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Show HN: Thirty Bees – A PrestaShop 1.6 fork

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Re: Show HN: Thirty Bees – A PrestaShop 1.6 fork

#31

Post by navs »

Walf wrote: post #29
hardwaresofton wrote: post #23

Can anyone suggest a good writeup on the problems with magento and the existing solutions? I honestly thought storefronts were basically a solved problem, with options like Shopify, WooCommerce+Wordpress, existing.

Have you ever worked with Magento? With 1.8+ I found customisation very tedious and unpleasant, documentation virtually non-existent, 3rd party code unreliable, and CMS functionality lacking. Perhaps it's come a long way since then but I wouldn't bet on it.

Good bet. Magento 2 isn't any easier to develop for.

As for the CMS, Magento has recently purchased Bluefoot CMS which I take to mean they are looking at improving the CMS experience, maybe just for enterprise sigh

Re: Show HN: Thirty Bees – A PrestaShop 1.6 fork

#33

Post by themaveness »

sandGorgon wrote: post #28
themaveness wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand it, but look at it from this point of view. PrestaShop 1.7 requires everyone to purchase new themes and modules. The code base is extremely messed up. We are taking the PrestaShop 1.6 codebase that has 10k modules and 2k themes as a fork. If we go changing the database handling off the bat we are going to lose the compatibility that might make us successful. We aren't a project starting from scratch with…

hmm.. i wont say I'm not disappointed. i thought you guys were going to rewrite a lot of the core because everything is broken anyway. since 1.7 is already breaking backward compatibility.. maybe it was an opportunity to do it right.

A simplified version of the roadmap is this. We are going to fix bugs and stabilize the platform where people can sell without having daily bug fixes.

After that we are going to pool our knowledge, resources, and community to figure out the path forward. I will be totally honest with you, I am half developer half CSR person. I hear what my clients want and I try to make it happen. I am not the only person in on this though. I am one of many and very flexible. We are going to do a rewrite after we have stabilized things and we are going to do it right. We are going to look at the options out there and figure out where to go.

At this point it looks like I am leading things. I am the reluctant leader. I am the guy that realizes that my ideas might not be the best ideas and I want to hear yours. I just feel in the beginning it is about stabilizing what is there. I think if we spent 6 months rewriting everything we would lose an important window.

Tonight I am actually setting up the feature voting for our site. This is how I think things with a community need to be handled. There are going to be nay-sayers that stifle things because they are new and unfamiliar. This is always going to happen. But if we are transparent and add features by simple voting then no one can really argue with the logic. I have my ideas, but I am not the arbitrator of what will be included. I really want this to be a community project. I want the merchants and the developers to speak what they want and I want to make something that reflects the ideas of both.

Re: Show HN: Thirty Bees – A PrestaShop 1.6 fork

#34

Post by zebra9978 »

themaveness wrote: post #27
zebra9978 wrote: post #21

where is the github repo ... the github organization ? there is no link to any source code anywhere. It may be an oversight, or a hesitation to open it too early. But here at HN, it gives me an uncomfortable feeling for a cabal that may bait-and-switch. For example, I have zero idea of whether you are going to use a MIT license or Apache or whatever. Why is this so secretive ? We have been looking to throw our weight…

We have the GH organization created. Its all private for the moment. Basically we have never forked a software like this before. We are going over the license and trying to make sure all our i's are dotted and our t's are crossed so we do not end up in a lawsuit. The project will totally be open source, it will be under the same license that the code is currently under OSL 3.0. We aren't trying to bait and switch I p…

thank you for clarifying that.

However, I think after reading the comments below that the scope of the project is to maintain backward compatibility with the agencies/authors of plugins in the Prestashop ecosystem.

What we were looking for is something that was trying to do new in the webshop ecosystem. Even I misjudged your "lack of MVC" comment below. My perception was that you were bringing together a lot of people from the Prestashop community and building something new with modern day best practices.

Using an ORM is the smallest of them. MVC is another. asset pipeline could have been a third.

But if you attempt any of this.. you will risk breaking backwards compatibility with any number of plugins out there. Which is why I'm doubtful you will try to do anything new. The way I see it is that you will maintain a bugfixed release of Prestashop 1.6 with incremental changes to support the plugin ecosystem out there.

Personally, I think you are aiming too low. You want to make something better than Prestashop 1.7 which is why your holy grail is to maintain backward compatibility and fix some plugins (like the Paypal one you talk about). But from what I have seen, your real competition is the Shopify of the world. Even Magento 2. Not sure if you have seen the docs, but Magento 2 has started adopting best practices out there:

1. composer for dependency management - http://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.0/install-gde/prereq/in...

2. database migrations - http://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.0/install-gde/install/c...

Re: Show HN: Thirty Bees – A PrestaShop 1.6 fork

#36

Post by themaveness »

zebra9978 wrote: post #34
themaveness wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have the GH organization created. Its all private for the moment. Basically we have never forked a software like this before. We are going over the license and trying to make sure all our i's are dotted and our t's are crossed so we do not end up in a lawsuit. The project will totally be open source, it will be under the same license that the code is currently under OSL 3.0. We aren't trying to bait and switch I p…

thank you for clarifying that. However, I think after reading the comments below that the scope of the project is to maintain backward compatibility with the agencies/authors of plugins in the Prestashop ecosystem. What we were looking for is something that was trying to do new in the webshop ecosystem. Even I misjudged your "lack of MVC" comment below. My perception was that you were bringing together a lot of peopl…

Let me be honest, I am winging a lot of this because you guys are asking great questions. I think I am either not expressing our plan adequately or it is a bad plan. I don't know, its late friday night and I have been having a couple of drinks after a hard week.

We are going to end up rewriting things with better practices. This is something that HAS to happen. Its not the first thing we are going to do though. We need to build a userbase in the cheapest, quickest, easiest way possible. Not having to scrap everything, getting a more stable shop with new features is attractive to people.

I am purely looking at this from a business sense. Yes, we can take the code, we can convert it over 6 months to be something totally different, more robust, better designed, just bad ass code. In that time we can miss the window and not have as many shops migrate over to our platform. Thats not a good strategy in my mind. I see great ideas all the time on GH that have been abandoned because they are not profitable. We are trying to cut a middle line deal here in the beginning. We want to make a profit to pay for expenses and we want to give merchants what they want.

Once you have users in a platform it is easier to get them into a big upgrade than to try to get users from scratch, or get the to migrate. I realize (I think) you are looking at this from a purely code / application development stand point. Look at it from a business stand point. Merchants generally look at two things when evaluating a platform. Is my payment gateway accepted and are my shipping options accepted. If we break these things out the gate we will either be stuck writing all of these modules, or we will just lose those customers. On the other hand if we get them to migrate and have a grand plan later, the agencies and companies that keep up these modules will rewrite them. I am trying to mix logical business with logical development to come up with a successful plan.

Re: Show HN: Thirty Bees – A PrestaShop 1.6 fork

#37

Post by themaveness »

chrismorgan wrote: post #35

Argh! You’ve hijacked the Space key (which is supposed to be for scrolling) to open your weird, well-hidden navigation! … admittedly, I wouldn’t have even found the navigation if I hadn’t pressed Space.

I can own that, it was me. We decided to launch this on Wednesday and I am a poor designer. I needed something to quickly get up as a page to explain to people what is going on. So I grabbed a Jekyll theme and went to town. Sorry about that, I am kind of at fault. Here is the theme I used though, http://jekyllthemes.org/themes/space-jekyll-template/

Re: Show HN: Thirty Bees – A PrestaShop 1.6 fork

#38

Post by zebra9978 »

themaveness wrote: post #36
zebra9978 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thank you for clarifying that. However, I think after reading the comments below that the scope of the project is to maintain backward compatibility with the agencies/authors of plugins in the Prestashop ecosystem. What we were looking for is something that was trying to do new in the webshop ecosystem. Even I misjudged your "lack of MVC" comment below. My perception was that you were bringing together a lot of peopl…

Let me be honest, I am winging a lot of this because you guys are asking great questions. I think I am either not expressing our plan adequately or it is a bad plan. I don't know, its late friday night and I have been having a couple of drinks after a hard week. We are going to end up rewriting things with better practices. This is something that HAS to happen. Its not the first thing we are going to do though. We ne…

look i understand your struggle. but you will HAVE to make a call. your points below about "not having to worry about zero days like wordpress" and "not having an MVC" is incompatible with your statemnt of "we will do bugfixes for next 6 months and go from there".

I would even go to the extent of questioning any success you think you will have with the bugfix approach.

Prestashop inc has 9 million USD of funding. Your reason of existence will vanish the day that Prestashop fixes the few bugs that you have. What do you think will happen then ? Will you yourself continue on this fork... or will you say "oh well, the Paypal module works on prestashop 1.7 again"

If you are doing this, then do this for the reason you want to do it subconsciously - all the MVC stuff you are dreaming about.

>Once you have users in a platform it is easier to get them into a big upgrade than to try to get users from scratch, or get the to migrate.

There is zero incentive to stay. The advantages of your "new" platform are so minimal that people will instead make and buy new plugins for 1.7 . In fact sorry for being blunt, but the existence of your fork is just as long as it takes for all agencies to port their code to Prestashop 1.7.

If your users migrate, they will force you to never break compatibility. So you will basically become Prestashop 1.8 . There is no possibility of a grand plan later.

Re: Show HN: Thirty Bees – A PrestaShop 1.6 fork

#39

Post by themaveness »

zebra9978 wrote: post #38
themaveness wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me be honest, I am winging a lot of this because you guys are asking great questions. I think I am either not expressing our plan adequately or it is a bad plan. I don't know, its late friday night and I have been having a couple of drinks after a hard week. We are going to end up rewriting things with better practices. This is something that HAS to happen. Its not the first thing we are going to do though. We ne…

look i understand your struggle. but you will HAVE to make a call. your points below about "not having to worry about zero days like wordpress" and "not having an MVC" is incompatible with your statemnt of "we will do bugfixes for next 6 months and go from there". I would even go to the extent of questioning any success you think you will have with the bugfix approach. Prestashop inc has 9 million USD of funding. You…

I really think you are pulling an outsider looking in on this. PrestaShop HAD 9m in funding. It was wasted on deploying a cloud which is being shut down on Feb 1. It was wasted on a myriad of other things.

As someone that works in depth with PrestaShop, very in depth, I don't think they can do it. I talk to the founder regularly, I actually emailed him and let him know we were forking. I believe in that kind of courtesy still.

Let me ask you a simple question that might change your mind about things. How many developers do you think work on PrestaShop? Currently the company has about 120 employees. 4. There are 4 core developers. Out of 120 employees 4 developers. I know all of them. I respect them. I don't agree with them sometimes, but jesus I know they are regular guys in a shitty position.

I think the bug fixing approach will work. Maybe it won't. That is what I am betting on. Like I mentioned before, I am just one person in a machine being driven by other people. Sign up to our mailing list. When we release the code as OS we are going to have a gitter, we can all get in it and air our opinions and hash out a way forward. I am expressing my ideas not necessarily the ideas of the project. I will argue my case and if I lose I am going to do what I can to help the idea that wins. To me this is what being a community is about. We are working with a product that is under a totalitarian regime I feel. I am not leading people out of one into another. I am the first to say I don't have the best ideas. We want more collaboration. We want people from outside the Prestashop ecosphere to come in and give ideas. In the end these are things that will help us.

Re: Show HN: Thirty Bees – A PrestaShop 1.6 fork

#40

Post by zebra9978 »

themaveness wrote: post #39
zebra9978 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

look i understand your struggle. but you will HAVE to make a call. your points below about "not having to worry about zero days like wordpress" and "not having an MVC" is incompatible with your statemnt of "we will do bugfixes for next 6 months and go from there". I would even go to the extent of questioning any success you think you will have with the bugfix approach. Prestashop inc has 9 million USD of funding. You…

I really think you are pulling an outsider looking in on this. PrestaShop HAD 9m in funding. It was wasted on deploying a cloud which is being shut down on Feb 1. It was wasted on a myriad of other things. As someone that works in depth with PrestaShop, very in depth, I don't think they can do it. I talk to the founder regularly, I actually emailed him and let him know we were forking. I believe in that kind of court…

very well.

could you atleast put up the gitter and allow us to sign up there. mailing list feels very "commercial"

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