DOWNLOAD THIRTYBEES HERE

ThirtyBees, the PrestaShop 1.6 Fork

For those of you who didn’t read my previous article about ThirtyBees (TB in short), here is a brief: it is the ultimate evolution of PrestaShop 1.6, a fork software that aims to correct all bugs of the base one, improve it, and ultimately meet all of the expectations that the PrestaShop company has miserably failed to fulfill with PrestaShop 1.7.
ThirtyBees is therefore a standalone project based on PrestaShop 1.6, created by passionate developers who were not enthusiast of 1.7, and wanted to carry on and improve the previous version, serious about finally giving merchants the ultimate e-commerce solution they need.

An overall better software

ThirtyBees improves the PrestaShop base in various ways, with an eye on the bugs pointed out by the community, as well as features they request.
No, I am not saying it just cause I am involved in the project, but because it fixed a plethora of PrestaShop bugs and already added a good portion of the long-time-requested features we all wanted. Let’s have a look!

Clean Urls

Yes! At last, a decent system that removed all those old-fashioned numbers from urls, giving us the opportunity to make them as human as possible. It also incorporates a url-history system, so that old urls will redirect to the new ones automatically. Awesome!
This means, of course, that you won’t need any expensive module anymore for this, and free stuff is always good

Page Cache

Cache means speed, and speed is key when it comes to selling online. ThirtyBees implements a better caching system than PrestaShop used to. Consider this test case: default theme, on a slow vps, from 130ms without PageCache (PrestaShop 1.6) to 30ms with ThirtyBees and PageCache enabled.
On slow servers the difference was 10 times faster in favor of ThirtyBees (from 500ms to 50). Quite a bit.

Better Error Reporting

Error reporting is vital if you want your shop to run hassle-free. ThirtyBees has implemented an advanced bug reporting script in the latest release, so that you can debug without showing any code to your users, directly from the back office.

Custom Code

ThirtyBees lets you add custom javascript, css and metas directly from the back office, a simple yet crucial feature PrestaShop should have implemented since ages.

Mailchimp

If you run a medium sized, or even large business, you certainly had to deal with newsletter and marketing. PrestaShop had a poor newsletter module which was not sufficient for the needs of an average store. ThirtyBees implements Mailchimp, with newsletter management, birthday coupons and advanced abandoned cart features. Think of how much you can save in modules, with all these features packed together in the base software!
As a side note, the module is still a little buggy at the time I am writing, but it will be stable soon enough.

PrestaShop User? You can now migrate to ThirtyBees

If you have a PrestaShop 1.6 shop already running, you can now migrate to TB without concern. The 1.0.1 release comes with a migrator tool that converts the original PrestaShop structure into the new one, so that you can keep all of your shop’s data and modules. Ah, yes, nearly every 1.6 module is compatible with ThirtyBees, of course.

The Bottom Line

ThirtyBees is, from an objective standpoint, what the PrestaShop community has been asking for in the last 3 years. It’s fast, stable, and has plenty of features (with more planned, see the roadmap).
Of course, you might be skeptic as I am involved in the Project and this whole article might just be a huge plug for myself. Facts usually work better than words, so if the above got you interested even just a little, head over to the ThirtyBees Download Page, install and test it. I can guarantee you will be positively surprised.
And if you like it, please support the project by giving it a star on GitHub here: https://github.com/thirtybees/ThirtyBees.

Stay tuned for a review video about ThirtyBees coming in the next weeks!

The post ThirtyBees 1.0.1 Stable is now available! appeared first on NemoPS.

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.

Additional Resources

• ThirtyBees project website

The post ThirtyBees, a PrestaShop Fork project appeared first on NemoPS.