Are you wondering where thirty bees is going to go from here? Hey, so are we! We have been putting the pen to paper lately and coming up with a long term plan for the thirty bees software. As a merchant or developer it is rather precarious to depend on software, but have no idea of what the actual plans are. We here have been in that situation before and we have decided that we are not going to treat our community that way. We want to be upfront and transparent about the future as much as possible. So lets get started!
thirty bees 1.0.x
We are freezing the features for 1.0.x. Unless there is a small feature that is of great need to the community we are going to freeze the core of the software. This does not mean that we are freezing the modules or the community theme. The modules especially might get new features. The community theme, it depends. What it depends on are the trends of the internet. We won’t let the front end of the software stagnate just because of a feature freeze. WE will still keep up with the latest trends and keep the theme current with the standards of the internet and SEO.
Version 1.0.x will be officially supported with updates and bug fixes until Aug 1, 2019
thirty bees 1.1.x
We are starting to plan for 1.1.x this month. Remember the feature request area? We have not forgotten about it. This month we are going to start going through the feature requests and organizing them into what can be integrated into the 1.1.x core. Some of the requests are better served for modules, while other need to be put in the core. We are going to do a sort first to accept / decline features. Then after that sort we will do another sort for core or module. As much as we would like to include every feature, its just not something that is feasible, especially for the features with very limited use cases. If you haven’t been to our feature request area lately now would be the perfect time to go and vote on some features. This month we are going to figure out the best way to represent a development path for 1.1.x and share it with the community. A document where everyone can see the changes that are going to be made and what will be included.
Some of the features we are going to include are not on the feature request list. They are internal features that we as a company want to add for moving the software forward. We have some pretty exciting ones too. (This list is not set in stone, these are subject to change)
- Creating a recurring payment system and billing system. This will allow users to subscribe to products and to be automatically charged for the products.
- A cleaner, less cluttered back office. It will feature a cleaner easier to manage theme with different views for different tasks.
- Condensing of modules. Is there really a need for 22 stats modules to clutter the modules list? More likely we need one stats module with 22 options in it for the stats. The same goes with a lot of modules, we are going to redo them to be more flexible and easier on the eyes.
- A better ASM. We are going to start adding new features to ASM that will be great for businesses with multiple locations. Things like giving the ability to filter and search by location on the front end of the shop.
- Cleaner, faster code. That is a given, right?
- A better, more streamlined EU setup. We are going to try to integrate the EU checkout options into the core. At the same time we are going to modify the installer to inject the settings during installation as well.
These are just a few of the internal features we have discussed. The list will likely grow to a very long list when we start going through the feature request section of our site.
If you have any questions or comments about the future or features, feel free to ask them below.
Please fix combinations as well in this release. No other shopping cart system that I’ve tested is this hard to use and add/modify combinations. And for the love of shopping carts, please give us the ability to disable combinations on the front end that don’t exist. Makes no sense how this is even possible in this day and age.
Can you elaborate on the fixing of combos?
For disabling combos on the front it is difficult. There needs to be a “master” attribute that you can filter from. Like if you look at this site, https://www.aperfectdealer.com/kids-sneakers-and-cleats/1481-new-balance-grade-school-reflective-990v4-kl990l2g.html
It uses the width as a master attribute, that when one is selected, it filters the size box to only combinations that are available in that width. Is that what you are talking about, something like that?
Yes, the “master” attribute should be based on the position in the Attributes and Values list.
I have a module installed on my Prestashop store that does this but as you can see, it flickers and doesn’t work perfect. But I have to have it, especially for products that have very different attributes depending on size. You can view one of these products here https://goo.gl/k1mYNv Size x-small has on packages of 32, small has packages of 28, medium has packages of 24, and so on. If I didn’t have this module, then all of those packages would show up for every size and the customer would have to go through all of them till he picked the right one. I can’t be the only one with this problem.
This is the module https://goo.gl/igkFKY
And yes, that website you sent is exactly how it should work. For Medium there are 6 sizes shown, then you switch to Wide and there are only 2 sizes shown because those are the only sizes available for Wide.
Ahh yes. This is something that needs to be built directly into the theme. Having it as a module would make it do weird things. I will look at this as an option in our new theme for 1.1.x.
Great to hear! Just so you know, I did enter this as a feature request and it’s gotten 18 votes https://thirtybees.com/suggestions/show-only-available-combinations/
I would love to see implemented some more up-to-date technologies such as Node.JS, Vue JS, JQuery 3.X slim, and a better template engine than smarty.
What better template engine would you like? We have talked about keeping smarty around because of its speed and stability.
I don’t think node is an option. It would basically kill being about to use thirty bees on a lot of hosts.
Dunno about newer versions, but I’ve found the one implemented in the current version of thirtybees to be too restrictive, more and more, and I’m afraid it won’t survive the burden of time if you plan to stick to it for 1.1.X.
The same goes for other technologies. The classic LAMP hosting services will have a hard time surviving the technological changes, why would the software’s future be any different?
I think we have to weigh several factors. One being is if we migrate from a LAMP/ MAMP / LEMP stack, thirty bees will no longer work with most managed hosts and shared hosts. That will make it difficult for new users to start using thirty bees. It will no longer be included in Softaculous or any auto installers. It will make it harder for general merchants to start a shop without hiring a developer. WordPress is so prevalent because it is easy to use, that is what we are shooting for, easy to use, but keeping all of the power.
As for smarty what is being restrictive about it to you? It could be in the current theme design itself. We have talked about trying to fork smarty and maintain it in the future. But I don’t know if that will happen. One thing that none of the newer templating engines do not have is the compiled nature of smarty. Smarty’s compiled nature is that it compiles partials into php, those partials are stored in Opcache memory, this is what makes smarty faster rendering when compared to other template engines like Twig and Moustache.
We have also talked about using Plates as the template engine as well since it allows for the same template caching.