Hi All, After much thought consideration and consultation in the past weeks. We have decided to close down what is the current instance of the Plugin Market until further notice. All plugins that are shown on our website end up being a reflection of Buzztouch, unfortunately over time developers abandon these plugins or don't maintain the code. This reflects badly on us. Our goal still remains to offer a high quality solution to our members and enable them to make apps quickly and without errors. So what does this mean for you the member? You will still be able to use the plugins you have downloaded, of course there is a concern that they will not work 100%. In the coming days you will notice that there will be a note near the top of the "screen or plugin" page in the control panel that could say something like this " Please note that this plugin could be buggy, click here to report any issues that you experience with it". This way it will go into our own service desk like ticket system and we can focus on it more clearly. More information about the future plugin market will be released in due course. It may seem like we are taking functionality away from you. But if you actually look at the data of downloads/purchases in the last few months it is not the case. We need to bite the bullet now and clean up the whole plugin market idea. To all current plugin developers, we will be making contact with you all in the coming days to discuss how we can work together in a more structured way to offer our members a world class solution. I hope we have your support and backing. Sometimes you just need to rip the bandaid off !! Kristen - CEO Buzztouch ### EDIT ### Closing date for plugin market will be 1st Feb 2017. ### ###

Will the current and future 'versions' of Buzztouch maintain the capability of (easily) utilizing 3rd party plugins? Will any kind of SDK or 'developers handbook' be available to maintain some standardization? Will you be allowing or endorsing any individual attempts to centralize Buzztouch 3rd party modifications (similar to the now defunct BTMods.com) ? Cheers! -- Smug

Hey, I believe that the number os sales may have dropped, probably due to there not being any new plugins. Loosing the market seems to limite, a lot, what you can do with a buzztouch app, right? Thanks

a sad sad day.......for a non developer, i rely on the plugin market a lot. as good as the standard screens are from BT, the plugin market always had fresh new ideas to make the apps look more professional. did the market not drop because of the growing bugs in the code where it was becoming outdated with iOS updates (hence the long awaited v4.x) so people didn't want to spend. i know that was my reason. i understand these steps may be needed but i also hope there is something in the pipeline for the near future

Good decision, Kristin. There are a lot of challenges with the current structure. And if plugins don't work, that truly is a reflection on Buzztouch. I know I have had a lot of inquiries from Buzztouch subscribers who couldn't get answers from the developer. I would encourage them to leave a review. And on the developer side of it, there can be a lot of user errors that are blamed on your plugin when there is another cause for the problem. With that in mind, it is not really possible to keep the reputation of the plugin market and its developers separate from Buzztouch.

I suspect all 3rd party plugins broke as soon as BT 4 was released. I withdrew my plugins from the market as soon as I realised they needed fixing to work with BT 4.0. It seemed like the honorable thing to do; I want to make them available again as soon as I know they work. I need to be able to test them and prove to myself that they work as well as they did with BT 3.0. I know inability to set tabs, backgrounds and colours are affecting my plugins, I believe these are either core bugs or core changes that I have not seen documented or seen working examples for (yet). So I am waiting for things to settle down so that when the kinks in BT4 have been ironed out, I hope I will be able to catch up. I am sure what would help all plugin developers is some guidance as to what needs to be done to be BT 4 compatible. I have pieced some of it together and but I don't know what I don't know. Alan

@Smug, we will be in touch wiht you in due course. @madrod, that limitation won't be for long, but it is needed. @Bonzo, sad that you feel that way, I reviewed your plugin purchases and you have only purchased 5 plugin in the last two years, so you should be okay for a while, of course we are not going to stop there by removing the plugin market we are going to implement a better more robust solution in this space. @susan, thanks for your support @AlanMac, there are a number of reasons why plugins don't work, some of them due to changes in Core which had to happen with 4.x, The concerning part is some plugin developers arent able to fix their own plugins they developed, so should they even be plugin developers going forward if they clearly can not maintain their plugins? These "developers" are unlikely to be part of our future as they do not add value to our customers. Bottom line is that we want to offer our customers a great solution, we need to make some hard decisions now in order to do that, members ability to make various apps will not be affected, soon they will be able to make more robust apps with quality core code and quality and supported plugins/features.

I perceive there are several plugin authors that will not update their plugins because they have moved away from Buzztouch. And I agree that closing the market temporarily may be your best option. I'm surprised to hear "some plugin developers arent able to fix their own plugins"; I'm hoping most of the authors remaining will want to fix their plugins and will do so. I personally don't know if *all* the information to do the remedial work has come out yet, which I think may be causing a few developers to wait. Ultimately, the course you are steering for Buzztouch means making some difficult decisions and I applaud you for making them.

Ouch! Yep, ripping a Band Aid off does hurt a bit initially but as per normal it is generally a prelude to something healing itself! So far all your decisions and visions Kristen are moving towards a much improved BT. Just a point though regarding "some plugin developers aren't able to fix their own plugins": I see this as maybe a legacy of what BT originally was in part and hopefully in some part still remains - a learning and development platform and forum. As such, some of the plugins may have been developed by 'learners'with help from experts' in order to achieve a certain functionality for their own Apps. Then in the spirit of BT they have offered these onto the market so that everyone can benefit from their creativity. Unfortunately though then with constant changes to iOS, Android and BT they have not been able to keep up with required knowledge. I trust that your more robust solution will probably address this scenario but hopefully not kill off the creativity needed to ensure that good, useful and unique plugins do continue to become available.

@AlanMac, no further information still to be released for 4.0.1 no need for developers to have waited to get stuck in. @bigPaul, good point and yes we have a plan to compliment exactly that scenario that you mentioned.

@Kaybee i think a world class solution would to give plugin developer a copy of the core before public release. They are so many top class plugin developers on Buzztouch like @chris1 that have pulgins not updated BT 4.0.1 does that mean they reflects badly on Buzztouch ? maybe we had other things on project working when BT 4.0.1 was release to the public like myself. If we can get an advance beta like other world class solution do, i am sure buzztouch will be powerful and Great like back in the good ole days :-) PS. Wordpress also use third party plugins but flags which plugins works with which versions of their release.

@aussidra, agree 100% that is part of our plans.

Well, here is a bombshell if I ever saw one. Buzztouch without the plugin market isn't buzztouch anymore... A brave decision and most likely the right one on a short term. Looking forward to be able to download again, I was just about to buy three plugins so this came in the nick of time!

Kristen, you made the right decision!!! As a non-developer I rely TOTALLY on the Plugin Market. But a Plugin Market with lots of buggy, non-functional or not-anymore-supported plugins is definitely not something that will make users trust the Buzztouch system and service. As an "old" BT member, I know which plugins I can use (and sometimes tweak). But there is no way for new users to find their way through the jungle. I'm pretty sure that this is one of the main reasons why BT was slowly fading away! Cheers Jack

Oh! I agree with aussiedra. I will be updating my plugins as soon as the bugs are worked out on self and hosted. I haven't updated yet, havent had much time. Nonetheless, I'm looking forward to it and the new changes! Thanks for all of the hard work behind the scenes!

As a developer of a single plugin, I've decided to not maintain it any longer. Why? Several reasons: - Passions come and go, and sometimes get revived. As we know, forever can be very short. - A plugin should support both platforms, iOS and Android. For most situations, a mobile app has to be on both platforms. I was only skilled in iOS, have not yet taken the Android plunge. As Buzztouch evolves, perhaps that will rekindle my passion for mobile development as a plugin developer. -- Niraj

@Kaybee Thanks for your energy to make those essential changes. I completely agree that the plugin market had always been a difficult aspect of Buzztouch. My take on this had always been to look at the name of the Plugin author... and purchase from authors I trust. Two comments 1) Currently, I do not have a plugin in the market, but had some plugins "in the pipeline" that I developed for individual projects and where I thought that they might be of broader interest. Could you add me to your list of plugin developers that "you will be making contact with" in the next days? Thanks! 2) What about the option to add an individual plugin to my app? In the plugin-section of my account there is a "Create a custom plugin" button. I used this way to add specific screens to my app, synced these plugins with my self hosted server, modified the "config_cp.txt" and "childItem.html" files on my self hosted server and could generate plugins for my specific needs within the source code. Will this option be available even after Feb, 1, 2017? I am currently negotiating 3 app deals with prospects... so I have to get a feeling for what is possible right now and in the coming weeks & months. Anyway, I am completely happy that these changes are made at Buzztouch as it offers a perspective for the future. To be honest, I was not sure whether I should realistically propose a Buzztouch solution to my clients in the past months... now this has changed, although I still have to understand the details ;-). Best wishes Thomas "Because the only nest we have are our wings" Erik Lindegren

Hi All, Hopefully I can calm some concerns raised in this post. Importantly the ability to PURCHASE free or paid plugins will end on the 1st Feb 2017. So if there are any plugins that you wish to get, now is your chance, but importantly please be advised we can not guarantee that they are working 100%. Post 1st Feb, should the plugin developer update their plugin at all, as a BT hosted member you will get the new version when you compile a new project, if you are self hosted you will need to update the plugin on your self hosted by checking for updates etc. So that is not affected, this will allow those developers that have plugins on the market the ability to continue to support their work. Plugin developers, please don't wait any more to update your plugins, you have the core code that is working to use as a base. The "create a custom plugin button" will still remain you are able to continue to make your own custom plugins and use them as per normal, again at this stage the only change is that you will not be able to buy new plugins. To answer the questions from @Smugwimo posted early on this thread: 1) Yes we plan to maintain the ease of use to add 3rd party plugins 2) I have created a slack channel for BT developers which will be used for this purpose, I think it is important to keep these kind of conversations seperate to the current forum format, we might end up have a separate forum for developers,self hosted etc, the more experienced dev crowd. More on that later. 3) We plan to allow and in some cases endorse 3rd party plugin developers. However there will be more stringent rules applied in our developer agreement to maintain integrity of BT and other developers. Hope that helps you, happy to take more questions. Kristen

That sounds great, Kristen! Cheers! -- Smug

Just one of those 'miserly'queries! I have some credit left on the plugin market so I assume that will still be there whenever the new market returns. I am not in any hurry for anything at moment so dont want to rush in and grab a possible troublesome plugin just for the sake of it now!

sure will