Satchmo 0.9.2 - Feature discussion

[Chris Moffitt]

Now that 0.9.1 is out the door, I wanted to outline my thoughts for the next release. My purpose is to drive some discussion about what we should focus on.

1. I would like to get the django csrf updates incorporated into Satchmo trunk so it can use this improved feature. An initial fork has been started here - https://bitbucket.org/dhmorgan/satchmo

2. Updates to the admin interface. I would really like to see some efforts at making the admin interface a little more streamlined so that it isn't as intimidating to a new user. I think some judicious use of jquery could probably make some big steps. I'd also like to see some rudimentary reporting so that the admin interface is more useful to store owner.

3. Evaluating improvements to the product model to support improved product model inheritance. There has been some good discussion here and I'd like to see if we can make some of that a reality without massive backwards-incompatible changes.

4. Figure out why caching-app-plugins does not work with the new caching template loader.

Other than those items, I'm sure we'll continue to focus on documentation, bug fixes and translations.

Some optional items:
- Bursar split. I'm still in favor of this but am not sure exactly how much work is still needed there.
- One of my pony requests is an improvement to the overall look and feel of the default store. I like that there is minimal cruft that needs to be removed from the default templates but I would prefer that Satchmo out of the box looked more presentable to a customer and had some cleaner markup. It would be cool if we could get some templates out there to jump start that aspect of deploying Satchmo.

Anyway, those are a few thoughts. I'm curious if anyone else has anything major they would like to advocate for. Feel free to bring up here.

Thanks,
Chris

[franck bret]

2010/6/3 Chris Moffitt <ch...@moffitts.net>:

> Now that 0.9.1 is out the door, I wanted to outline my thoughts for the next
> release. My purpose is to drive some discussion about what we should focus
> on.
>
> 1. I would like to get the django csrf updates incorporated into Satchmo
> trunk so it can use this improved feature. An initial fork has been started
> here - https://bitbucket.org/dhmorgan/satchmo
>
> 2. Updates to the admin interface. I would really like to see some efforts
> at making the admin interface a little more streamlined so that it isn't as
> intimidating to a new user. I think some judicious use of jquery could
> probably make some big steps. I'd also like to see some rudimentary
> reporting so that the admin interface is more useful to store owner.

I think a first and simple step is to integrate django-grapelli, wich
is well designed, coded and eyes catchy. It gives some pretty inline
admin and can remain optional.

>
> 3. Evaluating improvements to the product model to support improved product
> model inheritance. There has been some good discussion here and I'd like to
> see if we can make some of that a reality without massive
> backwards-incompatible changes.

Actually I think we need to make more simple and solid the main
workflow/api when dealing with product. Separating what is really
required for a product to exist (sku, pricing, title, qty, shipping
rules), what is qualifying the product inheritance(abstract parent
reference and variations) and what is needed for displaying a
product(description, photos, attributes etc...). Well designing this
part is the key for future elegant webservice api... Also I think
backward incompatible changes will be unavoidable., but south
migrations can help...
The next part is to refactor products templates tags / context
processors to ensure data processing and html rendering are really
separated in a way we designers can only works on templates with a
clear usage definition guide...

>
> 4. Figure out why caching-app-plugins does not work with the new caching
> template loader.
>
> Other than those items, I'm sure we'll continue to focus on documentation,
> bug fixes and translations.
>
> Some optional items:
> - Bursar split. I'm still in favor of this but am not sure exactly how much
> work is still needed there.

Agree for that, payment and shipping must be separated to gain a whole
of benefits with side projects...

> - One of my pony requests is an improvement to the overall look and feel of
> the default store. I like that there is minimal cruft that needs to be
> removed from the default templates but I would prefer that Satchmo out of
> the box looked more presentable to a customer and had some cleaner markup.
> It would be cool if we could get some templates out there to jump start that
> aspect of deploying Satchmo.

Not sure, cause it's design and design is a subjective and value added
job in this case... I really prefer to show in early customer meeting
look what we can do with an exhaustive api/documentation and notes on
workflow than a "look how does it's pretty"... A standard xhtml / css
compliant clear and minimal design(white/grey/black + 1 blue color
link) should do the job. I'll work on that when finding a few hours.

>
> Anyway, those are a few thoughts. I'm curious if anyone else has anything
> major they would like to advocate for. Feel free to bring up here.

A main context processor for cart and shipping in order to have
contextual dict for displaying on all pages of the website what is the
cart amount and simulate shipping based on logged or not
information(get_lowest_shipping_cost).
>
> Thanks,
> Chris
>
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Franck Bret
---------------------
06 03 90 65 98

[Brian O'Connor]

I agree with pretty much everything franck mentioned.  While pre1.0, backwards incompatible changes should be avoided when feasible, but it shouldn't be the end all be all in the decision making process.

 

I'd like to see a heavy push to optimize a lot of the SQL inside satchmo.  I know in certain areas the amount of queries are really, really high and whatever can be done to cut down on that would be great.

 

In addition, which I've thought a lot about and close to formalizing a proposal is greater AJAX support.  A few months ago I streamlined some of the product add / update / delete ajax functions to be the same code as the regular, with different output depending on the request type.  I'd really like to see that expanded into the other models as well, like Cart display, product viewing, shipping calculation, etc.  As you can see from my previous posts, I feel strongly that satchmo as a eCommerce framework should provide the ability for shop makers to calculate shipping and tax costs on the cart display page via AJAX without making it themselves.  It would be easy enough for us to do once, and everyone else can either include it or remove it (a perfect candidate for a templatetag, ie {% render_quick_shipping_form %}).

 

I think some more formal API specifications need to be made for each indvidual module - ie, we make it very clear we just call get_lowest_shipping_cost(), get_shipping_options(), etc.  This way if people need to extend satchmo for their own needs in templatetags, views, etc, it is very obvious what needs to be done.

 

This might be a poor place for this question, but why are we passing default_view_tax in pretty much every function I've looked at in the satchmo core?  Shouldn't that be made into a context processor, or just taken from the config values when needed?  Or just used in the product model when we ask for its price?  I'd liek to see that done so that future code improvements can be done and optimizations without worrying about what that really is.

 

My last, but really not important request would be to factor all the translation models out of the code.  I have a loose idea of how to do this in code, and will release that idea in a separate email to the dev list.  I know for my client, translations aren't on the agenda, and probably never will be.  For him, the translations area is cluttering up the already confusing admin interface, and there's no way to easily disable that.

 

Brian

Brian O'Connor

[Issac Kelly]

- One of my pony requests is an improvement to the overall look and feel of the default store. I like that there is minimal cruft that needs to be removed from the default templates but I would prefer that Satchmo out of the box looked more presentable to a customer and had some cleaner markup. It would be cool if we could get some templates out there to jump start that aspect of deploying Satchmo.

What sort of timeline are you on? That was one of our biggest efforts when starting with satchmo, so as long as we can keep up with our workload, we might be able to help.

We being me (back-end) and my brother (front-end design/dev) 

Also: please, if this was discussed before, let me know.   In one of James Tauber's talks online about Pinax, someone mentions Satchmo.  Personally I'd really like to see satchmo 'integrated' into Pinax.  Not necessiarly so that social stores or anything like that could be easy, but more so that setting up pinax was a little more straight forward.  It falls under the "it's not hard, but it could be easier" category for me.

I also thing that pinax's push towards standardizing applications and directory structures are probably good for everybody.

I would like to see these things, probably not in a 9.2 release, but maybe somewhere in the path to 2?

[Chris Moffitt]

Thanks for the comments. I'll summarize my thoughts here:

1. Integrating grapelli into Satchmo. I do like the look and extra features
grapelli has. I am very leary of adding yet another dependency to Satchmo.
There are some places where it's optional but some of the features do require modifying
the admin.py file. I'm not sure if we should do this or not.

2. General API stabilization- documentation and improvements. I'm all for these.

3. General re-design of demo store- I appreciate any effort that folks can devote
to this. There seem to be some offers of support so I hope we can coordinate efforts. If
someone starts a fork on bitbucket, let's try to coordinate efforts.

4. Ajax updates - Another good idea. I'm receptive to it as long as it degrades
gracefully and isn't required for core store functionality.

5. Translation model changes - Once again, I'm not opposed to this but would need
to see the implementation details to understand how it could play out.

6. Pinax integration - This recipe here is in place - http://github.com/hbussell/pinax-satchmo-buildout
I'm not sure what other "integration" people would like to see. I'm open to the idea and James
and I have had very very brief discussions about this in the past but no concrete work yet.

-Chris

[Alex Robbins]

FWIW, I think grapelli is a great project, that adds many interesting
and useful features, but I would be unhappy if we started requiring it
for Satchmo. If someone wants to add grapelli to their satchmo
install, great, but I'd rather not be forced to use it.

Just my 2 cents,
Alex

[Bruce Kroeze]

On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 6:57 AM, Alex Robbins <alexander...@gmail.com> wrote:

FWIW, I think grapelli is a great project, that adds many interesting
and useful features, but I would be unhappy if we started requiring it
for Satchmo. If someone wants to add grapelli to their satchmo
install, great, but I'd rather not be forced to use it.

I agree completely.  But, I think a lot of what people like about Grapelli is that it makes admin easier.  Now *that*, we can put some effort into.  More wizards.  More tools to help store owners manage their site in a simpler way.  If you look at "presta-cart", they have some great admin tools.  We could do that kind of thing.  In fact, I'd love to see it.

 

--
Bruce Kroeze
http://www.ecomsmith.com
It's time to hammer your site into shape.

[Alex Robbins]

> More wizards. More tools to help store owners manage their site in a
> simpler way.

Yeah, I know that streamlining common workflows would be a great help
for my clients. The admin works pretty well without much
configuration, but we could definitely make satchmo stellar by making
some common actions easier.

Alex

[Chris Moffitt]

Just to brainstorm, what would be some of the common workflows:
- New Product creation?
- Order Disposition?

What else?

-Chris

[Alex Robbins]

Common workflows I've seen:
Most of my users want csv exports of orders to feed into a crm. Some
kind of order report generator would be nice (ideally with
configurable export formatting).
Comment moderation

[Gerhard Kotze]

Configurable products/variations maybe? Clients usually have problems wrapping their heads around this

-Gerhard

On 06/04/2010 09:11 PM, Chris Moffitt wrote:
> Just to brainstorm, what would be some of the common workflows:
> - New Product creation?
> - Order Disposition?
>
> What else?
>
> -Chris
>
> On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 11:59 AM, Alex Robbins

> <alexander...@gmail.com <mailto:alexander...@gmail.com>>

> wrote:
>
> > More wizards. More tools to help store owners manage their site
> in a
> > simpler way.
>
> Yeah, I know that streamlining common workflows would be a great help
> for my clients. The admin works pretty well without much
> configuration, but we could definitely make satchmo stellar by making
> some common actions easier.
>
> Alex
>
> On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 10:09 AM, Bruce Kroeze <bkr...@gmail.com
> <mailto:bkr...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> > On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 6:57 AM, Alex Robbins

> <alexander...@gmail.com <mailto:alexander...@gmail.com>>

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[Alessandro Ronchi]

2010/6/3 Chris Moffitt <ch...@moffitts.net>

Anyway, those are a few thoughts. I'm curious if anyone else has anything major they would like to advocate for. Feel free to bring up here.

For SEO reasons, I can add some thoughts:

- make urls translation in some way. Now with language selection based on cookie, search engines cannot dig correctly other languages. One way should be to add language code inside url with localeurl, but every url in template should be internationalized.

So, if I'm on EN version the html source should show href="domain/en/product/slug"

- To optimize SEO, also the slug should be translated like name or description, so the nice url reflects actual localized keywords.

- add some sort of CMS to create standard static translated pages.

I really think that some major SEO improvements can let satchmo be best open source e-commerce solution, and it's quite a standard requirement... 

Just my 2 cents...

-- 

Alessandro Ronchi
http://www.soasi.com

Hobby & Giochi
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