I'm interested in helping
Bob Silverberg
I found out about this project awhile back, and I saw the blog post
today asking for those interested in helping to step forward, so here
I am. As with everyone, my time for OS projects is limited, but if
there is a specific area that I can help out with I'd be glad to lend
a hand.
Cheers,
Bob
--
Bob Silverberg
www.silverwareconsulting.com
Sami Hoda
offer our help appropriately?
On Jun 30, 10:55 am, "Bob Silverberg" <bob.silverb...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Andy Jarrett
There has been another hold up on my part due to work/training
commitments recently.
Please be patient with us. I'll try and get an update together.
Regards, Andy
Jason
level are you looking for? I am new to OO and to Frameworks, but I am
excited to learn more. I am also willing to do grunt work and (gasp!)
documentation.
Jason
On Jun 30, 6:23 pm, "Andy Jarrett" <m...@andyjarrett.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi All
>
> There has been another hold up on my part due to work/training
> commitments recently.
>
> Please be patient with us. I'll try and get an update together.
>
> Regards, Andy
>
Kevin Roche
I am still up for developing the Fusebox version.
Kevin Roche
Peter Bell
(benevolent) dictator. Unfortunately I don't have the bandwidth for
the job, but I think if anyone had the time and chops to get it done,
a single dictator suggesting, persuading, asking, cajoling and shaming
the rest of us into giving them pieces to fit into their master plan
would get some kind of project together much more quickly otherwise a
committee with no fixed meeting schedule is unlikely to deliver
anything in a timeframe - especially when we all have other gigs.
Personally I'm most interested in discussing specific patterns for
approaching things like product attributes, tax rates and shipping
calculators at a language independent level (what's the object model
and the general patterns you might use to implement in any OO capable
language) and I'll be back to posting on that stuff on my blog next
month when I'm done with my new generator and cms framework which I'll
be relying on. I'll cross post here so hopefully we can at least push
through some of those discussions and if anyone else wants to start
any of those discussions, hit me up online or off as I'm always
interested in trying to improve how I approach those classes of
problems. Also, if there was anyone interested in committing but not
too sure about their OO code skills, a review of key solutions from
Yahoo stores to Miva to the Ruby ActiveMerchant and how they generally
approach tax, shipping, attributes, catalogs, checkouts and the like
would give us a bunch of benchmarks to compare our solutions to. If
nobody else has the time I'll probably hire an intern to do this, but
anyone willing to work with me to create some reviews which we could
share with the project would definitely be helping the project as well
as improving their knowledge of the solution space. Again hit me up
online or off - li...@pbell.com.
So, any (optionally benevolent) dictators around who really need this
project for something they're delivering in the medium term?
Best Wishes,
Peter
Bob Silverberg
> if there was anyone interested in committing but not
> too sure about their OO code skills, a review of key solutions from
> Yahoo stores to Miva to the Ruby ActiveMerchant and how they generally
> approach tax, shipping, attributes, catalogs, checkouts and the like
> would give us a bunch of benchmarks to compare our solutions to.
Peter, that sounds like an excellent idea. I'd be willing to invest
some time in that, as that is also an area in which I have a great
deal of interest. Please contact me when you have some time to
discuss how to best approach that task.
Peter Bell
Great! I have a bunch of ideas and will post some tomorrow so we can
circle round and get a gameplan.
Best Wishes,
Peter
Peter Bell
Sorry for delay - got a little busy here! So, I was looking at this
and it seems to me we need to do a few things.
1. Come up with a list of "competitors" to benchmark
I think we could look at both more limited off the shelf solutions
like Yahoo! stores or Shopify which have limited flexibility but show
common approaches to e-commerce problems that clearly work for lots of
small businesses and then some more powerful frameworks which would
probably be a closer match to what we're trying to build and are more
likely to have elegant abstractions for handling variabilities in
areas such as shipping and discounting.
Immediately I'd look at:
- Yahoo! Stores - http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/ecommerce/
- Shopify - http://www.shopify.com/
- Miva Merchant - http://www.mivamerchant.com/
(please add to the list!)
2. Come up with a list of features/functional areas
We need to split down "commerce" into a bunch of smaller chunks and
sub-chunks so we can focus on one small problem at a time. For example
Commerce
- ProductCatalog
- - CrossSellDisplay
- Cart
- Checkout
- - CheckoutWizard
- - DiscountCalculator
- - ShippingCalculator
- - TaxCalculator
- Admin
- - CatalogAdmin
- - ProductAdmin
- - ProductAttributeAdmin
- - CrossSellAdmin
- - OrderAdmin
- - ShippingMethodAdmin
- - DiscountAdmin
- - TaxAdmin
- - CommerceReporting
- MyAccount
- - ProfileManager
- - OrderManager
This is hardly a definitive list and makes assumptions (putting
shipping and discounting calculators under checkout instead of under
some kind of generic utilities area assumes that discounts and
shipping are only calculated in the checkout whereas sometimes they
are calculated in the cart), so feel free to tweak it as you will. I
think it is a starting point at least.
3. Feature Analysis
For each key feature, a short comparative write up of the different
approaches taken by each of "competitors" including URLs where
appropriate for more detailed information. I think the key here is not
necessarily to be comprehensive, but to pull together the nuggets of
information that seems relevant from each supplier.
Next Steps
I'd say the next step would be to create pages on the wiki under some
kind of "benchmarking" page with a list of the solutions being
benchmarked/reviewed, a list of the features/functional areas and then
to create stub pages for each feature (or for the first few) and then
to post back to the list asking people to sign up for creating a page
on a feature or two. I'd also suggest soliciting more solutions to
benchmark along with a list to a wiki page.
What do people think about the idea in general and/or the specifics?
Bob, any interest in running with this? Any thoughts on a better
approach?
Best WIshes,
Peter
Bob Silverberg
Thanks for taking the time to lay this all out. It does sound like an
excellent idea, and a reasonable approach. I've added some comments
inline below, followed by a summary of my thoughts on how to proceed.
> 1. Come up with a list of "competitors" to benchmark
> I think we could look at both more limited off the shelf solutions
> like Yahoo! stores or Shopify which have limited flexibility but show
> common approaches to e-commerce problems that clearly work for lots of
> small businesses and then some more powerful frameworks which would
> probably be a closer match to what we're trying to build and are more
> likely to have elegant abstractions for handling variabilities in
> areas such as shipping and discounting.
>
So for the former solutions (i.e., Yahoo!) we'd just be looking at
features and how they are implemented from a user's (both customer and
admin) perspective, and for the latter we'd be looking at how the
features are implemented from a design perspective. Is that right?
I'm guessing that for the latter we'd need to actually look at source
code, or do you think we can infer some of that simply from the
interface?
> Immediately I'd look at:
> - Yahoo! Stores - http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/ecommerce/
> - Shopify - http://www.shopify.com/
> - Miva Merchant - http://www.mivamerchant.com/
If I had to add to the list, I'd add:
PayPal - https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_profile-comparison
OSCommerce - http://www.oscommerce.com/ or zen cart -
http://www.zen-cart.com/, which I believe is a fork of OSCommerce (for
a framework)
But those are based on hearing about them, not working with them. I
agree that we should add a few items to the list, but we don't want to
make the list too large or we run the risk of not completing the task.
I suggest that everyone involved in the process nominate the
solutions that they think appropriate and we make a determination from
there. That can be done via a wiki page.
> 2. Come up with a list of features/functional areas
> We need to split down "commerce" into a bunch of smaller chunks and
> sub-chunks so we can focus on one small problem at a time. For example
I've added a few items that immediately come to mind:
> Commerce
> - ProductCatalog
> - - CrossSellDisplay
-- Product Reviews
> - Cart
-- Wishlist
> - Checkout
> - - CheckoutWizard
> - - DiscountCalculator
> - - ShippingCalculator
> - - TaxCalculator
-- Multiple Addresses
> - Admin
> - - CatalogAdmin
> - - ProductAdmin
> - - ProductAttributeAdmin
> - - CrossSellAdmin
> - - OrderAdmin
> - - ShippingMethodAdmin
> - - DiscountAdmin
> - - TaxAdmin
> - - CommerceReporting
-- Currency Admin
-- Notification admin (e.g., order status emails, etc.)
> - MyAccount
> - - ProfileManager
> - - OrderManager
General:
-- Multi-language support
>
> This is hardly a definitive list and makes assumptions (putting
> shipping and discounting calculators under checkout instead of under
> some kind of generic utilities area assumes that discounts and
> shipping are only calculated in the checkout whereas sometimes they
> are calculated in the cart), so feel free to tweak it as you will. I
> think it is a starting point at least.
Again, I think that putting this on a wiki page and soliciting
feedback from the group would be a good way to go.
>
> 3. Feature Analysis
> For each key feature, a short comparative write up of the different
> approaches taken by each of "competitors" including URLs where
> appropriate for more detailed information. I think the key here is not
> necessarily to be comprehensive, but to pull together the nuggets of
> information that seems relevant from each supplier.
>
Great idea.
> Next Steps
> I'd say the next step would be to create pages on the wiki under some
> kind of "benchmarking" page with a list of the solutions being
> benchmarked/reviewed, a list of the features/functional areas and then
> to create stub pages for each feature (or for the first few) and then
> to post back to the list asking people to sign up for creating a page
> on a feature or two. I'd also suggest soliciting more solutions to
> benchmark along with a list to a wiki page.
>
> What do people think about the idea in general and/or the specifics?
> Bob, any interest in running with this? Any thoughts on a better
> approach?
>
I'd be happy to take the lead on this. I'll do the following:
1. Create a wiki page for solutions.
2. Create a wiki page for features.
3. Create a few stub pages for some features.
4. Post back to the list asking for specific contributions, with timelines.
My thought for #4 is that it would be great if we could make this a
collaborative effort, and easy for everyone to contribute, even though
all of our time is limited. I would attempt to create small tasks;
for example, I might ask everyone to review the Solutions page and
provide their feedback, which could include adding solutions or
commenting on existing solutions. This would be a task that should
not take more than, say, 15 minutes of someone's time, and therefore
everyone would be able to find the time to contribute, even if that
just means reading without commenting.
Do people think that they'd be able to contribute in this manner, if
given, say, a week to complete the task? After the deadline I would
gather all of the contributions into a summary, and then onto the next
task.
What do people think about that approach?
Peter Bell
On Jul 7, 2008, at 9:30 PM, Bob Silverberg wrote:
> I'd be happy to take the lead on this. I'll do the following:
> 1. Create a wiki page for solutions.
> 2. Create a wiki page for features.
> 3. Create a few stub pages for some features.
> 4. Post back to the list asking for specific contributions, with
> timelines.
>
> My thought for #4 is that it would be great if we could make this a
> collaborative effort, and easy for everyone to contribute, even though
> all of our time is limited. I would attempt to create small tasks;
> for example, I might ask everyone to review the Solutions page and
> provide their feedback, which could include adding solutions or
> commenting on existing solutions. This would be a task that should
> not take more than, say, 15 minutes of someone's time, and therefore
> everyone would be able to find the time to contribute, even if that
> just means reading without commenting.
I think that is a great approach. That way we get a bunch of opinions
we can all scan/review. Also, I don't think that (for instance) we
need to decide a definitive list of solutions. A long list is fine as
then each person can select whatever subset they prefer when they do
their task. So I might choose to look at the shipping calculators in
Miva, OS Commerce and Yahoo! stores. Someone else might add their
thoughts about shipping calculators in Miva (again) and in
AbleCommerce. I'd also recommend trying to ask at least a couple of
people to do each task so we end up with some different perspectives
we can compare. I think a bunch of data points/perspectives would be
more useful (and easier to develop) that the one true definitive guide
to any given topic which might be a little harder to agree on.
Let me know when the pages are up! I'm certainly on for doing some of
the tasks.
Best Wishes,
Peter