An update

Hi all,

It's been a few months since I made a big announcement about 'moving on' from ocPortal. What I haven't had time to say is that since then I've been working full time at another company, writing websites for some multi-billion dollar companies. If that wasn't enough, just before I started my new job I also landed contracts to design and build 3 significant websites with ocPortal – sometimes everything just comes at once. These contracts have been taking up all my free time outside work, but now they are finally completed. I won't personally be taking on more contract work now (as a full-time employee, my first commitment is to my new employer), but ocProducts as a (financially-stable) company continues to go on, and it may well be other staff will be doing so in the future.

I've previously revealed that ocPortal 4 is planned and that quite a lot of work has been done on it. We haven't put in work specifically on ocPortal 4 in the last few months, simply due to a lack of time – but it has been moved forward because work on the aforementioned 3 websites has led to some very major new features that will be a part of version 4. Now, work is continuing directly on version 4. We're not working to a schedule, and nobody should think it's "just around the corner", but when it comes there will be some really big changes equivalent to the jump between version 2 and 3 (which those who've followed ocPortal will know was a very big one indeed).

Since designing version 3, I've been heavily exposed to a great number of things, including:

• Internet Marketing (after version 3 was released, I did a long course)
• Making websites for end-users who don't know the software being used (the projects I've used ocPortal with, but weren't "ocPortal projects")
• Making high-end websites for some of the largest companies in the world (at work)
• Art and usability (I've been doing a lot of reading and experimenting recently)
• Most importantly, all the feedback we've received on version 3!

I'm the kind of person who soaks up ideas like a sponge and I think about how things could be improved all the time (it recently surprised some to see I'm only 23). So we now have a tonne of new ideas for ocPortal 4, and ocPortal will continue to absorb new ideas from far and wide and be far better for it. Even though I'm not making any money from it, I still care about ocPortal as a philosophy, and am not going to get stuck in the trap of making software for myself or some other group of people with limited requirements (this is why most of the software we compete with sucks – the developers really confine what it can do because they have limited vision).

As nobody is working full-time at ocProducts now, there is less of a need for us to concentrate on making the sales it requires to employ just one person (approximately 1000 or so sales per year per employee – ouch). ocPortal is now essentially a no-profit venture by those staff working on it; nevertheless, we continue to treat the quality of the product as serious as ever, and things will only improve. I hope people will understand that we're sticking around for love of what we do, and that we're not getting paid for anything – we're now (unofficially) providing technical support to everyone for free (if they purchase or not), and the money made from licence-sales is covering our operating costs. We do have some future plans to get ocProducts growing in size, and hopefully taking on new paid staff, but, please most importantly – ocProducts is a company of ideals, and the quality of our software goes before trying to make quick money.

This weekend, work begins on quickly getting out an enhanced ocPortal – version 3.1. This resets the patch number counter, which now is at a rather high 18, and also gives the community what they've been shouting for most – a much better point store. We've planned it all out, but I don't want to spoil the surprise yet. Stay tuned !

Thanks for the update. All good news by the sound of it. I'm staying tuned!

I look forward to the 3.1 release with trepidation. I've modded my OCP (site) software so much that it is a major task in itself to check what's been changed from one patch release to the next.

I suspect most of my problems are self-inflicted, and that if I followed OCP's advice and 'tutes' that life would be much easier, but what else does one do with one's time in retirement?

Wonder how I'll cope with 4.0?

 

I am like you with ideas and I am glad you have taken some of my ideas and it seems you even took my idea of going to 3.1 which is great.

I remember when using 2 and you could not edit the whole page and I asked about it and then in 3 you added a edit whole page botton which works great and now I see your using more of my ideas.
This is so awsome.

You should see though how many ideas I have for my site but have not had time my self to do much.

Some of the feedback/ideas are indeed coming from you, including the idea to go to 3.1 .

Here's another one based on some of your feedback…

I've just implemented support for a new menu type in 3.1 – a menu that can replace the hard-coded zone menu with a custom one. You can now just strip out the code for the zone menu from the TOP template and replace it with something like…
You can then use the menu editor to manage the 'my_new_menu' menu just like any menu.

And here's another…
if you don't like the help panel, you'll be able to open up OcCLE and type :set_value('hide_help_panel','1'); and it'll go away.

Chris and Co. this is great news! I've very glad to see ocPortal continues to be a part of your lives. Although (a new job here as well) I have not had much time to work with your great product lately, nor post in the forums, I've still been learning it in my spare time and it's exciting to hear I'll be able to continue learning with version 4!

*grin*, and what would a post be without a suggestion? One of the first tasks I was assigned at my new gig was the dreaded CRM change over from old to new. UGH! What a pain…however, I've gained alot of insight into customer management software. One of the glaring issues that immediately became apparent was the lack of seemless integration between a corporate CRM and customer portal. After testing pretty much every CRM package available, I finally settled on the current release of XRMS for many reasons, but one of the biggies being the excellent way it appears to be coded. (which always reminds me of ocPortal since it's prolly one of the best pieces of code my amature eyes have seen). Then I got to thinking: if XRMS were hooked to ocPortal or vice versa, a coporate web designer would only need two packages to have everything they would need for public website, employee portal, customer portal, CRM, project management, helpdesk, you name it, done!

Anyway, long story short, the above would be very cool (and I'm not suggesting giving that "bridge" code away, but rather another potential revenue stream for ya'll), but baring that, ocPortal could be setup to do some basic but comprehensive CRM functions by simply adding the ability to build/create relationships with/between catalogue id's…..

Thanx again guys for a great product and look forward to my P.O. in the very near future as I'm recommending OCP for our framework for my next task: customer support site and internal employee portal.

cya, SD
 

 

Chris Graham said

Some of the feedback/ideas are indeed coming from you, including the idea to go to 3.1 .

Here's another one based on some of your feedback…

I've just implemented support for a new menu type in 3.1 – a menu that can replace the hard-coded zone menu with a custom one. You can now just strip out the code for the zone menu from the TOP template and replace it with something like…

Code

{$BLOCK,block=side_stored_menu,param=my_new_menu,type=zone}


 You can then use the menu editor to manage the 'my_new_menu' menu just like any menu.

  I was making a mod for that one so I am glad I do not have to any more as now I will have time for some of the other mods I am working on.

Usig this tool I cannot get to the same zone addresses as they were before.
instead of www.mysite.com/Site I get www.mysite.com/adminzone/pg/start/Site
instead of www.mysite.com/personalzone I get www.mysite.com/adminzone/pg/start/personalzone

and of course these links do not work.


But IMHO somewhere in the system the order of zones in the menu must be defined somehow. Even if now there is no particular order, but it is the order as such (not random). Where is this order set?

What did you use for the page-links in your menu? Just using the zone names should work.

Anyway, the order is defined at…

Line 361 of sources/site.php:
otherwise the order is that of the database rows (which is usually the order of creation, but may not be – databases can reorder their store order sometimes).

This line helped a lot. Thank you