Extension Store Discussion & Feedback

The above steps are good but again, it may be a problem for people who have up-gradation schedule. They will have to wait until the module is reported or the developer replies back on the comment. This may consume a lot of time.

In some cases the developers don't even bother to reply! I think the best solution for a 100% satisfaction purchase experience is to take it in house.

You can form a volunteering team who will solely be responsible in testing the extension and then approving it for consumer downloads.

I myself has lost money on so many crappy faulty extensions and the developers site is down or their mail doesn't work. I am sure many others have faced similar situtations already.

adi_555 wrote:You can form a volunteering team who will solely be responsible in testing the extension and then approving it for consumer downloads.

That's just mind-boggling. You really think professional programmers are going to volunteer to be unpaid middle-men in a for-profit project?

Maybe a certain commission if opencart owners don't mind! this way we will not only help get a clean extension store but also set a benchmark for others

adi_555 wrote:Maybe a certain commission

And when you review an extension that's rejected or doesn't sell you've just earned $0 for your work.

The only way to make that work is hire a person to review extensions and charge a listing fee. The effect of that will be:
1) A major slowdown in new extension listings caused by the review process
2) Higher priced extensions as developers try to recoup their listing fee
3) Fewer niche extensions published as an extension that would be modestly profitable over a number of months would now be a net loss

Maybe we should fix society from having lamers who ruin everyone's good time.
Maybe an ethics quiz that you have to take before submitting a module
The nice thing about paying out at the end of the month is that would be scammers and what not forfeit their money.
That should be reason enough not to bother.

Qphoria wrote:The nice thing about paying out at the end of the month is that would be scammers and what not forfeit their money.
That should be reason enough not to bother.

There will always be someone trying to make a buck some shady way or another. I don't agree with the methods but adi is right that things can always be improved. For instance, it appears some people are purchasing their own modules in order to bump their rating. I've noticed some free extensions have suspiciously low ratings versus their paid counterpart too. And there really is no easy way to tell developers who regularly support and upgrade their extensions from those who don't (though version upgrades should be up to the developer and not expected as a given).

To be honest I think some (maybe wellknown) improvements could be done to extension store, partially redimensioning also the issues:

1) To trace rating. A developer should have the possibility to know who assigned a rate to its extension and why. He should also be able to provide a feedback or clarification on it

2) Some better extension home page with several charts: most downloaded commercial, most download free, highest rate, this month / recent, most downloaded themes (commercial/free), etc. (btw current filtered search is not effective imho and actually it doesn't work well).

My opinion is that, nowadays, with an efficient rating/social system, not working extensions are quickly and naturally excluded by the system itself. On the other side, best extensions could gain visibility.

regards,

M

Just an alternative,

While submitting the extension, the developers would also need to submit full fledged video right from installation (Of every version) to completion(Including functionality) and also a view of error log (To check if the module throws any notice or warnings) This way it will make it easy for the person in charge of approving the module for sale on opencart store. They can just watch the video and check if the module works well or not . This video can also help users install the module! What say?

adi_555 wrote:Just an alternative,

While submitting the extension, the developers would also need to submit full fledged video right from installation (Of every version) to completion(Including functionality) and also a view of error log (To check if the module throws any notice or warnings) This way it will make it easy for the person in charge of approving the module for sale on opencart store. They can just watch the video and check if the module works well or not . This video can also help users install the module! What say?

Not to put down the idea, but this is not going to happen. Including an installation video for every extension would take developers forever, not to mention it could easily be faked. Also, the error log means nothing, since people's installations differ from the standard version.

But shouldn't there be a protection system for customers? Even right now, I have 4 modules in my downloads but cannot use them because the developers do not bother to reply!

I think daniel should stop payments towards the developer even if there is one unhappy note or feedback. Payments should only be released after all the people who have brought the module are happy with it.

adi_555 wrote:But shouldn't there be a protection system for customers? Even right now, I have 4 modules in my downloads but cannot use them because the developers do not bother to reply!

I think daniel should stop payments towards the developer even if there is one unhappy note or feedback. Payments should only be released after all the people who have brought the module are happy with it.

While the idea may have some merit, it's going to be next to impossible to police it. The sheer number of extensions and developers are huge

adi_555 wrote:I think daniel should stop payments towards the developer even if there is one unhappy note or feedback. Payments should only be released after all the people who have brought the module are happy with it.

Uh. One strike and you're out? I'd pull all my extensions (free or otherwise) rather than deal with such a system. It's not worth it. You can't please all the people all the time. It's just not possible. Plus anyone who wants a free extension only needs to leave a bad rating.

The problem is you keep making this some fight between customers and developers when a far better solution is promoting community and transparency. How about this instead:

• Send automatic follow-up emails a week after an extension purchase that encourage users to leave ratings and feedback
• Require anyone who leaves a 3-star or lower rating to leave feedback so developers can respond
• Create an overall developer rating
• Some sort of help ticket system with public open/closed stats, that way users know which developers provide regular support and which don't

How does this help protect the customers who shell out money? when a developer does not bother to respond.

Developers only get paid once a month towards the end. Therefore if you have any issues, you can always get in touch with opencart to cancel the payment and get your money back. You are also covered by paypal. If you buy something and it's a scam, you can request your money back for 45 days I think it is

Paypal requests will be sent to daniel, is that how its supposed to be??? Identifying what payment paid for what module is difficult in paypal history.

Also the major issue is I cannot see report extension after purchasing the product (in download list)

adi_555 wrote:How does this help protect the customers who shell out money? when a developer does not bother to respond.

Handling developers that go AWOL is an issue but guaranteeing the functionality of extensions is much trickier since OpenCart has no formal extension system for core changes. You can have a perfectly working extension that fails because of a conflict with someone else's.

adi_555 wrote:Also the major issue is I cannot see report extension after purchasing the product (in download list)

You have to find it in the store again, not in your downloads list. A quick search by the extension's title should bring it up, and you can then click the "Report extension" link.

if anyone sees a site selling stole extensions please let me know. i'm trying to track sites that are doing this so i can ban them if they are members.

I mean look at this guy http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route ... 052&page=2

All hes doing is adding a <?php echo $heading_title; ?> and charging $10

Or this one

http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route ... on_id=2621

$10 is the lowest amount you can charge for a modification so whether a mod is worth that much will be up to the people who buy it (or don't).