I’m starting my first shop project today and I’m hesitating to buy this starting theme.
So I have few questions about Red Theme (officialy on release candidate 1 when I wrote this words).
When the final release will be available approximatively (days ? weeks ? months ?)
Is it possible to buy today the rc1 or have we to wait for the final version ? If yes, how to buy it ?
If we can install rc1 today, is it a good idea ? As we can only download it once, I suppose it will be difficult to get last updates easily to eventually deal with them.
Can I start to implement Commerce and later, if need, buy/install Red Theme without broke my own work ?
And finaly a comment: I read about the Red Theme license, but I found a little bit “stressful” the specific installation process of this theme. I would have prefered a classical installation for my next Commerce projects instead of make copy of the chunk/resources on a safe place. But maybe it’s just because it’s my first shop with Commerce and I’m not trust myself for now
So, the status of the rc1 is that the installation process works and I don’t have any more work planned on the actual templates/design (except for bugs/adapting it to Commerce updates). Preview is live at theme-red.modmore.modxcloud.com.
The rc1 does have a known issue installing template variables; after the installation you’ll need to edit the image TVs and select a media source to make sure those work as expected. The commerce theme settings need manual updating still (theme = ctred). It also doesn’t give you fully-configured example products/categories yet, but it does give you the right templates and TVs to fill out so for someone familiar with MODX it should be fairly straightforward to get up and running.
Two other pieces of work that need to be completed before a final 1.0 release is documentation (both for getting started, explaining how to get the started pack installed and where to go from there, as well as more detailed docs about building custom styles safe from upgrades, and some cool features) and the marketing page.
On the scale of “days/weeks/months”, I’d say “weeks” to complete the things I’ve just mentioned but I don’t have an exact timeline.
I’ve just added the purchase link at https://www.modmore.com/commerce/extensions/theme-red/. You can install rc1 and upgrade as we make fixes available, but please make extra sure to backup any template files and assets you change, as the documentation on what is and what isn’t overwritten is still missing. Also see below on licensing.
See below.
Yes. The starter pack has prefixed chunks and its own templates folder, so unless you happen to choose the exact prefix (ctred, in this case), you can safely install it later. If you choose resources during the installation those will be created as new, leaving your existing resources untouched, though that will update relevant settings to automatically put them to use. (Fun fact, the installation also checks if you changed any of the provided chunks/templates so you can choose if you want to overwrite that on upgrade or not.)
So… licensing.
I could bore you with details about how our license mechanism works currently, and why that doesn’t translate well to themes/starter packs, but I would like to get to a place where you can install updates and transfer licenses automatically, without license checks affecting the front-end.
If I can get that to work, licensing will work the same way as our other extras, and what the page currently says about licenses can be disregarded. But that’s still a work in progress…
I’ve also added an unlimited license pack. Agencies with multiple developers, or anyone that may do more than one shop, should probably get that to greatly simplify license handling. No matter how we end up technically implementing licensing, with the unlimited pack you always have a valid license and upgrades. Great to implement into skeleton shops as well that way.
