The Purpose of this Board

Harvey, I cannot agree less. But what I submit to, considering the current situation were many of the addons are either half completed or totally abandoned. While free, such situations cannot be helped considering the hugh investment (of time and skill) to create, but to leave the Premium Addons to a let-the-buyer-beware picturesque will affect the MODx brand beyond affecting the developer's followership. My concern is MODx brand: that we don't kill the growing evangelism with statements like 'the CMS with broken premium addons"

Still I do not think premiums will eliminate customs. In that regard, the community should be encouraged to make available custom packages to the Premium Addon market.

So if I engage (for lack of time or skill) a developer, part of our deal will then be to put out the custom codes for the open MODx market.

Quote from: harveyev at Feb 23, 2013, 11:32 PM

Interesting debate. Not sure I agree tho. The platform can be open source but the addons built on the platform which actually produce complete end user functionality will be worth what the developer is willing to invest in them, and investment comes at a cost. The higher quality the functional additions, the more valuable the platform itself becomes. I would argue that professional grade Modx addons are already being developed for a fee, but on a contract basis and not available to the public. There's no repeat-ability in that and the cost for these is high as each is custom. I would prefer these solutions be made available in cooperation and coordinated by the platform provider themselves, or at a minimum, endorsable by them, rather than and slew of "one offs" without any coordination or implementation standards as described earlier in the thread. There will always be the free addons and benefits and risks that come with them.

Quote from: ojchris at Feb 23, 2013, 08:14 PM

We must thread carefully with Prermium Addons. MODx is open source, the Addons need to maintain that path.

The simplecart instance above clearly emphasizes why the we need to apply creativity around this approach. It will be great for all if it grows MODx brand further and not stifle it.

Well debate is a healthy thing right? I can only speak from my experience in regards to protecting my own investments in software, which are numerous and costly. Ignoring the reality that the buyer is responsible to ensure that his investment is protected to the best of his ability would be pretty idealistic. The risk is in assuming the thing they bought would be support free and forever. There is nothing "picturesque* about it. And honestly any expectation that there is something the ModX folks could or should do in this regard is pretty "picturesque" itself. What I was mentioning was one way I have mitigated that risk in my business dealings in the past.

There are principals and there is practice, and sometimes they diverge as is probably the case here. As for creativity, I think we're all striving for that. But lets not throw out past experience about what works and what does not for the sake of a Utopian ideal when in reality, people get hit by buses and those realities need to be planned for. Folks will write addons and some will do it for a fee. As ModX becomes a more prevalent platform that reality will only become more complex to manage if the ecosystem is not well planned. I think we can all agree to that. Whether or not they agree to release the code publicly is between the buyer and the provider to negotiate, and I commend you for your insistence in that regard, but that is your choice and practice as a buyer "being ware".

I think the big issue here is what kind of environment, resources, and controls need to be implemented so the Modx brand and community is protected and benefits as a whole from the development that will surely happen while at the same time providing some level of assurance that the things they use will be reasonably supported congruent with the price they paid for them (may be a run-on sentence but I am on a roll here dammit!).

I don't mean to be cheeky, but I stand behind my opinion and comments despite any tomatoes that may be cast in my general direction;)

No tomatoes gonna come your way! We're just trying to make the bed well enough.

We now have a concluding agreement:

I think the big issue here is what kind of environment, resources, and controls need to be implemented so the Modx brand and community is protected and benefits as a whole from the development that will surely happen while at the same time providing some level of assurance that the things they use will be reasonably supported congruent with the price they paid for them (may be a run-on sentence but I am on a roll here dammit!).

The biggest problem I have with Package Manager is Check for Updates rarely works. For example even solid Extras like Articles or getCache don't update correctly right now.

Quote from: BobRay at Feb 22, 2013, 07:48 AM

The biggest problem I have with Package Manager is the occasional raft of error messages it puts in the log.

One thing that I think might help a lot with the current Package Manager is to add a "Cleanup" button to the PM panel that would remove packages from the DB that no longer exist in core/packages, and maybe if there's no version of the package there, also remove any objects with their namespace and/or category.

[ed. note: dinocorn last edited this post 11 years, 1 month ago.]

I agree with this also and would only add, death be to ExtJS. If MODX 3 does away with it, my interest/ability to develop Extras will quadruple and I think there are many developers our there who agree. ExtJS is probably the only framework that the more I work with and learn about, the more frustrated I become with it. It's the Flash Builder (Flex) of JavaScript.


Quote from: sottwell at Feb 22, 2013, 12:50 PM

More tutorials and examples of creating packages. I've been struggling with MyComponent off and on now for weeks, just to package a template. If more people can easily understand how to make packages, there will be more packages. I'd like to concentrate on getting a couple dozen fairly basic templates done.

It is funny and true that almost every dev has something in the works, myself included. Looking back ad MODXpo, E-Commerce was heavily discussed and we learned that MODX is focusing on aggregating and consuming existing e-commerce services rather than completely creating it's own.

Personally, I think that's the right approach. For example Shopify is amazing in terms of user management. Now if I could just finish up this Extra that on a set interval syncs your Shopify products with a 3PC (so you can quickly access up-to-date product data like inventory and price with xPDO) I think some site builders may find it really useful.

Quote from: AdamWintle at Mar 03, 2013, 05:30 AM

good grief, it's time for a legitimate e-commerce add-on

I'm also +1 for a good eCommerce component.

Ideally something that a MODX site builder can Install > customise > launch would be perfect. There are so many MODX + eCommerce plugins that are half finished now.

Also, every MODX developer I chat with in private almost always has some kind of eCommerce plugin in the works; ideally we could get a few of these out in the open (on Github or something) and start to team up and collaborate on something that will be more useful to the community at large.

It also surprises me that VisionCart has its own dedicated forum but its been abandoned for over a year now, somehow we need to clean up this MODX + eCommerce mess and get things back on the right track

Hey jpdevries, what's your progress on the shopify extra.

Quote from: ojchris at Apr 03, 2013, 11:44 AM

Hey jpdevries, what's your progress on the shopify extra.

Unfortunately abandoned. Although I can try and at least put where it was left off on GitHub.