Merchant’s Edition Release

Tired of waiting? You’re certainly not alone. We read about hold backs after hold backs for months now, without any substance backing anything up. Even this latest post three days ago asks for yet another two months of waiting. No new code, but new paid plans, apparently giving up free forum support. One could even read it as if they’re playing with the idea of going closed source.

Seeing this, Merchant’s Edition could no longer hold back and did what thirty bees should have done a year ago already: I made a release from what’s there. That’s more than 400 bug fixing commits since the last release, certainly not too shabby.

So say hello to Merchant’s Edition 1.9.0

Technically it’s a thirty bees release with a renamed installer package. It’ll install as thirty bees 1.1.1.

Merchants with an existing shop simply upgrade to the latest Bleeding Edge 1.1.x, that’s the same. And remember: 1.1.x as of half a year ago isn’t the same as 1.1.x of today.

What’s the plan? Well, there is no shortage of ideas, including:

• Rebranding, own translations & update server (obviously).
• A Core Updater supporting both Merchant’s Edition and thirty bees, allowing to switch easily between them.
• Committing the dozens of bug fixes I already have on my plate.
• Support for PHP 8.0.
• Speed improvements.
• Simplifying back office without giving up the feature richness. There are so many ‘features’ which barely make sense, just confusing merchants and slowing down operations. Tidying it up will improve the back office experience tremendously.
• A patch system for third party modules. We all know there are many modules out there which leave room for improvement. Their authors are too lazy to update them, Merchant’s Edition is not.
• A usable version of the freaking freaky full page cache. Ever tried to configure it for best performance? It’s currently a mess, and can be done much, much better.
• Regular releases, like once a month. Of course!

About Merchant’s Edition: there’s a working business model in place already. No need to beg for money. Merchant’s Edition may come up with things like Crowdfunding for larger improvements. From my own experience, merchants will happily pay if they get a substantial reward for their money, like fixed bugs and working code. Let me take this opportunity to thank those who did so far, it has been much appreciated!