Roadmap

[bearcat]

At this juncture, I think one of the most important things that 68classifieds could use is a long-term roadmap with a rough schedule and expected feature additions. The jump from 3.1 to 3.2 seems to be taking longer than some previous jumps, and I'm sure many people are curious around the time we can expect it.

But getting beyond the curiosity factor, I think it would be helpful if people knew what the plans were over the long-term. It would be good to know what features you regard as worthwhile coding into future versions, and what features you regard as of low importance or more trouble trying to implement than they're worth. That way your user base knows what things they might need to custom code into their own sites, or what they might want to code for the community, or what they might even want to offer as an add-on module for a fee.

I know software developers normally dislike stuff like this, and I can understand their reasons completely. But I really do think it would be helpful.

[sleepy]

I totally agree .... its a bit hard to make business decisions when theres a lack of communication or feedback on progress re updates etc. It was great previously but things have gone very quiet the past few months.

sleepy

[Eric Barnes]

The next version is still under heavy development.

I will try to post a roadmap and a tentive feature list next week. But the only problem is if I do this and a feature listed is not made into the official then we get upset people.

[civ]

We'll direct those complainers to this thread then, so they can see your motivation for posting a roadmap in the first place.

[Xemion]

I absolutely agree and I'm desparate to see a roadmap. I'm very close to going with another product for the next version of my site (which will be greatly expanded and much bigger) and perhaps with a roadmap I could get a clearer vision if whether or not 68C can support my site in the future. I love the product, the code and the support, but a roadmap would be extremely useful.

[Eric Barnes]

Here is the first tentative roadmap with the features that we really want to add in:

• New Administration layout fully xhtml compliant. - Completed
• New default template
• A lot more statistics
• Better banning features. - Completed
• New administration order system. If you change the status of an order it will make the necessary changes to the listings. For example if you mark an order as fraud it will then delete all the users listings and ban them. Or mark it as inactive then all listings associated with that order will be made inactive.
• New front end order system
• New transactions table which appears when viewing an order. This will give you the details that the gateway passes back.
• Customer can view all orders placed with printable reciepts and view purchases not completed so they can make payment. ( CIV's idea from another thread or pm).
• Customer billing fields that go along with registration fields. Just incase they are different. - Completed
• Listing preview capability before purchase is complete. This will be able to be turned on or off.
• Recurring payments for memberships. This is still in the planning stages because not all gateways support recurring billing. So we will probably have to create invoices.
• Administration table sorting - Completed
• User notes - Any notes entered will be seen on the order screen, listings, etc. - Completed

That is all for now but I will make a much bigger / fuller list next week. Also if you want to request any other features that are not listed here or not in this thread:
Wish list
Please post them in that thread. That way we have one central list.

[Maffo]

Great ideas. My issue is that im in a catch 22.

I am currently in developement of sites at the moment, some of them are having changes made to the checkout system, and there is also the banner_mod I made that fully makes use of the checkout system. Hmmm... do I wait for the new version or plug away with what I have done?

[Eric Barnes]

Personally I would say finish it for this version. I say this for two reasons.
1. A lot of people do not upgrade very often or wait a while before they do.
2. This version is still being developed and we don't have a set release date in mind yet. Although we do have some ideas when we think but it will not be in 06.

[Maffo]

Yeah, Im with you there. I have just written a world domintating, Dr Evil kind of mod, but looking at it, this will work on any version more or less as long as the code isnt too different.

Cheers

[Eric Barnes]

I can't comment yet on how different it will be because that portion has been started yet. But once I get into it I will have more information.