Add-on XenReviews [CrowdFund]

[Daniel Hood]

is it even up for sale still?

No. It hasn't been since July when I took it back over. Technically there were instructions for purchase but nobody has completed them. I have no idea when the most recent license was sold.

are there any problems with XR,

I'm not sure how many of the problems actually exist within XR. Most of the problems are a part of the grid (hence depreciating it), the custom fields add-on that was built (possibly depreciating after widgets are built). I may discover bugs that were masked by other components.

I need a functioning reviews system, I'm not totally sure what's wrong with this. Hopefully it adheres to the above to ask.

I don't see why your post would conflict with the staff's request. The goal is just to have a constructive conversation rather than an endless debate.

 

[Alpha1]

Acknowledging the above post, are there any problems with XR, what bugs are present

The problem with the current package is that nothing works after install. People who upgraded their installation encounter these open bugs, as well as a number of bugs that are marked as fixed, but the fixes were never implemented. The bugs reported are so vital that it renders the software useless.

The background was that the reviews part of the software was relatively solid in beta 4.2 and beta 5.1 Beta 6 unfortunately is just a mess. The functionality in itself is pretty extensive and polished.

 

[AWS]

I have no idea when the most recent license was sold.

I bought mine February, 2015 so I might have been close to one of the last to purchase.

 

[empire]

Just to make sure, this one is the new one, right? (widget framework)

And that one is the old one? (grid)

 

[Daniel Hood]

I know many have you have been checking XenMods daily and are probably wondering where the new widgets are. I made that post Saturday and set up the navigation widget which is the only one active on the site so far. I have started on a couple of others, these are the orders in which I'm currently planning to build them (and have started).

• Custom Fields
  • Right now the item view doesn't show any data, that's because it was completely powered by XenGrid which was an odd choice but I kind of like the idea of having custom fields moveable so I'll be making them widgets where you can select the display group. I'm actually going to make it so that you can select an individual field as well which will be useful in places like the list item, you'll be able to select to display the price for example.
• Maps
  • Maps have been a big complaint for far too long. The XenGrid Map Element was all messed up from Javascript errors to loading in middle of the ocean to not working at all. I'll be making it so it works on both the list view (multiple location points shown) and the item view (where you just see a map of the one item).
• Items
  • Options to display the user's other items, featured items, items in the same category, highest rated, etc...

There will be more but I'm starting with these.

Just to make sure, this one is the new one, right? (widget framework)

And that one is the old one? (grid)

Correct.

 

[empire]

Even the current version is already doing what I need and would be a vast improvement over our current thread format. Looking great so far!

 

[popr]

I think we should hold the complaints while he is actually making progress and working on it. The dev has previously made a lot of excuses that don't fly in the real business world -- The best course of action is to just own up to them, including long delays, keep apologizing, plug ahead as best he can and continue updating with the progress being made. It looks like he is doing that so I wouldn't continue discouraging him.

 

[NetDoc]

I'm confused... does this work or doesn't it? I have a rather large forum and would love something like this in it. Are there any other mods that will do close to what this is supposed to do?

 

[Alpha1]

It's beta software and doesn't work. You should check out @Bob 's Showcase to see if it meets your needs. Showcase is feature packed rock solid software. But XenReviews and Showcase are two different animals.

 

[NetDoc]

I own www.ScubaBoard.com, the world's largest community of divers. Here are the specs I sent to Mr Hood for what I need it to do. He has not responded to me:

User Trader rating

• 1-10 scale
• Limited to users who respond to other users on certain forums (market place aka 'classifieds').
• Problem with deal flag (either way)

Dive Ops

• 1-10 scale for each service and overall
• Searchable by city/state/country
• I want to be able to give access to the dive ops (via user name) to edit what they offer
• Weighted input (client/student or observer)
• Taggable in the forum. This should be twofold: accidents/incidents and general

Manufacturers

• 1-10 scale for each product and overall
• Manufacturers should be able to upload their product lists with pictures
• Weighted input (own, rent or observer)
• Taggable in the forum.

 

[Alpha1]

For the user rating part you need to find a Classifieds addon.

For Dive Ops and Manufacturers you will need a reviews addon. You will likely need a little custom development. XenReviews is currently not available for sale as its currently vaporware. So you have two options: try Showcase now or wait until XR is released. Or both.

 

[Mike Edge]

Any update on when we can expect the next beta?

 

[Alpha1]

The process of porting to widgets has begun. I'm doing it live on Xenmods.com so you can track the progress.

No change since posting this 2 weeks ago. What widgets are you working on?

 

[Daniel Hood]

Any update on when we can expect the next beta?

No

No change since posting this 2 weeks ago. What widgets are you working on?

Well there has been change but the widgets aren't visible because when I reverted back to beta 5 code base they started throwing errors. You should see progress by the end of the weekend (I generally do the most XenForo work in the weekend).

 

[Alpha1]

You should see progress by the end of the weekend (I generally do the most XenForo work in the weekend).

There is no progress to be seen. No widgets have been added.

 

[Mike Edge]

There is no progress to be seen. No widgets have been added.

Yeah I was disappointed by that too, I checked several times this weekend but didn't see any changes.

 

[Ernest L. Defoe]

I don't really have a dog in this race but I have read pretty much every post in this thread and I've had about as much as I can stand.

Yes this addon should have been completed some time ago. I get that. I also get that Daniel didn't have much to do with it for quite some time and now he's back working on it. It sounds like this addon got way more complicated than it had to be and its taking Daniel quite some time to put out a solid product without all the bloat the original addon was going to have in it. Let's give him time to get it finished. I know there are some that are having to put other projects on hold waiting to get this addon because the projects center around it. I get that I really do.

If we as a community keep the bashing and comments about stuff not being done by a certain time continues Daniel may just throw his hands up in the air and say he's done. Daniel doesn't seem like that kind of person but we all reach our breaking point. Give him the time he needs to sift through the thousands and thousands of lines of code so that way he can release a solid bloat free product.

If we as a community keep this type of stuff up we will end up losing quality addon developers and when that happens the community as a whole will suffer from it. Yes Daniel got paid some of the money from the CrowdFund for this but now he's having to more or less fix someone else's code. Most of us have families to feed I understand that and I'm sure Daniel does too and while the money from this I'm sure is long well spent he can't survive and pay bills if he devotes every waking moment on this addon. He has to update his current ones to make people want to renew and take on other projects to help put food on the table.

I'm sure he wishes this addon would have been finished by the other guy so he wouldn't have to hear another word about it but he's being the bigger man and not saying screw you to all those that have already put money into this addon. He's trying to finish it and I'm sure as quickly as he can so he doesn't have to deal with all the negativity surrounding this addon.

Ok my rant is over. Like I said I don't have a dog in this race but I'm seeing this same type of mentality across this community. We as a community need to stop this or as I stated earlier all developers may just throw their hands up and say screw it and leave. We don't need that. We need the addon developers to stick around and continue to make quality addons for us. So everyone please let's stop all this negativity and just try to be patient. I know that's hard to do when you don't see updates for awhile.

 

[Alpha1]

I completely disagree with you @Ernest L. Defoe because we have been sitting here waiting for any action by @Daniel Hood for the last 7 months. Sure we all need to approach this in an understanding way and things can always happen. But we haven't seen action in over 7 months and have read many excuses. Not only in the last 7 months but also a similar course of events took place when @Jeff Berry and @Daniel Hood first started on it in 2013. Which was one of the reasons given why the developers are no longer on speaking terms and Daniel exiting the project.

My post is in no way meant as bashing, or putting Daniel down. But I would very much like to see movement on this project. I am happy that Daniel is now for the first time looking into the last beta release that Jeff did. Daniel was quite surprised to find that custom fields work very well in that release. So that's great. But its also mind boggling to find out that 7 months after taken this project up again this is the first time it was looked into.

What we need now is a change from the past and actually seeing some action.

I know it makes no sense to just complain for the sake of complaining. Its not productive. But I will point out when yet another statement is not lived up to. Especially when it looks like more of the same behavior we have seen so far.
At the same time I will be the first to cheer for seeing progress.

 

[Daniel Hood]

But I will point out when yet another statement is not lived up to.

I said should. This is why I always try to avoid giving any sort of time estimates on anything. The fact is that while XenFields works better in this version. XenReviews still does really odd things.

For example,


why in the world is the box that contains the output of that array 185,003px? Comparatively, the same widget that I'm trying to port from Classifieds to XenReviews (as I said, I'm progressing on both at the same time when possible) is only 20,215px (and it's displaying 10 adverts compared to XenReviews 1 item).

This is the type of stuff I run into literally every step of the way. Every time I'm like "ok, just have to find where the custom field is.... why the heck is the debug a mile long?". Now I'm looking for a memory leak because there's no way we aren't going to run into "memory limit exceeded" errors. This is only with 4 custom fields by the way.

Not only in the last 7 months but also a similar course of events took place when @Jeff Berry and @Daniel Hood first started on it in 2013.

This is ridiculous. I've been over this.

I am happy that Daniel is now for the first time looking into the last beta release that Jeff did. Daniel was quite surprised to find that custom fields work very well in that release. So that's great. But its also mind boggling to find out that 7 months after taken this project up again this is the first time it was looked into.

Because I didn't want this project to move backwards and I was trying to push through all the troubles to the finish line but now I just don't care about taking steps backwards, as I've told you, I'm very close to just starting over. When I say this project is a mess, it's a mess. You guys wanted to know why Classifieds got to what you view as a far point so quickly... it's because I wasn't running into wall after wall. I wasn't working on overly complex code (I don't mean that as it's too advanced or I'm in over my head -- I mean it as far as it's a mess and over complicated compared to what it should be).

XenFields does work better. That doesn't mean it's perfect. It just means the Beta 5 build is "less bad" than the Beta 6 one that I was given as a "release candidate" 7 months ago.

 

[eberkund]

Because I didn't want this project to move backwards and I was trying to push through all the troubles to the finish line but now I just don't care about taking steps backwards, as I've told you, I'm very close to just starting over. When I say this project is a mess, it's a mess. You guys wanted to know why Classifieds got to what you view as a far point so quickly... it's because I wasn't running into wall after wall. I wasn't working on overly complex code (I don't mean that as it's too advanced or I'm in over my head -- I mean it as far as it's a mess and over complicated compared to what it should be).

I must say that as a software developer myself I can sympathize with this point.