Changes to e-Commerce

Hi,

Over the past couple of weeks I have been getting a few of the same questions and I thought that post a little on this and explain what is going to be happening with the next release of e-Commerce.

Basically the have been "Where is module xyz?"

Well the answer is that it is not going to be in the e-Commerce core anymore. With the exception of 2 modules there are going to be no more or less modules in e-Commerce core.

The major reasoning for this is that with previous versions of e-Commerce we had 35+ modules which is becomming very un-managable for a small groups of developers. Also it is becomming very hard for us to be able to create releases in a timely fashion. And what I think is the worst part of this is that in the majority of installation most of these modules are not being used.

So given this I have reduced the modules that will be available in core to only 12 (I am going to be adding ec_charge and very likely removing ec_address which will be replaced by addresses module http://drupal.org/project/addresses which will give the same functionality). Out of these modules, 80-90% of them will be used on every site, and enabling them all will not really cause any issues.

This means that setting up a site will be much easier and because there is less code it will be much easier to maintain and also upgrade for future revisions. It also means that we need less hands on deck to be able to maintain and trouble shot any issues.

So what does this mean for the modules left behind? Well this is where we need more people to take responsibility for the other modules, and take them in new directions and improvement them. Since I am not holding on so tight to e-Commerce new developers will be able to take on modules and create new ones. Build new methods for people to do things and make e-Commerce better. And because I have developed as many ways as I can think, developers can extend shops to do just about anything they can think of. If there isn't a hook or api call then we can work together to extend e-Commerce to do what is needed.

Now What? Well if you want to help or you need one of the modules that have been left behind. You can grad the most recent version, upgrade it to Drupal 6.x and e-Commerce v4.x, and then creat their own project and work on it themselves and take control to make it do what ever you can think of.

What if you are not a developer? In that case because of changes to e-Commerce we now use Views and Actions to implement a lot of functionality, so you can start building new reports, and workflows that you think will be needed, and submit them to be included in e-Commerce core. Or lastly you can start helping by documenting and updating the documentation for e-Commerce.

Any and all help will be appreciated.
Thanks
Gordon.