Add-on XenReviews [CrowdFund]

[Moshe1010]

Not to be the pessimist here, but even if Daniel would release a final, stable version, XF2 is around the corner which means an add-on rewrite (100K lines of code). So unless gazillion people would purchase the add-on, I can't see how he's going to handle it by himself.

 

[snoopy5]

Don't dismiss showcase too quick . ...

I do not dismiss showcase. I just wanted to know what else is out there, which I do not know by name yet. It seems it is really only showcase and Xenreviews who are offering a Review system which is compatible with Xenforo.

I think it is easier for an importer, if the source database has less fields than the target db. I will definetely not make copy&paste actions. Then I rather stick with my interims solution over teh Reviewpost bridge.

If I pay for an addon, I expect more than if I use a free addon. Since Reviepost from Photopost is more or less the only serious Review system out there at the moment, I do think that every XF-Review addon needs an importer for Reviewpost to be taken seriously.

Can you image a Xenforo software without a vbulletin importer? Would anybody have taken Xenforo seriously, if they would not have offered an importer for vb right from the beginning?

Maybe a solution could be that showcase and Xenreviews work in the future together, I d not know how to manage this on the money level though. But if it is true that for Xenforo 2.0 everything has to be rewritten again, it would just slow any progress in both too much down if each is developed on its own and independantly.

IMHO it is not a question how much time and money is invested already. The question is how to be able to offer a product that fullfills all needs asap and which can survive in the battle to get paying users. If both more or less do the same, is the market big enough to make it financially attractive in the long term to be maintained and further developed? We have nothing of an addon, which works for 1 year and then does not get maintained anymore.

The one who has the Reviewpost importer first, will have a significant competitive advantage. Will the other addon be able to keep up and be so much better or offer so many better Review options that people are willing to wait for that addon until it offers an importer for Reviewpost? I doubt it. People waited too long already. Each month it takes longer, they get less patient.

Just food for thoughts...

 

[Alpha1]

@snoopy5 if you want a reviewpost importer for xenreviews or showcase then there are a number of people who can develop this for you relatively quickly. Your chances of getting a reviewpost importer from @Daniel Hood is zero because all effort is focussed on getting the functionality already produced to work and to Gold status.
Investors have funded the developers with thousands to get a feature set and need their moneys worth. Its not a matter of getting more customers. Its a matter of bringing a paid project to a satisfactory level.

If you need something that works right now then try out showcase. It's a very advanced and polished addon as a whole. If you need more specialized reviews functionality then wait and see if xenreviews comes through.

Not to be the pessimist here, but even if Daniel would release a final, stable version, XF2 is around the corner which means an add-on rewrite (100K lines of code). So unless gazillion people would purchase the add-on, I can't see how he's going to handle it by himself.

You are right. XenReviews needs more developer(s) somehow. There is no way that XenReviews will make it through with a few hours a week of development. This has to happen IMHO. And since so many people want to pay good money for it, I cant see why it should not happen. So much has already been done. So many people want it. What is missing is a reliable senior developer with enough time to invest. Then this project would be released quite quickly and license sales would be significant.

 

[Daniel Hood]

Just wanted to touch base here;
I'm aware that XenReviews is down. Don't worry it will be back up. I'll also be fixing the SSL error that has been happening the past few days soon. The project is still fine. I'm still developing. Don't be worried about the connection error .

 

[eberkund]

What is the status on the website? For a website to be down for close to a week is quite unusual.

 

[Daniel Hood]

What is the status on the website? For a website to be down for close to a week is quite unusual.

The droplet was never transferred to me when the domain was, due to it having some personal stuff of Jeff's on it. I talked to Jeff the day after it went down and he said it was because he didn't notice that there weren't more funds on his account. He deposited money and said:

[Tuesday, September 22, 2015 10:46 AM] Jeff Berry: Okay. Just put $25 in DO so it should be back up soon

I had already left for a doctor's appointment (my wife and I are expecting our second child in Dec ) when he sent that. He wasn't on when I got back. I'm under the impression that he needed to "restart" the droplet after making the deposit but assumed it would come back automatically. I told him later it wasn't back on yet. He hasn't been back on and I was out of town for the weekend.

I have messages out to him on Skype, I assume once he gets back to his office he'll see it and restart the droplet.

This has not impacted development, as I haven't been developing on XenReviews domain/droplet for quite some time (I'm developing on localhost and uploading to xenmods as I go).

 

[Kintaro]

Daniel you really need another dev to help you with a second child in arrive!

Noah (Zelda little brother) born around 25 day ago... so I know what I'm talking about! (( _ _ ))..zzzZZ

 

[Alpha1]

Yeah, virtually no sleep...

 

[Daniel Hood]

My son slept like a champ and still does (2 years + 3 months old, sleeps 10-12 hours a night and takes a 2-3 hour nap during the day -- most days). I really hope his sister behaves similarly. When he was a newborn, he slept a lot, he woke up a lot but just to eat and rarely disturbed me (my wife is a stay at home mother so she let me sleep... during the week at least).

That said, I have gotten one developer for XenMods stuff. Though they don't work on XenReviews. I may try to expand on that this upcoming year. Not so much because of the baby, but just because it's always good to try to scale businesses and that generally involves a bigger team. Plus the idea is to free up more and more time work on XenReviews.

 

[cdub]

Still getting ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED

But seriously are we ever going to see a new build of this? We need to get a release going.

And as a father of 3 kids let me tell you that no kid is the same in regards to temperament and sleep. Although I hope you get another good sleeper.

 

[Daniel Hood]

I'm aware of the situation. I know that a release is much needed. I also know I can't package versions that have the same known issues. I'm making progress but I told you guys I have limitations in what I can do as far as time goes. I'm making steps to change that.

Yeah, I've been told the second kid is usually the opposite of the first one.. I really hope that's not the case lol

 

[cdub]

I'm making progress but I told you guys I have limitations in what I can do as far as time goes. I'm making steps to change that.

You said above that you'll try to expand next year... I hope this doesn't mean that you're saying that we're not going to see another build until next year.

Hopefully you'll be able to make a lot of progress soon.

 

[Daniel Hood]

I hope this doesn't mean that you're saying that we're not going to see another build until next year.

I meant that in terms of my XenMods team. Not that it should take that long to impact XenReviews.

 

[cdub]

I meant that in terms of my XenMods team. Not that it should take that long to impact XenReviews.

Okay whew. We've been waiting a while... I hope you're able to make progress soon.

 

[cdub]

If you need some more $$ I'm sure myself and some others could do that.

 

[Alpha1]

Lol. Surely not many will be prepared to throw more investment at a project that has received 5000 without a working product. At least not without firm guarantees about delivery of the project.
But something needs to happen here. We cannot wait until 2016 or xf2 for a working product and at this pace this will be the outcome.
you need help.

 

[Daniel Hood]

If you need some more $$ I'm sure myself and some others could do that.

There's not a chance that I'd ask anyone for that at this point. I'm not even trying to sell licenses at this stage.

We cannot wait until 2016 or xf2 for a working product and at this pace this will be the outcome.
you need help.

I know. I'm not trying to wait until 2016. Like I said, I'm actively working on it. There's no doubt that I could use help. It's just that I'm in a catch-22 at the moment. I don't have capital to pay someone for development, I'm not going to try raising more capital. I don't see me being able to get help on the project until we have a 1.0.0 release listed on XenForo and I'm selling licenses again.

 

[eberkund]

I know. I'm not trying to wait until 2016. Like I said, I'm actively working on it. There's no doubt that I could use help. It's just that I'm in a catch-22 at the moment. I don't have capital to pay someone for development, I'm not going to try raising more capital. I don't see me being able to get help on the project until we have a 1.0.0 release listed on XenForo and I'm selling licenses again.

That doesn't sound like you have any solution in mind.

I think most of us realize that the first release most probably will still have issues. I don't understand why you cannot continue releasing beta versions in the mean time. As long as we are converging towards a stable 1.0 release it will do a lot in showing us that progress is being made. Especially since when Beta 6 was released that was apparently just an issue with Jeff's build system yet we never saw another release with the actual code which was intended to be released originally.

Also Jeff originally had a Git repository and said he could give me access but he never got around to it. Would you be open to accepting outside help in fixing some of the remaining bugs? Of course, this wouldn't work with out regular releases or we'd have people potentially trying to fix things that have already been fixed but not released yet.

 

[Daniel Hood]

That doesn't sound like you have any solution in mind.

Currently my solution is to get to 1.0.0 by myself. The long term solution, is once sales start coming in again, I'll hire help to maintain the project and finish building it out. I don't a solution to a short term "you need help" statement such as @Alfa1 said. It's a fact, I do. It's just not feasible at the moment. So what I did instead was hire someone to help with XenMods stuff so I have more time for XenReviews, like I mentioned. It's working, but it's only been a few weeks. They're doing well though and the plan is starting to work. I think there was some miscommunication when I said that by next year I'd like to add to that. That comment wasn't supposed to be really related to XenReviews to begin with.

I don't understand why you cannot continue releasing beta versions in the mean time. As long as we are converging towards a stable 1.0 release it will do a lot in showing us that progress is being made.

Because at the moment, it's still really broken. The point of beta releases is to get bug feedback and stuff, it's counter productive to go through the trouble of having someone report a bug that I know exists just to discuss it with them as I'm fixing it. I still intend to get to the point where I'm doing frequent releases but when I mentioned it in the first place, I didn't realize there were a lot of existing issues. The more I dig in, the more I fix, the more I discover. Once I stop discovering bugs in basic functionality, that's when beta releases and testing will make the most sense.

Especially since when Beta 6 was released that was apparently just an issue with Jeff's build system yet we never saw another release with the actual code which was intended to be released originally.

I released a 6.1 which was a version after the build system was working. Did you not see/download it?

Also Jeff originally had a Git repository and said he could give me access but he never got around to it. Would you be open to accepting outside help in fixing some of the remaining bugs? Of course, this wouldn't work with out regular releases or we'd have people potentially trying to fix things that have already been fixed but not released yet.

I would be open to this, for sure. I didn't know you had an interest in doing something like that.

 

[eberkund]

I released a 6.1 which was a version after the build system was working. Did you not see/download it?

To be honest, I am not sure. It has been a while and I forget

I would be open to this, for sure. I didn't know you had an interest in doing something like that.

Yes, I might be interested in doing that. We can discuss it further in PM.