FAQ Manager

[skunkworx]

This is a known bug and i'll also get this changed, this piece of code:

p.products_date_available

needs to be changed to

p.faqs_date_available

i'll try and make an effort to get this contrib updated and looking good.

Derek
perfectdesigning.net

So I guess there's no answer forthcoming to this then?

i too cant find the text...i originally asked about it last year around june...now i know it's not a revenue generator for you guys but please zencart is a revenue generator for you, and many of us contribute to the development of it...so can you please tidy this contribution?

i know when i asked about it the answer i got was ''sorry, its not a ticket item so we wont be putting it high on the priority list, but we should have it fixed shortly''- that was about august 2006.

another thing that this atually does is serve as visibility for your company, and an opportunity to correlate your name with a quality module...which in turn increases the chance of getting seen..

so i think theres some real reasons why pefrfect design should address this issue- more than just as a ''nice thing to do''..although let it be said that many of us do actually contribute with no commercial link or thought of financial gain.

is the above fix going to actually arrive guys?

the community needs to know, otherwise please do the right thing and ask zencart to remove it from the module downloads...as you can see it is costing people time and effort as it is.

Cheers.

Tim

[Dehaw]

Hi Tim,

We, nor anyone else is obligated to develop anything for free, we do it as a contribution to the community.

This contribution was originally developed by Dave at Open operations, we merely took it and fixed alot of bugs to get it working on a clients site, which again was a few years ago.

We are very busy and are trying our best, but we will not drop our paid work to develop a free peice of software or module. This is suppose to be a community and i fail to believe that everyone using this contrib that no one can help and fix a few of the minor problems.

If you take the poll manager or testimonials manager they have been updated by users of this forum and this community, which is good because thats the way open source and the GNU/GPL licence is suppose to work. Although i know there are others that took these modules and are now selling them as their own work.

Under no circumstances are we liable to fix anything for anyone for free, more so its kind of hard to fix a bug that everyone notices but no tells us what page this error appears, are we suppose to go through the code and hope we find the problem?

you said you were told ''sorry, its not a ticket item so we wont be putting it high on the priority list, but we should have it fixed shortly'', who exactly said that? it certainly wasn't us.

You also said "please do the right thing and ask zencart to remove it from the module downloads...as you can see it is costing people time and effort as it is.", this contribution work perfectly on our systems and we haven't come across any bugs so far, but we have removed alot of redundant code and i know there are others that also have it working fine, so why would we ask for it to be removed??

Alot of software have bugs and need updated, if we were charging for this module i'm sure we would make it more of a priority to update it, but we don't so it isn't.

If you require custom coding then ask a developer to fix the problems now? or why don't you use one of the other FAQ contributions, or why don't you do what i personally did and learn the code, which does take time and effort and ultimately cost, but we are certainly reaping the benefit.

or even better, get involved with the project, donate towards its development and also you may want to tell us where this problem exists so we can guide you with what to do.

The module is there its up to each individual to assess which one is best for their needs, if this one doesn't work for you then bin it and use another.

I'll say it again, we are trying to upgrade the contrib but we are very busy and we need to pay the bills so i'm not sure when we can release it, in the meantime as the community for help.

Derek

[skunkworx]

Derek, the contrib doesnt waork- as attested by this thread..thats why it should be removed. you yourself have posted the issue on this very thread..and there seems no fix.

rather than a great big defensive response to what i think were fair comments (ps it was you or one of your staff that told me about the ''priorities''...almost certain it was you actually) , just a fix or remove it...simple as that.

no need to go on and on about contribs and other's taking your work...

you are making $ on zencart itself so my thoughts are that you ARE obliged to either contribute by way of programming or donations. But that is purely on moral grounds.

all i ask is if you commit to something, see it through. its very frustrating and can only do your business harm to see that what you say doesnt match up with what you do. Like i said, its also free advertising...so in many ways is much more of a ''paying'' effort than you might think.

so is there any fix for the quoted issue?.

Tim

[Dehaw]

Derek, the contrib doesnt waork- as attested by this thread..thats why it should be removed. you yourself have posted the issue on this very thread..and there seems no fix.

rather than a great big defensive response to what i think were fair comments (ps it was you or one of your staff that told me about the ''priorities''...almost certain it was you actually) , just a fix or remove it...simple as that.

no need to go on and on about contribs and other's taking your work...

you are making $ on zencart itself so my thoughts are that you ARE obliged to either contribute by way of programming or donations. But that is purely on moral grounds.

all i ask is if you commit to something, see it through. its very frustrating and can only do your business harm to see that what you say doesnt match up with what you do. Like i said, its also free advertising...so in many ways is much more of a ''paying'' effort than you might think.

so is there any fix for the quoted issue?.

Tim

Tim,

This contrib is the result of open operations, all we did is merely fixed a few bugs to get it working for one of our clients, it was already released by open operations before we even touched it.

We are no way obliged to do anything for anyone for free and i'm sure you also wouldn't want to work for free, we all have our bills to pay, and quite frankly i'm not interested in developing a program for free when i need to feed my kids.

I will not be doing any further development on this contrib until we have time, however being a very busy company goodness knows when that will be.

As for removing the contrib, if the guys at zencart want to do that then fine, but it will always be available from our site. I mean the contrib is there for those who wish to use it since it does work and there are many using it as we speak, i really am not that interested if you or anyone else uses it or not, its not our original work and we do not need to stand by it, but we are more than happy for others to download and use it if they so wish.

Yes thats right as a development company who uses zencart we will be making $$ off the back of this great software package, just like many others, although i personally have been a long member of these forums and USED to help out alot in the past but because we are good at what we do we are too busy now, is that good or bad, well i need to feed my family so it must be good.

I don't understand how you can say that we are not a committed company that supports their work, go to our site and read the testimonials submitted by our clients, what do they say??

As i said this contrib was NOT our original work, we only fixed a few bugs to get it working for a client a few years back and then released it again as a near working mod.

Open Operations had a great idea there but failed to deliver and we are currently working on this contrib on a clients site to clean up the code, fix bugs and remove the redundant stuff, but again who knows when that will be done.

So what issue are you talking about? I already asked in my last reply to provide details.

For those that are interested we will be releasing a help desk manager soon!

Derek

p.s. i don't mean to be defensive but it really does get my back up when people think that all development is free because we all use an open source free peice of software, oh and BTW, open source does not mean free.

[skunkworx]

the issue is quoted at the top of this page.

its the p.products v p.faq code that no one can find.

im just trying to be middle o the road here...my belief obviously differs from yours philosophically as i think that there is some obligation...financial or otherwise...thats all.

[Dehaw]

the issue is quoted at the top of this page.

its the p.products v p.faq code that no one can find.

im just trying to be middle o the road here...my belief obviously differs from yours philosophically as i think that there is some obligation...financial or otherwise...thats all.

Tim,

We deal mainly in open source software thats released under the GNU/GPL licence, you should give it a read its quite interesting. The problem we as a company have experienced in the past and continue to do so is alot of people that use these softwares expect to get free support, free development and as you keep pointing out, the developers have an obligation to fix things.

This clearly is incorrect since its up to the companies or developers whether they provide support or continue to develop the software. i know of many companies that release open source software and only provide paid support because thats where alot of the time and energy is consumed. other companies or collaborative developers like the Zen cart team offer user led forums such as this one where users can help each other to solve problems and report bugs, you'll find that although they accept donations from users of zencart that still does not mean that the team must update the software, although in most cases they do, which generally results in some sort of payment whether it be donations or otherwise.

I have always stated that we are prepared to update the module since it would and is useful for our own clients, but as i keep stating we need to try and find the time to do this over and above our day jobs, but just because we released an updated copy of somone elses module that doesn't mean that we are obligated to fix the problems, there is no reason that any other developer on this forum can help.

Anyway enough said, i think your original post could have been worded slightly better, i mean the time i've spent time writing these posts could have been better spent solving the problem.

I know that the problem is stated above but as i said before i refuse to search through everyfile to find out where the problem exists, so tell me the page that you are trying to access, then i can look at the code on the page, otherwise we will be going around in circles.

Derek

[lankeeyankee]

So, would you kindly mind telling us which file contains the p.products code line that needs to be changed? I have searched and can't seem to find it.

[skunkworx]

good luck dude..this is what we all want to know.

it seems that it isnt there at all, and when asked for it, the answer is never given.

just a thesis on the position of the company's position on contributions.

lord knows i tried to get the answer.

[Dehaw]

Yes this is actually correct!

This line of code does NOT exist in this contribution, i have installed this module 3 times on a fresh system and did not see this problem, which seems to exists within the module. We also done a complete search & replace on all the files for this peice of code which returned no results.

So you ask where do you go from here?

Well, try turning off all the other modules to the side where the faq manager module is currently sitting and then we can see what the conflicting module is.

What does this mean?

This means there is another module within zencart thats conflicting with the faq categories module, once we can figure this out i'll recode the module to stop that happening, until that happens nothing can be done.

good luck dude..this is what we all want to know.

it seems that it isnt there at all, and when asked for it, the answer is never given.

just a thesis on the position of the company's position on contributions.

lord knows i tried to get the answer.

BTW Tim, i asked in a previous message for you to tell me where the error was showing, i.e. what page, you never replied, so you never got an answer!

The reason i can provide this answer is because i was contacted by a user who respects the fact that this is a FREE unpaid for module that comes as is and is not supported by us, remember we never developed this god damn module we only amended it for our own needs then released it so don't start slandering our company or making us feel like all these problems MUST be fixed by us because they certainly do not and by posting the way you do i'm surpised you get any help.

Read our testimonials, speak to our clients, see what other mods we have helped create or fix, what exactly have you done except moan?

Derek

[skunkworx]

derek..major meltdown dude...i wasnt the first to ask where the code was.

either put up a contrib that works or expect some people to ask for help to make it work.

and stop whining when they do..its inevitable.

thankyou so lordy god you are the best thing ever to have contributed to zencart. i owe you all of my success.

many of us contribute in many ways and probbaly much more than you do and dont complain and whinge about it. so pull your head in mate..

you've known about this issue since last august and back then promised to fix it.

all peeps are asking is if its going to be fixed..not war and peace on your thoughts on teh world of open source.

are you going to fix it or not?..simple as that...if not, then we can close this threa and move on.

ion the meantime people are viewing this thread that could be your potential customers.

i thought it wouldve been a great opportunity to look real good..but instead youve proven yourself to be difficult, whiney, full of excuses and defensive...man id hat eto contract you for some coding..id be worried about technical aspects i didnt write into my contract...

over to you..shine or whine.

oh, fwiw it was YOU who wrote where the error was..so why ask me?...see the first post on this page..its signed ...derek...

good lord.