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ThirtyBees, a PrestaShop Fork

ThirtyBees, a PrestaShop Fork project

in Blog on January 10, 2017 8 comments

Given the downhill path PrestaShop is pursuing, a group of passionate developers are putting together a new project, let’s see what it is about!

We all know PrestaShop has been having crucial core bugs ever since 1.6 has been released (let’s forget about previous ones…). The company has kept ignoring most of them, having only four people in the core development team, and betting everything on marketing. This lead to PrestaShop 1.7, a version which nobody is really happy of, developers, nor merchants.
Prestashop 1.7 has marked a critical downgrade compared to 1.6, seeing features removed, speed decreased, and compatibility with existing modules and themes basically zeroed.
From a developer standpoint, it means having to rewrite modules from the ground up, and getting used to the new interface and codebase. For merchants, it’s a different story, as it makes them prefer other platforms instead of PrestaShop, given the limited number of features, weight, and lack of third party extensions.

With this in mind, a skilled group of developers has started the ambitious project of forking PrestaShop. What does forking mean? It simply means taking an open source project that fell into an impasse state, with another team, and continue its development, independently, split from the original.

Forking PrestaShop 1.6

The idea of forking PrestaShop 1.6 has been discussed among developers for more than a year, when it was clear 1.7 would have marked a substantial difference in the route the software had taken until then. We all committed changes to the PrestaShop project on Git, but the time it always took to see them implemented was a real drag.
We also continued pointing out numerous bugs and flaws through the PrestaShop Forge, but saw most of the requests frustrated with no responses, or in any case every new subversion containing the same bug. Merchants need more. Merchants need stability, and developers need a clear path to follow too.

  • Why has PrestaShop’s Advanced Stock Management never been properly implemented?
  • What happened to multi-shipping options, available in 1.5?
  • Why is PrestaShop still lacking clean urls from the core?
  • Why is there no core Blog?

These are just some of the matters ThirtyBees will address.
ThirtyBees wants to clean up PrestaShop 1.6, and continue its development by maintaining the same substantial codebase, improving it while preserving compatibility with current modules and themes as much as possible.

An eye on Merchants, but not only

As previously mentioned, ThirtyBees wants to listen that user base the PrestaShop company has been deaf to, in the last years. Feature requests will be polled, giving merchants an opportunity to really have the software they want, at last.
Additionally, as most users often point out, security will be taken into serious consideration, fixing bugs and flaws of the ever-broken most popular payment solutions, never addressed by PrestaShop.
Developers will not be ignored either, of course. As we all are developers (I am considering myself into the project), we know what makes us frustrated, and what would really make an easier day if added to or removed from the core. Stability will be improved, and an attempt will be made to create a better documentation, so that the platform will finally be accessible to newcomers, and veterans will have a solid base (much like the WordPress codex) to refer to, when needed.

And more coming soon

The ThirtyBees project has not even launched yet, but its plan is ambitious. It wants to be the next best E-Commerce platform of the market, and its promises, and the passion of people who are actively contributing to it, make us hope there really is a bright future for this newborn creature. It will have its own Modules and Themes Store, which will not be vexatious towards contributors, nor buyers, and much more. It will be focused on its community, already counting a good number of enthusiasts all over the world, and will therefore need your contribution, too.
Whether you are a writer, translator, marketer, developer, designer, or anything you think might be useful in such a project, head over to the ThirtyBees Contact page and get in touch with the manager. We will need as much help as possible in making this project successful; and this success will come from nobody, but you.

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  • Myles Cirillo

    Nemo
    Im new to Presta Shop and what sold me was that I could easily manage my own store. In an effort to learn more I stumbled onto your video tutorials and now I’m here. I have BlueHost as my service is this a problem? How can I keep up with the fork revisions and not get burned? Thanks for your insight and videos.
    Myles
    Owner

    • NemoPS

      Myles,
      Well there is no way to keep up with that if you need to use it on a live environment. It’s not ready for production yet, so I would try to wait a couple of subversions and just download them from the site.
      If you need to stay updated, the only way (that’s what we do) is to erase the local version and pull down again from github, then reinstall

  • Casper Olsen

    I will keep an eye out for this project. After they announced 1.7 it has been a fight to address even small issues in 1.6 and after the release of 1.7 it did not got any better, really.

  • smartdatasoft

    thirtybees, Will be the best ecommerce , For the last 4 years of contribution and hard work for Prestashop , Prestashop give nothing to us. They just kick all of us :)

  • NickN

    Strange that nobody commented on this. I know that prestashop ppl are watching this.
    I can fully understand why a fork is beeing created. Although I hate forks reason beeing that I believe that’s its better to join forces instead of splitting.
    IMO this fork is “holding back”. Let me explane: You say that it will be based on 1.6 and fix the bugs for this. By the time you get your project together and try to fix the problems in 1.6, prestashop 1.8 will be released. This fork may be a wakeup call for the prestashop team and maybe they step up their game and address the probems you are saying about 1.7.
    IMO this project should be more bold and focus on “fixing” issues by upgrading the code all together. Sympony3 and twig would be a nice example. At the same time adding the features nemo is saying prestashop is missing (what does nemo realy think prestahop is missing?). For me this with a “compatability mode” for 1.6 themes and modules would be the ideal deal. Because let’s face it at some point backwards compatability will be broken.
    I hope the best on your effords and beeing a 1.6 store owner I will keep my eye on you.
    Best of luck
    Nick

    • NemoPS

      Hi Nick, and thanks for joining.
      The fork has been created because it’s not actually possible to “join forces”.
      We tried, we tried helping and improving the code, suggesting features and so on, but have seen our efforts constantly being frustrated by the company and its suicidal choices.
      The fork doesn’t want to hold back, but rather, as you say, improve. It will indeed fix bugs and add just a couple of features at the beginning, but will also take its own course later on.
      There is no reason to adopt symphony and twig, why should it? It only adds another level of complexity, which is not needed. Prestashop already shifted from pure php to having its own adapters and classes recently, and this doesn’t help newcomers. It just raises the requirements bar a little higher, and the fork wants to avoid it.
      It simply wants to continue to develop prestashop with the spirit it was born with: simple, fast, efficient, the software every merchant could use, even with little to no financial resource.

      • NickN

        I for one will be keeping an eye on this as I find it very interesting. It’s a good thing that there are agencies and profesionals that make a living out of this, beacause at the end of the day we all need the money :-). Although I love prestashop it always seems fragile. I will continue to work with 1.6 as long as I can and will consider my options then. For me opc / upgrading are the biggest problems with prestashop. I read on the net some very interesting ideas about the project.

        Best of luck and see you there :-)

    • oliiix

      you seriously wanna join forces with the people who don’t care at all? I mean you have to give an additional piece of nothing if you do not even care about hundreds of price calculation and display bugs in a product that HAS to do at least this correctly. Besides I never heard from them on any of my requests and questions even when payed modules were not working and I didn’t hear anything from the module creator, money just lost. Yes that product definitely deserves to be forked… And forking is actually a very good thing but I’m not going to get into right now. It’s a good think especially if you create something wonderful with it. There’s no backside to it except human ego ;)

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