After a long wait we have finally released version 1.0.4 of thirty bees. This latest version of thirty bees includes many new features and speed improvements to make our software more modern and feature packed. It also includes a ton of bug fixes as well.
Statistics
New in the 1.0.4 release is our core Stats module. This module replaces 23 modules that were installed in the earlier versions. No statistics features have been lost with the new stats core. This is our first effort in cleaning up the modules page in your shop. Having 23 less modules in the list means less scrolling, less looking at modules that should be one module, and a shorter more compact module list.
Image Regeneration
Also in 1.0.4 we have ajaxed the image regeneration. This means you no longer have to keep refreshing the page and regenerating images. You can now just press a button and have the images run in the same browser window. This is a huge improvement over the previous system and offers a set it and walk away method for resizing or adjusting the quality of images on your site.
Better Favicon Support
Favicons have always been an issue. Did you know that there are over 25 different supported favicon and device icon sizes and types? This version adds an easily updatable interface for providing support to all of these types. With the new favicon management system, you will no longer have to upgrade versions to support the latest size for devices or browsers.
Bug Fixes
This is the heart of the new release. There have been several hundred bug fixes over the last several months. These bug fixes deal with everything from the installer, the theme, and the core of the application. Since version 1.0.3 there have been 805 commits to this version. This means there are a ton of small bug fixes, new features, and speed improvements.
Updating
This version of thirty bees is not currently in our updater. We are reworking our updater to be more flexible and more stable in the future. As most of our community knows we are a small team of developers, so every little bit of time we can save adds up. Our new version of our updater will allow us to programatically generate updates, without having to package them specifically for each version of thirty bees.
To update your shop to version 1.0.4 you will need to do a manual update. Below are the steps to manually update your shop to 1.0.4
- Download the 1.0.4 zip package here
- Extract the zip package
- DELETE the install directory from the zip package
- RENAME the admin directory to the same name as your current admin directory
- PERFORM A FULL BACK UP ON YOUR SITE
- TURN OFF ALL CACHES ON YOUR SHOP and SET IT TO FORCE COMPILE
- Upload the files that are remaining from the zip archive to your site
- Go to the config directory and edit the settings.inc.php file, update your version to 1.0.4
- Go to PHPMyAdmin or you MySQL interface and run the query in this file here
- Go to your modules directory and DELETE all of your stats module except statsdata and statsmodule. Also delete the modules graphnvd3, gridhtml, pagesnotfound, and sekeywords.
- Now log in to your back office, the upgrade should be finished
- Go to your modules page and install the module labeled Stats Module
This should be all you need to do to be able to enjoy the new features and bug fixes that thirty bees 1.0.4 has to offer.
If you do not feel comfortable upgrading your shop, we have added a low cost upgrade option to our store where you can hire thirty bees to upgrade your shop.
With there being so many commits and bug fixes in this version it would take hours to go back through everyone and find every name of every person that committed code or helped with a bug fix. I think naming the ones I can think of off the top of my head would be unfair to the people that I forget. The whole thirty bees team would like to thank each and every one of you that has helped make thirty bees better. Either by committing code or reporting bugs that you have noticed. Without our community we are nothing, thank you all.
Any work going toward GDPR? Can we expect a .5 release (or a module for it) before the end of the month when the law goes live?
Yes, we have started on GDPR already. We are shooting to have the module out in a couple of weeks so it can be used in production and we can fix any bugs before the deadline. We did make a GDPR commit to the Google Analytics module a few days ago. I think in the end that will be rolled back and put in the GDPR module though. It seems more reasonable to have everything in one place.
I wish all the best to dev team.
I feel that the direction is good.
But try to find a way to do some cash, like adding the compatible modules in marketplace or google ads or something.
Where are the donation links?
Hey, the links are on the side of our blog, https://thirtybees.com/blog/ We are planning to integrate them into the 1.0.5 version somewhere in the back office.
My support is not much but hope it helps.
are you planing to devellope a version of thitry bees based on prestashop v1.7 core ?
Not at all. We have more features and less overhead. There is no good reason to support that core.
Interesting: do you have benchmarks about ThirtyBees vs PrestaShop 1.6 vs PrestaShop 1.7 you’d like to share?
In so far as what? Performance or features? We talked about this on our forum a couple months ago. It looks like the screen shot service I used at the time is no longer in business, but I did write a decent post on it. You can read the post here. https://forum.thirtybees.com/topic/1374/time-to-first-byte/3
I actually removed our SSL certificate from our demo because there is not one on the PrestaShop demo. We were getting sand bagged with ssl negotiation time and it was making our demo look slower.
From my tests right now though (I have no clue what PrestaShop’s demo is on, ours is on a 1gb Vultr instance) we seem to have a performance edge out of the box with no optimization.
https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/br4p0I/http://fo.demo.prestashop.com/en/
https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/cGssX1/http://front.thirtybees.com/
https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/br4p0I/http://fo.demo.prestashop.com/en/
https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/8C57W/http://front.thirtybees.com/
I used the closest testing facility to Paris in the tests which is Stockholm. That is about 1900km from Paris. Our sever is using a Seattle instance and I tested it from NYC, which is 4500km away. So even with the PrestaShop instance being more than half the distance closer the thirty bees instance loads quicker.
I honestly do not put much stock in those tests. I think they are reason to sell things to people. The optimization metrics are generally outdated and hold no actual bearing on performance. The test I tend to gravitate to is the Lighthouse one. Especially since Google is supporting them these days, they in my opinion provide a more meaningful metric since it is not based on shear download time. When you factor in the actual rendering time, that is what matters to people. Sites download quick on mobile devices, but repaints and js can slow down what a user actually sees and make them feel like your site is slow.
On that note, this is what I get testing our thirty bees instance:
http://pix.toile-libre.org/upload/original/1525412592.png
This is what I get testing the PrestaShop demo instance:
http://pix.toile-libre.org/upload/original/1525412641.png
You can see the actual times are no where near what the pingdom direct download times are. Its because it factors in the rendering paths of the page and latency in the device. Testing in WebPageTest is not so bad either. It tries to bring in some data from Lighthouse as well. You can see these two tests I just ran:
https://www.webpagetest.org/result/180504_4Z_d7f76b24c9b26619b8ea78187ab00b3d/
https://www.webpagetest.org/result/180504_KW_adc52e0154962039f4be525b6fb67cca/
The tests are a bit closer, but we still shave a full second on the fully loaded time. Our first interactive is a half a second quicker. PrestaShop does take us on the render start and the TTFB, but really in my opinion those are not frustration metrics. The basic fact of the test is when a mobile user loads the site they can interact and use our site 30% faster.
As far as having tests involving 1.6 I don’t have any vanilla ones handy. If you want I can spin up an instance. Do you? I would love to see some internal tests from you all.
Sweet! Thank you! Our production shop has shipped more than 60k orders on 1.0.3 with no problems. Conversion even went up after we switched over from PS (probably due to the speed increase). I can’t wait to test 1.0.4… when I’m done with all the “SUPER FUN” preparation for GDPR.
Nice, that is awesome. What is the url to your shop?
GDPR is going to be a fun one. We should have our compliance module out in a couple of weeks for it.
Sounds great with a module. Will the module include some way for the customer to export their data? I have mostly been updating our policies, trimming out old data etc. The shop is called WilliamDam.dk (Danish bookstore) https://www.williamdam.dk
It will have the export and a method for customers to request the deletion of their data. We made a commit earlier in the week to the Google Analytics module, to give a notice before Google Analytics actually starts tracking. I think in the end we are going to roll that back and put it in the GDPR module. I have the feeling several modules are never going to be compliant like facebook like boxes, twitter feeds, ect. Since there is no method to control what data they collect.
Nice! I was just about to create a small module for those features. I think it will be hard to be 100% compliant the 25. I have a really hard time to find clear guidelines for webshops in general.
Yeah, the guidelines are tough. Honestly they are impossible really. I think our module should cover the concerns of most people. I am sure there will be people that want a stricter version of it, there always are.
I hope the team reconsider to support PrestaShop 1.7.x because your work is amazing, I’d love to see the PS 1.7 core with less crap.
I’m just starting to build my store and picked up PS but after a few hours using it, wanted to move on to another CMS.
I came looking for a PS alternative and I’ve found it.
Thank you very much.
We forked away from PrestaShop because we do not care for the Symfony architecture, there is 0% chance of us supporting that core. We are about adding features shop owners need, not stripping them out.
run away of ps 1.7 enviroment…
TB is much faster and all is done to make your shop without issues. I tried TB and there is not back for be to PS.
Hi, what about the step of changing the “1.0.4. PS_VERSION_DB and PS_INSTALL_VERSION” in the PREFIX_configuration Table of the DB?
Good point. I will have to add that in. I am going to make some official documents for the future of migrating this weekend.