Creating a bash script to install thirty bees on a USD 2.50/month VPS

[Yeku]

Hi folks. I am a newbie. Please pardon my for being presumptuous but....

have you guys considered creating a bash script that would enable non-technical users to provision a "plain vanilla VPS" with a live installation of thirty bees?

By "plain vanilla VPS" I mean one that does not have any applications installed on it except for those included with the operating system such as CentOS 7.x. In other words, I am imagining a bash script that would install:

• nginx 1.12.x
• MariaDB 10.2.x
• PHP 7.1x
• the required and recommended PHP extensions
• the recommended thirty bees php.ini settings
• and any other necessary items

See, CentOS 7: Nginx, MariaDB Installation script led me to avitex/centos7psinstall.sh which enabled me to successfully install PrestaCart 1.6x (along with Nginx and MariaDB) on a USD 2.50/month (two US dollars and fifty cents per month) plain vanilla VPS with 1 CPU and 512MB 500GB in no more than 15 minutes by doing the following:

• Logging in to my inexpensive USD 2.50 per month account at my ISP.
• “Spinning up” (that is to say, creating) a new CentOS 7.x server with a three clicks (had I chosen the default server in Miami it would have only taken me two clicks). That took me less than 10 seconds. I am not exaggerating.
• Opening a terminal in Linux.

• Entering ssh root@the_domain_my_ISP_instantly_assigned_to_my_new_CentOS7.x_server

• Entering the password my ISP assigned to my new CentOS 7.x server.

• Entering: bash -c "$(wget -O - https://gist.githubusercontent.com/avitex/ea35054b28530b3b3fd482c7232b47f1/raw)"

• in the same terminal I had logged into in previous two steps.

• Answering a few questions and following the instructions at prompts in the same terminal I ran the bash script in the previous step.

This was simple, cheap, easy, and allowed me (a non-technical person) to look at the script and verify that the code being installed was coming from a known source (namely, prestashop.com).

"There are lots of products that are loved just by techies but not by normals. When something is getting hyped by techies, one of the hardest things to figure out is whether it will cross over to normals." Excerpted from Techies and normals.

I presume the more reasonable thirty bees installation options potential users are offered, the more users thirty bees will likely amass. And make no mistake about increasing the number of users of thirty bees software is essential at this point. Clearly thirty bees user base must grow big quickly in order to generate sufficient income to become self-sustaining.

Sure, initially developers (businesses) attract users (customers). A new restaurant (developers) must open its doors to attract customers (users). But ultimately it is users (customers) that make or break a business. A busy restaurant can normally find plenty of cooks because the restaurant will generate sufficient income to pay the cooks. But how would a restaurant employing some of the finest chefs in the world afford to pay their salaries without customers?

I do not pretend that this bash script option I have suggested is the single best option for every potential user of thirty bees. Rather the bash script option is an option that thirty bees should make available. Why?

I assume that at least, say, 5% of potential users of thirty bees will likely see this as the best option for them. Why?

This option would enable potential non-technical users to remarkably quickly and easily provision a new server that they had just spun up on a VPS at an ordinary ISP with with thirty bees. I estimate the installation would take no more than 15 minutes with a minimum of muss and fuss.

Yes, I am aware of thirty bees other installation options including A2 Hosting's single click using Softaculous https://www.a2hosting.com/thirty-bees-hosting. No, those solutions are not necessarily better than the one I am proposing.

If you disagree with my one or more of arguments please present me with carefully considered arguments that specifically rebut one or more of my arguments. Please neither rebut points I have not made nor misrepresent points I have made in order to, say, trot out a favorite argument of yours.

I have little patience for male technical folks who jettison their rational thinking in order to cleave to some deeply cherished yet erroneous, often inane, and almost always self-serving belief of theirs that they blindly worship. Women, on the other hand, often cannot help but follow their hearts therefore I do not mind them being irrational but I simply won't argue with them when they are. If you crave enlightened political correctness please don't engage me in discourse.

For example, if you seem to be a man and were to respond with something like, “anyone who wants what u r suggesting should use the terminal. lol.” or “Did you pull that 5% number out of thin air? Good grief. Get a grip. SMH” I would likely rip your argument to shreds and pillory you.

[Tomik]

check out cloudways its a bit more money but still its managed vps that means better security + you can change your own settings + change database/cache

[Yeku]

@Tomik I assume you did not carefully read my entire original posting. When you have a chance please do so. Then please revise your reply with the type of information I clearly and explicitly requested. Thank you.

[lesley]

To be honest non technical users are not using bash scripts. They are installing via Softaculous, A2's auto installer, or via Cloudways app launcher. Non-technical users don't generally do anything from the command line.

[Yeku]

@lesley

Thank you for responding promptly to me.

To be honest non technical users are not using bash scripts.

Sure. I am aware of that.

In 1975 non-technical users rarely used computers. Based on that, one might have erroneously assumed that the target market for computers was composed almost entirely of technical users.

They are installing via Softaculous, A2’s auto installer, or via Cloudways app launcher.

I assumed that. But that assertion ignores some salient facts.

First and foremost that assertion seems to implicitly presuppose the hypothetical bash script I suggested exists and is readily available to users. Yet—as far as I know—it does not and is not.

Your assertion immediately above seems a little like asserting that no one was using iPhones in 1995. Sure. The statement is factually correct yet obviously nonsensical.

Non-technical users don’t generally do anything from the command line.

That appears to be a valid and germane point. But again it ignores salient facts that undermine the implicit argument contained therein.

Now, please try to set your biases (preconceived ideas) aside and consider the following with an open mind. Technical experts typically seem to be rational, but in my experience they are extremely irrational when it comes to their deeply held beliefs… just like the rest of us. That is not a criticism but rather an observation. And it is certainly not an implicit ad hominem attack against you.

Copying and pasting basic commands into the command line is not nearly as difficult for ordinary users and many technical users seem to typically incorrectly believe. You might be thinking, "But I tried to teach ordinary users how to use a terminal many times and they never were able to get the hang of it!  I speak from experience!"

Technical users are typically so thoroughly ensconced in and familiar with the various technical worlds they inhabit, that they typically fail to grasp how foreign and bizarre many of the concepts they take for granted are to non-technical users. When that is coupled with the typically extremely different learning styles of technical users and most non-technical users, a chasm that makes the Grand Canyon look like a mere crack in the sidewalk opens between them.

This is neither a criticism of technical users nor of non- technical users at all. And again, it is certainly not an implicit ad ad hominem attack against you. Ok ? I have infuriated many a technical expert by attempting to disabuse them of some incorrect belief of theirs because they think I am attacking them personally. I am not attacking you at all ; I am attacking your incorrect beliefs.

With a simple screencast that shows ordinary users in verbose and explicit (two words engineers typically eschew) step-by-step manner how to open a terminal and how to enter commands into a terminal (along with an accompanying text which non-technical viewers of this screencast would copy commands from) I am confident it would be trivial to teach the majority of non-technical users interested in testing out thirty bees how to install thirty bees with the bash script (or something similar) which I have proposed.

As a technical person you probably rarely watch technical screencasts. As a non-technical person I have often watched them with rapt attention and learned much from them.

"But what if a non-technical users makes a mistake using a terminal!" Generally that is a valid concern, but in this case it is irrelevant. Why?

Spinning up new servers on a VPS is trivial. If a non-technical user were to make a mistake in the terminal when trying to install thirty bees he/she could easily destroy the server and spin up a new one. Naturally a screencast showing how to both create and destroy a server would need to be created to teach non-technical users how to do this.

Not only would the bash script I described give potential non-technical users of thirty bees the option to install quickly and easily thirty bees on one of myriad ISPs around the world, instead of being locked in to one of thirty bees partner one-click hosting solutions, it would also do something saavy salesman unfailingly look to do: empower potential customers by giving them a free education!

The best salespeople, after all, are consultants. They teach and teach and teach. They give away vast amounts of free knowledge. Why? Because, in part, people inherently tend to reciprocate with those who do something nice for them.

Empowering an ordinary non-technical person to use a command line should not be seen as an insurmountable burden—regardless of how often you might have failed at it in the past by using inappropriate teaching methodologies and tools— but instead as as a marketing opportunity to give away a free computer lesson which will make these potential non-technical users of thirty bees (who are better seen as potential customers of thirty bees) feel that they are better educated and more capable computer users ready to tackle the challenge of learning to use a new ecommerce platform (which they probably think of as a "shopping cart" or "online store")

Furthermore, in many cases I wonder if a technically savvy person would want to bother provisioning a server with thirty bees manually when he could easily run an install script on a freshly spun up a VPS ? If the script had sufficient options, it would make it faster and easier for him to accomplish the same goal. Wouldn’t it ?

thirty bees is like an exciting and promising new restaurant that lacks sufficient customers. I have provided you with a simple (and I suppose not too difficult) way to help bring some new customers into the thirty bees restaurant.

If you, or someone else, were to provide me with access to the bash script I have described (or something similar to it), I will make the screencasts mentioned above.

[lesley]

To be honest it is low on our priority list. There are generally two target demographics with software, users and developers. We are targeting both. That is why we have deals with companies to make installations easier for our users. At the same time developers can either download a package or use a CLI installer.

The market you are talking about, it does exist, but it exists in such a low number the effort at this point in our development would not make it worth it.

If you are wanting to develop such a script we would find a place for it. We could make a blog post on it and get it some exposure.

[Yeku]

@lesley

Thanks for your quick response.

To be honest it is low on our priority list.

Thank you for letting me know.

There are generally two target demographics with software, users and developers.

What other target demographics might there be? I am not being facetious. I am genuinely curious.

We are targeting both.

I suppose a venture capitalist might opine that you are attempting to create a viable two-sided market with free and open source software. The most profitable example that came to my mind was MySQL which exited for approximately $1 billion nearly a decade ago when Oracle purchased them and then began its bizarre love/hate relationship with FOSS.

Personally, I think the SaaS market is a bubble that could burst at anytime. Investors keep pouring money into SaaS startups that will likely get bought for pennies on the dollar. Salesforce benefited by getting into the game early. If the SaaS market were to burst, I suspect it would likely have a negative effect on thirty bees for reasons which I suppose are obvious to you: namely consolidation and commodization.

That is why we have deals with companies to make installations easier for our users.

I suppose that is one of the two primary reasons. As for what I suppose is the other primary reason I have read that tactic referred to as, "Give away the disease and sell the cure." In other words, "Oh, our software is too difficult for you to install? Gee. I am really sorry about that. But if you sign up with one of our partners..." That is not an ad hominem attack but rather an attempt to disabuse you of employing misleading half truths.

I suppose most people reading this forum are typical savvy, creative early adopters who will see right past that sort of, how shall I phrase it, um, "marketing-speak."

At the same time developers can either download a package or use a CLI installer.

I see.

The market you are talking about, it does exist, but it exists in such a low number the effort at this point in our development would not make it worth it.

I see.

If you are wanting to develop such a script we would find a place for it. We could make a blog post on it and get it some exposure.

If I am interested I will contact you.

In the meantime, I would like to see thirty bees succeed because I have not yet found a better FOSS ecommerce solution. To that end I urge you to engage in frank and forthright discussions in this forum because I suppose if you were to do otherwise you might tend alienate potential users and developers.

At this point thirty bees seems like a young child who it behooves to be friendly towards nearly everyone. A more mature such as the organization behind Prestashop can afford to alienate users and developers as they attempt to monetize the large and successful two-sided market they have created.

I guess that perhaps their management sees the "hand writing on the wall" (the likely consolidation and commodization of ecommerce solutions over the next few years) and hopes to sell Prestashop in the near future for a high price based on strong revenues they hope to produce over the next 12 to 18 months.

[Yeku]

@mdekker

Have you seen the vagrantfile we have added to the repository?

No.

It could be a first step to make an automated deployment on a VPS easier.

Thanks for taking to time to explain that to me.

[lesley]

Its not that we are trying to create a two sided market. That market creates itself really.

I think you are really off base with the software being too difficult to install. Its not. Its as simple as Wordpress, Joomla, PrestaShop, et al. None of which offer shell scripts. To be 100% honest, offering a shell script is a bad way to entice people to use the software. It promotes bad practices. Shell scripts were all the rage until real replacements came out like Docker and Vagrant.

I also think you are way off base in the whole sign up with one of our partners We currently have 3 hosting partners. thirty bees is currently available as a free install on over 1000 hosts. It does not look like we are cornering that market and trying to keep people from installing thirty bees if they do not use one of our partners. Actually, that is quite not the case. Our two advertised partners now have custom installers. I made it a point personally before we partnered with anyone for hosting to reach out to Softaculous to be able to be included in their installer. If I were trying to stunt the thirty bees market and push users to our partners, that would have been a monumental bad move this early on.

We also believe in FOSS, that is why we have started thirty bees. I am not sure if you have read around our blog or our other postings, but know two things for sure. thirty bees will never sell code we develop, it will always be FOSS. We will never be a SaaS platform. Both we feel are against the very nature of OSS.

We don't want to alienate anyone, we never will. Well, almost. There are toxic community members that need to stay toxic and never switch to thirty bees. I am ok with alienating them.

I also think you need to look at things from our perspective. What I see is one person in a forum asking for something. I look in my other window and I see bug reports and feature requests. We are a small team currently, a small team trying to keep up. We are starting to get momentum and help from contributors such as @Traumflug @roband7 @Occam and @yaniv14 (and anyone else who I forgot). We have to look at each task we could do and weigh it. Sure we could spend all of our time doing the wrong tasks, where would that put us? No where. Or we could objectively look at the tasks, talk to the community and see the need for the tasks. What part of our mission is, is to be guided by the community. We are not store owners, we are developers. If there is enough need expressed for something it will end up on our roadmap. The more help we get with things, the faster the roadmap is traveled.

[Yeku]

@lesley

Its not that we are trying to create a two sided market. That market creates itself really.

I see.

I think you are really off base with the software being too difficult to install. Its not.

Your assertion reminded me of the beginning of a Talmudic argument which typically starts with a simple declaration…. and then ends up blossoming into a fabulous web of intricate and sublime arguments. I can envision rabbis ready to pounce on the implicit indirect object hanging off the end of that declaration.

That is to say, too difficult for whom?

Yes, it is too difficult to install for an ordinary non-technical user. No, it is not too difficult to install for an ordinary technical user.

Your vague assertions have tended to cloud this discussion.

Its as simple as Wordpress, Joomla, PrestaShop, et al.

I can see the ad copy now, "Try thirty bees now! Getting our application running on your own $2.50/month server is just as difficult for non-technical users as our competitors! But if you pay 50% to several hundred percent more per month to one of our partners you can avoid the hassle that is not a hassle."

None of which offer shell scripts.

And all of which earn money through self-hosting and/or referrals.

Why not just be up front and explain to your customers you need to earn money from the website?

To be 100% honest, offering a shell script is a bad way to entice people to use the software. It promotes bad practices.

That assertion is subject to debate. If non-technical users were provided with a screencast which showed them how to carefully ensure a particular shell script was safe to use it could actually be considered a good practice because it would empower non-technical users to ensure they were actually installing applications from sources which had been vetted.

Shell scripts were all the rage until real replacements came out like Docker and Vagrant.

Donald Trump is all the rage today in much of the USA. Fads come and go. Do not slavishly chase after the latest bright shiny object.

Please define the phrase "real replacements." Also, you did not distinguish between, say, Docker official repositories and unofficial ones.

Shell scripts really work. That is to say, the are real solutions. You might consider them to be obsolete but I assure you they are not. The official thirty bees Github section could contain such an installation shell script but that seems unlikely, not for any sort of legitimate technical consideration, but for an occluded business consideration.

I also think you are way off base in the whole sign up with one of our partners We currently have 3 hosting partners.

Good for you! I hope you guys hook up with more hosting partners. A simple little light-hearted statement like, «We want you to know that we earn a commission each month you pay for your hosting with ISP XYZ. These monies helps us keep the lights on and fill our bowls with instant ramen so we can keep improving thirty bees!» would go a long way towards building trust with your users.

thirty bees is currently available as a free install on over 1000 hosts.

I see.

It does not look like we are cornering that market

Please do not take umbrage with me for this assertion but: you really need to focus more on your choice of words.

I did not suggest that you are cornering any market. Steering users is inherently different than cornering the market. The Hunt brothers did not try to steer silver buyers and sellers, they actually tried to corner the market on silver. You guys are currently way too small to corner any market of consequence.

and trying to keep people from installing thirty bees if they do not use one of our partners.

Ugh. That is another murky half truth. Your business model is clearly based in part on generating revenue from these partners. Therefore you have a vested interest in steering customers towards your partners. The truth of the matter is as clear as day.

Actually, that is quite not the case. Our two advertised partners now have custom installers.

I see.

I made it a point personally before we partnered with anyone for hosting to reach out to Softaculous to be able to be included in their installer. If I were trying to stunt the thirty bees market and push users to our partners, that would have been a monumental bad move this early on.

I am unsure if you actually believe the incredibly nonsensical assertion you made above, but I will assume that you actually do.

Freemium is based on giving lots of stuff away for free. (After all, the root of the word is "free"). Ideally, you guys would earn a commission from every install on every ISP, but you can’t. Therefore, as a second choice you guys made your install free to a huge number of ISPs by piggybacking on the large market share of Softaculous.

Trotting out an obvious marketing weakness as an indication of your inherently honorable intentions was clever but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to burnish your reputation.

Again please take this as a constructive criticism: you really need to work on communicating clearly and honestly. It is not merely me who you are at the very least subconsciously attempting to mislead but to some extent you are misleading yourself. That is a scary place to be because eventually you will essentially say that up is down and black is white.

Our thoughts not only influence our choice of words, our choice of words actually influence our thoughts.

We also believe in FOSS, that is why we have started thirty bees.

I see.

I am not sure if you have read around our blog or our other postings, but know two things for sure. Thirty bees will never sell code we develop, it will always be FOSS. We will never be a SaaS platform. Both we feel are against the very nature of OSS.

Yes. I have read those postings. Frankly they are less heartwarming and less credible in light of this discussion we are having. Yes. That is a direct criticism which—I am sorry to opine—you deserve.

We don’t want to alienate anyone, we never will. Well, almost. There are toxic community members that need to stay toxic and never switch to thirty bees. I am ok with alienating them.

Jewish sages (great rabbis) generally find the the inclusive, free speech ideals rooted in the European Enlightenment to be inherently wicked for they necessarily promote lashon hara (evil speech). As far as Jewish sages are concerned, free speech (but not speech itself) is inherently evil. Therefore, as far as I am concerned, feel free to ban me or anyone you like. This is your business, not mine.

By the way, Jewish sages differ starkly from Christian sages in this matter. It is actually a commandment for Jews to hate many types of wicked people. Christians tend to focus on love, Jews on justice. I hate wicked people without giving it a second thought. Christians seem to be taught to abhor hate. Not us Jews. We embrace it.

I also think you need to look at things from our perspective. What I see is one person in a forum asking for something.

That "something" is what I spilled much ink over lucidly arguing in favor of, and which you failed to properly reply to. From my vantage point you lost the argument because you failed almost completely to refute my arguments.

I look in my other window and I see bug reports and feature requests. We are a small team currently, a small team trying to keep up.

I believe you are busy. I really do. But as I argue below, the most critical task right now for thirty bees is almost certainly on-boarding new customers, not improving buggy PHP code or adding new features. How long would this script take to get written? 10 hours? Get it done, put it up on your thirty bees Github and use it to improve your on-boarding efforts. The hamburgers and fries your restaurant serve need some work. Sure. But sell the food cheap and make it easy for customers to walk in, sit down, get served, pay, and get out, before focusing too much on improving your food quality.

Recurring revenue is nice in theory, but thirty bees needs more users very quickly, not a little trickle of recurring revenue. Like I opined previously, a restaurant with great chefs will not be able to afford to pay them without customers. Non-paying customers can help spread the word to bring in more non-paying customers who could eventually constitute a significant two-sided market.

$2/month in recurring revenue for 3 years is less than one $79 add-on. And I did not mention hourly consulting. You are familiar with consulting. Aren't you? That's what pays your bills, currently isn't it? As you well know, consulting is a huge potential money-maker. Most of your non-paying customers will never pay a penny for consulting… but they might happily help you to land a big fish (lucrative client) by providing thirty bees with the best form of marketing that exists: word-of-mouth recommendations provided by satisfied customers who trust the organization they are doing business with.

You guys need to very quickly win what is essentially a popularity contest, not collect what is essentially some loose change from a small group of users. Your most critical challenge now is not developing a better ecommerce platform. The current buggy Prestashop PHP code is likely probably actually far better than it needs to be for the vast majority of potential new users of thirty bees, at least initially.

Each new customer is probably worth at least $10 to you, even if they never pay thirty bees a penny because of the network effect that word-of-mouth advertising creates. As you surely know, a single advertisement is generally worthless. Potential new customers often need to be bombarded with messages over and over and over again to finally on board them. Superbowl television ads are inconsequential in comparison to positive word-of-mouth.

We are starting to get momentum and help from contributors such as @Traumflug @roband7 @Occam and @yaniv14 (and anyone else who I forgot).

Great! Appoint one of them as project manager and recuse yourself from your day-to-day oversight except probably to settle disputes. Developers are human. And they often cling tenaciously to ridiculous viewpoints despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I am trying to think of an example to point out to you, but regrettably nothing comes to mind at the moment. (Yes, that I was being facetious. But try to take my criticism as primarily constructive albeit harsh. This thread is not meant to tear you down but open your eyes so you can help build yourself up).

Someone needs to adjudicate disputes and ultimately even dismiss recalcitrant developers. And I guess that someone probably needs to be you. It’s an unpleasant job that will likely win you lifelong enemies, but it must be done carefully and judiciously yet swiftly. Very, very swiftly. Unsettled disputes are like poison that festers. Possibly find an informal trusted mediator to help you if necessary.

We have to look at each task we could do and weigh it.

Someone needs to, but not necessarily you. You need to focus on marketing now, not development. thirty bees marketing efforts are meager at the moment.

Sure we could spend all of our time doing the wrong tasks, where would that put us? No where.

Or where you are now. Which is on an exhilarating ride on a venture that is apparently succeeding but I suppose is likely to fail. You are confused about what potential users (customers) need. Most of your potential customers are little fish (not the big ones you dream about). Those little customers need to metaphorically fill up your football stadium to attract the big fish who will purchase the expensive luxury boxes.

Some of those little fish want to pay $2.50, add their 200 products to a store, set it up with PayPal and maybe Authorize.net and stop paying $29/month to Shopify whereas other little fish are people who want to start a web store, but do not want to pay $29/month to Shopify to do so. And yes, some of those little fish are stuck using a buggy unsupported version of an ecommerce platform from big, bad, evil Prestashop.

In Herb Kelleher’s book called «Nuts!» which is about Southwest Airlines he recalls a meeting with, I believe shareholders, who complained Southwest Airlines was not charging enough money vis-a-vis other airlines. Herb Kelleher responded with something like we are not competing against other airlines, we are competing against the Greyhound bus lines. Make it cheap and make it easy. And iron out the bugs. Cut back on the features for now and endure the wrath of your developers. It is ok if they despise you as long as they respect you and trust you.

Or we could objectively look at the tasks,

Sitting in an echo chamber having developer-speak rattle through your head is not objective, it is subjective. You know the adage, "When you are a hammer every problem looks like a nail" I suggest you move away from development for now.

And go find some other people to talk to. Many developers are like mad geniuses. They have some really warped sensibilities.

Find some honest to goodness salesmen who sell, say, shoes or cars. Have them look at thirty bees website and then LISTEN to them critique your website. The thirty bees website might look good to your eyes, but I doubt a true salesmen would be impressed with it at all.

To my eyes it does a poor job of on-boarding little fish or big fish. It is a bunch of boring boilerplate with no appealing call to action.

talk to the community and see the need for the tasks.

By most accounts Steve Jobs was a nasty guy, but he did introduce some very successful products. One thing he was adamant about was largely ignoring customer requests. Listening to your customers is important, but actually following their advice and suggestions is great way to go out of business.

Generally it is best not to give customers what they say they want because most of them do not even know what they want in the first place. In other words, think of customers as if they were women. No. That is not sexist. It’s simply good advice. Ever been shopping with a woman. It's usually an adventure in limitless possibilities and unrealistic fantasies.

Figure out what customers need and are willing to pay for. Then give them that. Did anyone ever come up to Steve Jobs and say, "I want to ditch my IBM Selectric typewriter for a Macintosh computer" I doubt it. Listen to customers. Sure. But feel free to ignore them. Think of it as a form of benign neglect.

Your current customers, lots of developers apparently, want all sort of bells and whistles. You would do best to explain to them that after you have on-boarded your 100,000th customer you will work hard with them to create the precious bells and whistles they crave, but for now you need a process that enables people to go live with a website for $2.50/month with only a little more time and effort than it takes to sign up for a PayPal account, find and buy a low-priced plane ticket, and book a nice Airbnb in some exotic location.

What part of our mission is, is to be guided by the community.

None. Zero.

You and whoever else is in charge guide must decide. Everyone else get zero votes. They get input. Sure. And you must listen to them. But if you can overcome their arguments then ignore them as you see fit. That includes me too.

You must not become a tyrant. (Easier said than done, I learned the hard way). You need to either run a benign dictatorship or a benign oligarchy but certainly not anything remotely resembling a democracy (a polite name for mob rule). As a Jew I must, but regrettably do not, follow halacha (Jewish law). All people must follow either Noahide laws or Jewish laws as the case may be. Otherwise paganism (think of the Huns, Goths, and Visigoths rampaging through Europe) naturally takes over.

thrity bees is not a community. thirty bees is an organization (at least to some extent) that has customers and developers. The whole absurd notion of online communities is not something I want to comment on here in detail, but I will say that anything that is exclusively online is almost certainly an association and almost certainly not a community. The sooner you internalize that the better off you will be.

We are not store owners, we are developers.

I think it is better to think that "they" are developers whereas "you" are now primarily a marketer (and supervisor of developers) who might get back to developing one day if you have the time and inclination.

You are clearly not even close to being a pure engineer. You are apparently a sharp guy who probably taught himself to code, sell, and do all sorts of things. You were probably a terrible formal student who probably hated school and had a very difficult relationship with many of your teachers. Perhaps you didn't graduate from high school. Pure engineers have to build things just like pure musicians have to play music. You are eclectic. Embrace it and use it to your advantage. But labeling yourself a developer is limiting and foolhardy.

If there is enough need expressed for something it will end up on our roadmap.

thirty bees will likely not exist in any meaningful way 24 months from now if you embrace that nonsensical notion. Democracy does not work in politics in business or anywhere for that matter. So-called liberal democracies exist and financially flourish in large part because tiny yet extremely powerful groups of men are able to successfully circumvent so-called democratic institutions. In an actual democracy, interminable arguments ensure precious little is ever accomplished, feuds typically fester, and that which does get done usually gets done badly.

The only reason the USSR lasted as long as it did, despite it's inane social and economic policies, was that democratic governance was jettisoned not long after the Russian revolution. Russia is doing much better these days (by Russian standards) under a terrifying but reasonably effective and generally fairly benevolent dictator who, you probably do not know, is very friendly towards and very supportive of observant Jews in Russia. It is extremely unlikely any pogroms will be tolerated in Russia as long a President Vladimir Putin is in office.

The Jewish people would never had made it out of the desert if Moses had asked the people what they wanted. He had to impose G-d’s will on them. And we never would have made it across the Jordan into Jericho without Joshua leading us. No way. No how. But Moses and Joshua were profits. You are not. You need to follow either Jewish law (if you are Jewish) or a Noahide set of laws if you are not Jewish.

The more help we get with things, the faster the roadmap is traveled.

It guess it is time for you to dust off that old copy of the "Mythical Man Month" you have laying around somewhere so you can quickly abandon that ridiculous idea. Usually when it comes to development less is more. Get two or three top notch developers working together as a team, and they will code circles around poor devs working under apparently pathetic management at Prestashop. And do not let the devs subsist too much on caffeine, chocolate, and sugar. Force them to eat real food. Even go so far as to buy them lunch if you need to. In 20 years they will likely thank you profusely for making them eat real food.

Pair programming (or trio programming) which can be done remotely and developer-narrated screencasts of all of the code they have just written at the end of each coding session are critical components. In my experience developer comments within their code is usually remarkably inadequate. But a 10 minute developer-narrated screen cast is typically extremely illuminating and far more than adequate even to bring a brand new developer right up to speed. 2 or 3 top flight devs. That is all you need for now. Turn them into minor celebrities. Put videos of their developer-narrated screencasts on the front page of thirty bees. Really. Do it. We typically heap accolades on athletes and entertainers while paying scant attention to ordinary people who accomplish meaningful work. Let your devs bathe in the limelight.

Also make them feel important by protecting them from as many distractions as is feasible. 3 to 4 hour uninterrupted coding sessions are critically important. No phone calls, no text messages, no social media, no nothing other than 2 or 3 top notch devs arguing with (well, actually often yelling at) one another as they wrestle over the code on the 42 inch monitor they are staring at.

The other fundamental problem you guys will likely never address is PHP. It’s a terrible language for developing anything beyond small scale projects. No PHP 7 has not solved PHP's fundamental problems. They won't likely ever be completely solved. Something like Ruby or Python or one of the myriad other languages favored by actual software engineers (and I mean actual software engineers) would really help. You guys will likely never implement such a solution for an entire rewrite because thirty bees would need copious financing to accomplish a rewrite in such a language.

However, perhaps you guys might develop new modules in one of the above mentioned languages. You have probably become inured to just how bad PHP actually is. If you have not done it before, you might watch some YouTube videos which demonstrate basic coding in Lisp or a language derived from Lisp. If you were to do so you would likely quickly see how vastly superior it is to PHP. Trying to avoid writing bugs in PHP is difficult and requires developers to be disciplined even when using modern PHP frameworks. (Modern PHP frameworks are, of course, very useful).Whereas in Lisp it is not quite trivial, but actually almost difficult for a true software engineer to write bugs. And bugs in Lisp are much easier to track down than in PHP because in Lisp bugs look ugly whereas in PHP they tend to not to be immediately obvious. Lisp has an inherent logical power and beauty that PHP does not.

[lesley]

I cannot tell if you are trying to be intelligent and unintendedly coming off as insulting or if you are just trying to be long winded and insulting.

Let me start with the shell scripts and why they are bad. Installing the software to run a server is only a quarter of the battle. These are not Wordpress sites or static Jekyll sites we are talking about. We are talking about sites that take payments and host personal information for all of your users. Depending on the products that are sold the personal information can be damaging. Needing a shell script to install a simple PHP application and a server means you do not know how to manage a server. This is a bad practice. Environments like this are fine when you are running in your localhost sandbox. But not for applications running on the web. I am not going to teach our users bad practices to save them a few dollars a month. That is a great reason for managed hosting. Updates get pushed to packages that need updates. Not all updates are as easy as apt get update. Some require configuration. Some of the packages we recommend require good configurations or they expose sites to security risks. One I can think of off the top of my head is REDIS. Setup improperly it exposes the whole server, https://www.itnews.com.au/news/insecure-redis-caches-abused-for-linux-server-attacks-435968 It, like other packages needs more than a simple shell script. It needs hardening, updates, security patches, and configuring. Someone that has trouble installing a PHP application that installs like every other PHP application in the world has no business running their own internet facing server. There is a reason there are people that are paid to configure them.

I do not see a need to disclose about the terms of our hosting partnerships. It is an industry standard. It would be like every commercial on TV saying they bought the space to either change your mind or sell you a product. Its the status quo, we partner with companies that we earn commissions from to help us grow the software to help merchants be successful. I am missing the point where this is a big deal.

If you feel that hosts are a big portion of the monetization strategy you would be wrong. To be totally honest they are one of the smallest means to monetization. Our strategy lies in other places that are more profitable. That is why we help users no matter what host and try to refer users to the best hosts possible.

I think you miss the whole idea of freemium. What you claim to be freemium is not freemium. You might read this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemium We aren't going to have tiers of the software. We will have just one version, free. Not limited and you can pay more to get more features, just free. As far as it being a marketing weakness, it is not. We are a company just getting started.

To be honest I skimmed the last half of what you wrote, so I am not going to address it point by point, I am just going to blanket address it.

We are not going to abandon PHP for another language. It does not work. The other languages do not work in a large scale. Our forum is in node. We now have to maintain several forum modules because in the 4 months that we have taken it up they have become abandoned. We are not going to strap ourselves down with a ton of technical debt. PHP is not the hot, hip, js language of the week. It is the language that powers the web hands down. You might think it is declining, but it is not.

I actually should do more delegation, you were right on that. I have a feeling I should rely on you to write a shell script to install thirty bees. I think you would do a good job with it. You seem to be dedicated to task with little or no reward and you like to write. When you finish with it, shoot me an email. Also, if you want to do the screencast and write a blog post you are welcome to as well. We can host the script in our repo and post the post to our blog. If that does not suit you, go to the feature request section, add it in, and lets get to voting on it. We are sorting through them this month to see what is going to make it in the next version.

[moy2010]

dftt

[Yeku]

@lesley Thanks for taking the time to respond to me. I appreciate that. If I am interested in taking you up on your offer I will contact you.

[Traumflug]

have you guys considered creating a bash script

No, because it exists as part of the testsuite already:

sh php install-dev/index_cli.php --newsletter=0 --language=en --country=en --domain=localhost --db_name=thirtybees --db_user=root --db_password=mypassword --db-clear=1 --db_create=1 --name="Bash installed shop" --email=me@localhost --firstname=My --lastname=Hero --password=superhero Adjust parameters to your needs, of course. And using a distribution, change install-dev to install.

[dynambee]

@Yeku Use your time more wisely. In the time it took you to type up those bloated & nonsensical replies you could have written the bash script yourself and contributed it to the project.

[Yeku]

@dynambee

I agree with your sentiment but not your conclusion.

By getting past the 建前 (appearance) to the 本音 (root of the matter) I eliminated thirty bees as a solution. Technically thirty bees seems superior to Prestashop, Magento, Woocommerce, and Open Cart, but technical superiority must be weighed against other considerations. And no, I am not looking forward to wrestling with a buggy ecommerce application.

I wish I had had a forum like this to write such " bloated & nonsensical replies" before wasting over a year of my life living in a land and studying its spoken and written language with the most polite and helpful pagans I have ever had the displeasure of living with.

Any decedent of ancestors who at least once subscribed to an Abrahamic faith who willing lives in Japan—excepting times of duress, say, like when the guys from the Mier Yeshiva briefly sojourned in Kansai (in Kobe) before landing in Shanghai—is likely unwittingly embracing paganism and its concomitant blackness. Remember, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

Like most online forums, this one is a means of communication that tends to cause like-minded people to reinforce one another's preexisting erroneous beliefs causing them to arrive at many erroneous conclusions. For example, this is not a community. Not even close. It is very likely a decade hence few of you will have any significant contact with one another.

頑張ってください (good luck) and おおきに (thanks)

[Tomik]

hahaha jezus f**k why did i read all of that

mdekker EDIT: censor word

[dynambee]

You guys actually read his posts? I got about two lines in. No time for drivel.

@Yeku, Your attempt at Japanese is pretty poor, or maybe your Japanese is fine but your English is poor. Works out the same in the end I guess.

Back to work for me.

[Tomik]

well it started normally then it went into weird things