GetPaid

A while ago, we created the release branch for GetPaid's second major release, 0.6. However, we didn't officially release it (with packaged code etc), and in the meantime, several fixes and changes came in. So, we are now releasing 2 versions.

0.6.0: This is the originally branched code. Works well and preserves "backwards" compatibility for those using customized GetPaid code.

0.6.1: This is a final release. Includes API refactoring and unicode fixes. May break your customized GetPaid code but not too much :)

Both of these work on Plone 2.5 and 3.0, and apparently on Plone 3.1 also (though we currently aren't providing a buildout for 3.1).

To check out the changelogs, see http://groups.google.com/group/getpaid-changes 

Another GetPaid site launched this week - Investors Circle. The organization helps a network of angel and VC investors connect to opportunities to invest in sustainable and responsible business opportunities. ifPeople developed their new site so they can manage the workflow of business plans that are submitted by entrepreneurs as applications to present to the investors. GetPaid is integrated into the workflow so that the submission process includes payment.

Congrats to Investors Circle and thanks for being an early adopter of GetPaid!

At last we have reduced the issues in the tracker, given the code some polish, fixed typos and added some improvements. Red Ochre has gone a ways beyond what we originally set out to do...providing additional features like Plone 3.0 compatibility, optional anonymous checkout, 2 additional payment processors, lots of languages and i18n work, and some example implementations. Supporting all these extra features has taken extra effort to get the release polished, but also been a great way to involve a much broader community of developers and integrators.

We made it to the release candidate thanks to some dedicated effort from Maurits over this past week to squash some remaining bugs and clean up the product. Then, Lucie swooped in at the last minute to take care of the remainder of issues yesterday! Wow, great work you all!! Thanks for helping get this ready!

Update on status:

• All tests are passing!
  
• Release Candidate tarball uploaded: Download it now! (484kb)
  
• Issue tracker: main thing left to do is prepare the code base (tags etc) for the release
  
• Our Ohloh reports seem to be broken, so I can't get new updates from there (request for updating made today). 
• There are a great many things to work on going forward, which have been organized in a page of proposals here. 
• If you find any issues with the current Release Candidate, please report them in the issue tracker and share any ideas, news, etc on our mailing list.
  

Latest changes in product:

• Put back on the last checkout page a check to see if the person is anonymous, and if the person is, we don't give a link to the order
• Added a check on the order view page to allow only manager and owner of the order to see the order, refs #157
  

And that's a wrap for today!

Please use the product and let us know how it goes! If you launch a site with GetPaid, please contact us so we can advertise it on our Sites that Use GetPaid page.

Thanks so much to  all those who helped make this possible - all our developers and supporters. Special thanks to our sponsors, who have contributed so much support to helping this become a reality:

ObjectRealms | ifPeople | One/Northwest | Contextual Corporation | Trees for Life | Totsie.com

People have really been grabbing GetPaid and running with it lately...which is awesome, inspiring on the one hand,
and yet frustrating since we have issues left for the release on the other :)

Part of what this has motivated, though, is organization for upcoming community collaboration around GetPaid. A few things are already officially moving like:

• PloneFormGen adpater! We all love PFG and SteveM :) Now GetPaid wants to play with that too...really this is what we have chosen for the flexible, donation handling route. See more here. Already several folks have expressed interest in this, including One/Northwest, who made the outstanding Salesforce.com connector / PFG adapter.
  
• Advanced store features: building on the GetPaid core feature set, many folks are looking to extend its features as an online store. Liam has stepped up and drafted a proposal for that (check it out and get involved).
  

• Salesforce.com integration (mentioned by sixfeetup, onenw, ifpeople, kapil)
• event/conference registration (also mentioned by many)
• membership management (mentioned by a few)

Ohloh was created to provide more visibility into the open source development process and to help connect those involved in open source projects. By registering our project on the site, the site downloads and studies the software, determining the lines of code and metrics about committers, comments, and more.

And now we know...

Well, the first thing Ohloh tells us, we already know: "Large, active development team" and that it is mostly written in Python. Ok, maybe not too insightful for us yet...but hopefully soon we can see committers on the little Google world map!

At the moment, it has online analyzed getpaid.core, so still waiting for two other elements to get sucked into the process...

Help build awareness

Please check out the listing for GetPaid: http://www.ohloh.net/projects/9356?p=GetPaid

Also, please rate the project! Your comments will help others learn about how cool the project is :)

Also check out

Plone's listing

Plone Collective's listing

Zope 3's listing

Zope's listing

Thanks to Maurits for summarizing the talk on his blog here.

To download the presentation by John Lenton, please click here.

Since not all of our readers and follower are subscribed to the changes mailing list (where you should go for the real gory details of what happens to the code base...), I am preparing a summary of that info from the logs (while I wait for a new buildout), so I am very excited to see some of this stuff go into the product! (for those who want to get their hands on the latest, there is a new tarball as of this writing at http://code.google.com/p/getpaid/downloads/list )

• Anonymous checkout: Kapil hammered out a number of features and improvements here, including a configuration option!
  
• User Contact Info: Kapil added a schema for this in the product and also, this info is now pulled from member info on checkout (sweet!)
• Javier added a custom widget for setting credit card expiration date, making the checkout interface more user friendly, and also added display for additional information on the final page of checkout.
  
• JPG reinstated the shipping features for the system (/me is sorry for requesting their removal...)
• Checkout without session: Kapil also factored out the session for checkout...and made the pages of checkout screens save values between screens. The checkout wizard is now also bidirectional (/me admits to having no idea what that means...)
• Payment workflow: the default behavior was modified to authorize and capture payments (rather than authorizing them and then requiring the site admin to capture the payment). Additionally, workflow event driven payment processor integration happened.
  
• There is now an empty cart view

• Ken made a number of changes...in particular, improving the way information is passed to the authorize.net payment processor, making it easier to track who made payments!
• Ken also made some help text additions to the product, which show inline
• Javier fixed the GetPaid profile setting for country and state, which now saves the value entered.
  

I am definitely getting antsy, and it seems like others are also, for a release. This last week, the channel has been livelier (#getpaid), new nightly builds are being sent out for testing, the wiki is getting tweaked more as documentation is getting drafted, and the tarballs keep rolling off the download area as people test and use the product. I added an issue and then realized it was the 100th issue reported (though as of the writing of this, less than half of those are open, and only a couple dozen are for this release). There was really no way we could have known what this product was going to turn into when we started, since we haven't done anything like this before...and we have learned a LOT along the way! The product itself has transformed, both in its vision as well as technically speaking, since we started.

It is exciting to see the sites that are in development and waiting for the product - or already incorporating it at an early stage. Some of the sponsors are hard at work on those, including Trees for Life, which will be launching its new site with GetPaid, as well as Contextual Corporation, ifPeople and Totsie.com, who are all working on client sites with GetPaid. In addition, our community has grown and we also have folks in Italy actively contributing development towards commerce sites.

While the system itself is currently working (download it here), there are still a few more significant pieces to put in place, such as the backup manager. There are several smaller tweaks we are evaluating and working on as well, including i18n cleanup, inline documentation, etc. If you are interested to help, please check out remaining issues!

As we near the Plone Conference, where we have 2 GetPaid talks included, the pending release is even more exciting!  Though I am already thinking about the celebration for the release...it is also a time when we are getting several inquiries about the future - new features, extensions for new use cases, integration with other systems, adding new payment processors, etc etc...and we realize how what initially was like kicking a little pebble down a hill has turned into quite a movement with a lot of energy and excitement from the community.

Thank you all for your support! Let's make this an awesome release and a vibrant, sustainable community :)

After a lot of design and development work at the sprint, Kapil is leading the charge to prepare the Red Ochre release!

Since the sprint, there has been a lot of refactoring. What does that mean? Well, for one, the product is getting a LOT better! But what that means that impacts you...is that we need your help testing.

The product is now available in a more traditional Plone product way - just download a tarball and stick in your Products directory, restart Zope and see how it goes! (for more on the issues with buildout see dev list message). Get the latest tarball from our Google Code downloads section (The Friday the 13th version is here).

You should be able to:

• Install it to your site
• Go to product config area and: Configure it for donations, shippable products, etc
• View order history, search them
• Note: to do this, you will probably want to generate test orders using the script included in the product.
  
• Go to content in your site and make it "buyable" or "a donation" from the actions menu
• Set the price etc
• Browse the site and when on buyable content, be able to add to cart
• Review your cart
• Checkout (fill out info for the order)
• View your order history
• Get Paid!

DocComm sprint got underway at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, CA yesterday. We had a great start with a solid team of a dozen people.

To catch up on progress, check out:

• Sprint objectives, including tasks
  
• Sprint updates (who is doing what, daily progress notes)
• Get the source latest version!
• If you already have it, please update your code ("svn up") and reinstall the product.