at the worst time, so I want to check with the community before I take the next steps.

[datakick]

Yes, as long as you run on a required stack, you can start selling out of the box. 

Of course, you will soon find out many things you will want to modify, theme wise. And then you will have some custom requirements, hence the modules and/or custom development. And once you install a lot of them (especially modules with overrides), things will start to fall apart, and you'll need to hire some support agency that will help you keep things tidy. But that's normal on every platform, I guess. 

[AndyC]

Website wise it's very good.. Although I have had a lot of checkout problems in the past due to external module (ie not TB ) ...Now I am using the 5 to 3 checkout and things have vastly improved.. Although in saying that I have just had a customer email me asking if her order has gone though and am getting stressy again

 

[DRMasterChief]

Hi, i have tried several ecommerce platforms and honestly i have to say that  tb  is one of the best working out of the box  🙂 (also compared to paid systems,  it is really reliable). 

Keep it clean and simple,  like every system....  there are a lot of modules (also from PS 1.6)  which are horribly programmed, do not try them on live site, trust your gut instinct when looking for a theme or module.  Create a test system for such things and try it before installing it on your live shop. 

Edited May 16, 2020 by DRMasterChief

[toplakd]

If you run basic modules that are provided by thirtybees everything should work out of the box.

And that should be sufficient for most users, however as datakick said, when you wish something custom you can't go around third party modules and this is where all the fun begins.

And with recent update it became even more php 7.4 friendly ( thank you  @datakick - I currently have 1 or 2 error_log messages in front running 7.4)

Edited May 16, 2020 by toplakd

[Wartin]

Just a quick question, what update do you say? Do you use stable version or some of the bleedy versions?

What do you think it's more stable now?

[toplakd]

I'm always using latest bleeding edge (the one without issue number)

[funnycamel]

Thank you for all the replies. It's sounding as good as I could hope for. I will be very selective when installing modules. The only extra thing I've needed to install is Community-Theme-Modded in order for everything to display correctly on mobile devices. I am very tempted to streamline the checkout a bit, but that seems like asking for trouble at this point.

ThirtyBees is the only free e-commerce system I've tested which seems to tick all the boxes, and I didn't even know it existed until a few days ago!

[datakick]

1 hour ago, Wartin said:

Just a quick question, what update do you say? Do you use stable version or some of the bleedy versions?

What do you think it's more stable now?

There are no stable versions, there are only named versions, I'm afraid. Version 1.1.0 is just an arbitrary commit that was picked to be named version just because it was a nice idea to have a new version released. It was tested, of course. But not extensively -- unfortunately there are not enough resources for that. There is no dedicated QA team. 

So far, the emphasis of thirty bees developers was not on the new features (we believe the system is complete, if not over-bloated), but on a code maintenance and bug fixing. This usually means that commits are very focused and targeted. There is usually minimal disruption, or potential for bug injections. And if there is a new bug introduces, it is usually fixed right away (these have highest priority), and the bleeding edge is soon fixed. 

This is why I always recommend using latest bleeding edge -- it should be more bug-free then any previous named version. 

And the best thing is -- it's very cheap to test the new version. If you don't have any core modifications (you should never have these), then it's just a single click of the mouse in core updater. You should then thoroughly test your store. If it doesn't work, then it's just as easy to revert. In that case, please report this new issue on the github. If you use magic words like Regression or Injection, it might get magically fixed within days. And then you can try again.

[funnycamel]

57 minutes ago, datakick said:

There are no stable versions, there are only named versions, I'm afraid.

@datakick In Core Updater, under Channel there are two choices. One is "Stable", the other is "Bleeding edge", but from what you've said the bleeding edge version would have the fewest bugs and seems to be the best choice. This is actually quite important to know, so thanks for providing this info. Are there any other things like this which are not obvious yet important to know?

[veganline]

On 5/16/2020 at 7:45 AM, funnycamel said:

here'll be a checkout bug or something won't work on mobile, and expensive plugins will be required to create a viable site.

This is the best I've found, with no gotchas like the need to pay for a postage module or a shopping cart module.

For postage, countries are zoned, just as any post office zones countries, and you can probably fill-in sufficient prices and weights each year for your product. For example most post offices have a cheap 2kg deal which suits a lot of products. Apply the price for "world" then add a zone for your own country which will be cheap and edit prices for the furthest zones. If you need another option than a 2kg parcel, you can add it as another courier option and enable it for the products where it applies. 

For the shopping cart, the default option is rather subtle and allows you to have different payment options for different parts of the world where customers live, like the Mastercard Simplify Payment system for the USA. Subtlety looks OK on the 5-page checkout but when you tick the box for a 1-page checkout, as any shopkeeper would, it looks a bit complicated. There is a button that says "please sign in to see payment methods", even if you disable sign-ins as any shopkeeper would. These glitches are well-discussed in the forums and there are suggestions for a three page version or a one page version. A lot of complexity can be made invisible with the "custom code" css box. It may be possible to make the payment option like Stripe or Paypal show before customers press the "please sign in to see payment methods" button. By default you can translate a lot of the phrases on the cart for your own country or maybe others and there are forum post about how to translate that button. There are free modules for Paypal and Stripe.

By the time you have got those two right, you will have the skills to tweak the css files for the rest of your site.
Good luck
 

PS
This is a crude hack for a one page checkout

A subtler 3 page checkout is emerging on the forum now

Edited May 17, 2020 by veganline
crude hack / link to subtler 3 page version

[funnycamel]

@veganline Thank you for that nuanced explanation of the checkout issues. I will play around with it.

@datakick How do you actually get onto the Bleeding Edge Channel without messing things up? I took a simple test case using all default settings and no extra modules and it didn't work. Here are the steps I followed:

1. Install thirtybees from Softaculous in cPanel with default settings (this installs 1.1.0)

2. Go to Core Updater and change the channel to "Bleeding Edge".

3. Clear Cache

4. Try to load the Front Office and get the following error message

ThirtyBeesException
Unable to load template file 'localhost/themes/niara/./product-list.tpl' in 'localhost/modules/blockbestsellers/views/templates/hook/blockbestsellers-home.tpl'
in file vendor/smarty/smarty/libs/sysplugins/smarty_internal_templatebase.php at line 129  

It seems like the update somehow messed up the paths. I tried it with the community theme as well, and yielded similar results.

[datakick]

That is strange. I have latest bleeding edge installed on both my development and production server, and it works without any issues.

[toplakd]

I usually install my test instances through Cpanel/Softaculous and after that I apply the latest bleeding edge with core updater, and that have never failed.

Live shop is always updated to latest bleeding edge within couple of days after updates are available in core updater.

[datakick]

29 minutes ago, toplakd said:

I usually install my test instances through Cpanel/Softaculous and after that I apply the latest bleeding edge with core updater, and that have never failed.

Live shop is always updated to latest bleeding edge within couple of days after updates are available in core updater.

@toplakd could you please try update your test instance? Bleeding edge contains new version of smarty lib, so there might be some issues with it. I didn't encountered any, though.

[DRMasterChief]

Hi,   ....Install thirtybees from Softaculous....   gives me always errors and problems  (tried i with 3 webhosts, no luck at all) !   I have installed tb then manually, which is easy and done in 1 minute.  Maybe this is helpful for someone.

[datakick]

2 hours ago, funnycamel said:

Go to Core Updater and change the channel to "Bleeding Edge".

Also, make sure you select Version to compare = 1.1.x, and not 1.0.x. Unfortunately, 1.0.x is the default for new installations. 

[AndyC]

I did mine yesterday too and also got an error , but I just refreshed and it worked the 2nd time

[veganline]

34 minutes ago, DRMasterChief said:

Install thirtybees from Softaculous....   gives me always errors and problems  (tried i with 3 webhosts, no luck at all)

The only host I've had trouble with is just for testing anyway - the free Byethost & variations like Infinityfree. The ones that call CPanel "Vistapanel". Byethost's Softulicious says
The following errors were found : Could not make the query numbered : 365 MySQL Error No : 1071 MySQL Error : Specified key was too long; max key length is 1000 bytes
I have no trouble on Hosting.co.uk and other paid shared hosts that I've used. I put new test sites in a different directory to recent previous test sites, which might prevent traces of one being used by the next.

Edited May 17, 2020 by veganline

[funnycamel]

22 minutes ago, datakick said:

Also, make sure you select Version to compare = 1.1.x, and not 1.0.x. Unfortunately, 1.0.x is the default for new installations. 

@datakick Yes, that was the issue! Never would have noticed it, thanks a lot!

[toplakd]

43 minutes ago, datakick said:

@toplakd could you please try update your test instance? Bleeding edge contains new version of smarty lib,

I run my Live shop with very latest bleeding edge. Have no problems with it.

However, I don't use guest checkout, every customer should register from my point of view 🙂

Edited May 17, 2020 by toplakd

[funnycamel]

In less that a month I've got my site up and running and have received orders successfully - much quicker than I expected. There was no messy coding required at all. Just a couple of light edits to some .tpl files and some CSS styling. So yeah, it does work out of the box as far as I'm concerned. What prompted me to finally choose TB was the response to my initial question. Knowing there's a friendly community here gave me a great deal of confidence.

Special thanks to @toplakd for making Community-Theme-Modded available, it really makes the mobile experience so much better. Thanks also to @datakick for providing some vital knowledge, and to @musicmaster for offering Prestools which saves so much time updating product info.

[wakabayashi]

@funnycamel congrats, that's great! Hopefully we can generate a lot more succes stories as yours 🙂

[veganline]

@jaen (from the goodbye thread - I'll message her)

Quote

We are developing an altruistic project to make stores for the small autonomous affected by the break in their
activities during the coronavirus.
After a month of testing we chose thirty bees for being free, light and adding advantageous functionalities.
We are about to come to light and we could not bear to pay as we cover the cost of accommodation and 22 
engineers donate our work.
Do you think I should look for another solution or have we chosen well?

I think your post might get an answer in this thread, but it's hard. The people who know which free software suits which small firms are people who make a living selling web sites, so they might not read this forum and post an answer. Maybe somewhere there is an online guide that says...

• If your business doesnt't need to count stock in and out; if you never run-out, then just put a paypal "buy" button on a wix site, and build from there. I use Mal's e-commerce which is the same idea and allows access to card details and a slight choice of online card processors. When it came-out, shopkeepers could just type the card number into their usual card machine and I expect that's still possible. That allows the shopkeeper to use the same system for online and face-to-face orders, which is always a headache to organise.
• If you do need to count stock in and out but nothing else, Thirtybees is a bit heavy.
  It takes a lot of forum support or a bit of paid support to get going.
  It expects you to use an account for each customer.
  A 3-stage checkout so you choose the right card processor and courier for your place in the world. These could be over-ridden in a simplified default version but nobody has done it. 
  It doesn't work on Freemium server space like Attractsoft or Byethost. It works on cheap space, but not free. Maybe someone would give a grant to fund space or donate it. On the other hand Thirtybees is a lot less gross, bloated, heavy, than Magento and the TB version is a lot more stable than its predecessor called PS1.6. 
• Some merchants ask what else they can combine into the same bundle of software, which is above my head. Someone on this forum suggests connecting to the free ERPnext software, whatever that is.
• Looking at the carts on Installatron, Fantastico or Softaculous, there might be a simpler one for simpler needs - maybe Litecart? I wrote notes to myself years ago but was unsure, and Installatron / Fantastico / Softaculous have different software ranges. They're important if you want to reduce support costs by making installation simple.

This is a long way of saying that I don't know, but better than no reply I hope
John

---------------11.07.2020
If you have just tested a lot of shopping cart softare, you might see bits of...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_shopping_cart_software
...that you could make more helpful. Better information would help your small organisations; you could point them to it. For example Prestashop is listed as importing and exporting data. My impression is that it takes a lot of googling and a day's unpaid work to find out how, but that's what the wiki page says.

Edited July 21, 2020 by veganline