#################################### EDIT: I posted a comment about 50 posts down with some updated info... Tip: Search this page for David @ buzztouch with command-f to show all my posts in this thread. #################################### Hi Gang, We are updating three core parts of Buzztouch tonight and need to take the download server (for downloading app projects) and the plugin market offline for several hours. THIS WILL HAPPEN AROUND MIDNIGHT TONIGHT (PST) - November 18, 2013 Not all account holders will experience this but most will. If you cannot download projects from your control panel, or install plugins from the plugin market you are not alone. Bear with us while we get through this and look for the features to be turned back on before 6:00 AM PST Tuesday Nov. 19. Three core updates will be available when service is restored... 1) Plugin market. The plugin market will be self serve. This means plugin developers will be able to submit new plugins and update existing plugins without our involvement. 2) iOS7: The download server will include the option to download the Buzztouch Core for iOS v3.0. 3) Buzztouch Member control panels (not guests) will be able to upload custom plugins to their control panels. It does not matter if the plugin came from our market, another market, or if it was created from scratch. These are long overdue updates on our end and we're super excited to roll them out. Look for a .PDF when the dust settles that explains some of the technical differences between an "old" Buzztouch Plugin and a "new" Buzztouch Plugin. Plugins uploaded to control panels, or to the market, will need to conform to the newly designed plugin package rules. Cheers... David

WOOOT!

David, Looking forward to it! And may I be the first to pester you about self hosted update availability? ;) (External plugins for BT users is a nice idea. Not sure how soon people will want to get off of BT Hosting now, unless they go for 51 apps…) Cheers! -- Smug

Thanks David, just in time with my development roll out

+1 WOOOT!

Sounds great! Self-serve plugin market? How would it be approved? LA

You're already approved, LA :) Cheers! -- Smug

Exciting changes! Thanks David!

yeah right lol LA

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY! It was an overdue update! I like the idea of uploading custom plugins too.

Ratings and reputation will hopefully take care if quality of plugin market over time!

Is this the fastest set of replies to a BT post ever :)

Wow, cool! Good luck with the update! Best Regards, Danny

OH YAY! Thank you David for all your work!

I suppose that the new core will be making its way to the Self-Hosted panels soon? You are a living legend! David is parallel to Daft Punk (it's his favourite robot french band)

yeah man yeah

YAYYYYY!!!!

Sweet! Cant wait to give it a go!

AWESOME!!! Thanks David and the Buzztouch team. Can't wait to try it out in the morning.

Nice! I have literally logged on multiple times every day for the past two months hoping to see this thread :) Thanks bt team..I'm guessing this has been a pretty huge undertaking

Early birthday present to yourself? :) Just in time Mr! You just earned a metal for that one! Wow!

Thanks David!

Terrific!

Awesome awesome awesome! So this means the plugins in BTM would be now be available to more than just self hosted users..? huge news! Thanks david for all of your hard work, can't wait for midnight! (and I was going to sleep early too, but scrap that lol!). Unless self hosted doesn't get this yet, then I'll just have to make a new app here and play with it. :-) Thanks again David, you deserve a long long break. David https://buzztouchmods.com/market

Yay! Thank you so much. Jake

Excited!!! Today is great day Thanks BT Crew!!

Cool! Thanks to the BT Team! Excited to see what's new :D

This is awesome news..Thanks David and the whole buzztouch gang. Looking forward to seeing all the changes.

Excellent news, David. Thanks for all your hard work. If I ever get to meet you in person, I'll be buying you some of your favourites drinks :-)

Wow! This is huge..

Another lurker who has been waiting patiently in the background... Ready to pounce!

@Sheri: Birthday's are overrated. Self Hosted folks...good questions, super important. Part of the reason this has taken so long is the idea that one change affects another change which in turns affects another change. This would have been easy if we were starting from the beginning! LOL. The biggest change to the plugin packages is the removal of the index.php page from the plugin package. Prior to this, every single plugin used a .php page as it's "landing page" when configuring the properties for a particular screen. This is no longer the case. Screens are now configured in the control panel using the same file - screen.php. This file is part of the core and does NOT come in each plugin package. Plugin developers can customize how the screen.php page behaves without having to create an individual .php page. For web devlopers familiar with .php pages this change won't make much difference. For non web developers it will make a huge difference because you no longer have to understand .php to make a plugin. In fact, you can make a basic plugin without having to make a web page (control panel part of the package) at all. Cool! Developers making highly customizable plugins will be creating .html files that come in the package. These .html files will save data to the backend using .javascript, not .php. Example: "createChildItem()" and "getChildItems()" etc. Much easier. This of course means that the files needed to make this work will need to be added to existing self hosted control panels. There are several of these files. Rather than releasing just the affected files, with some instructions on how to install them, we're releasing the next package of the self hosted as Self Hosted v3.0. The end result: Plugin Code (for Andorid and iOS), and the self hosted package will be Buzztouch v3.0. Buzztouch Core of iOS v3.0: The core package used as the basis for iOS apps. Buzztouch Core for Android v3.0: The core package used as the basis for Android apps. Buzztouch Self Hosted v3.0: The package used to run your own self hosted control panel. Buzztouch Plugins: Plugins include source-ios-v3.0, source-android-3.0 This concept should make it much much easier moving forward. The consistency in this pattern is long overdue and took a ton of work to realize. There really wasn't any reason to continue limping along with a hodge-podge of unorganized, confusing, and unsupported code. This single change (consistent versioning) should make it much much easier to make compelling apps. Reality: We updated hundreds and hundreds of files (think plugin files) in order to support this amitious "change" and this is the bulk of what took so darned long. In the morning, when all of this is "on" we DO EXPECT a few fires. These fires will be related to individual plugin packages that WE updated (not the plugin developers) and didn't get right. There will be things we overlooked. However, it shouldn't take more than a few days for us and the plugin devleopers to quickly isolate gotchas and push updates in real time. We're finally moving away from us having to make all the changes, which took WAY TOO LONG. Plugin devs will be able to help us help you by isolating and fixing gotchas associated with their plugins. Yeah, it's about time! All will be smooth again in a day or two...until then...hang on tight! d.

Great update, cant wait to play! Thanks for the hard work.

I know everyone has been anxiously waiting for this update. And if you look at the three items in the first post that David listed, I hope you can all understand how powerful #3 really is. For anyone who has manually added a "plugin" to an Xcode project, and wished they could control it from the control panel, now you can! For anyone who has hired another developer to create a plugin for them, now it can live in their control panel! Don't limit yourself to the plugins that you can find. Dream up your own! -Chris

@David Birthday's ARE important especially cool cat's that are pushing nifty fifties! HA! Still got it :) Little slower but you got it! Take it easy burning the midnight oil tonight! @Chris Thanks for specifics So much coolness happening!

Fantastic news!! Thanks a million. Quick question, about: "plugin developers will be able to submit new plugins and update existing plugins without our involvement." Maybe I got this wrong. Does it mean only bonafide developers will be able to submit or anybody? Who will control the quality of the plugins before release? Very very excited! Farcat

Sounds like a ton of work David and very exciting for us all. Thank you. Some day in the future, I hope we in the BT community can help you to make these changes when they are needed. You need to train us up…pass on some of those super-coding skills that you have!!! (starting with code camp ;-)) In the meantime, I hope you are feeling our appreciation here and that’s helping to take some of the pain out of it for you:-) p.s. I am with Sheri on birthdays… they certainly are not overrated!!

Excellent thanks for the great work !

Good news. Thanks a ton for BT's hard work. Cheers.

Great news! Thanks David and the BT crew.

Update It's 6:00 AM and loads of things are still updating. Hoping this ends soon....huge relief when we're through over this hump! d.

you have 3 minutes to go mister

Is it David@buzztouch's birthday today? If it is Happy Birthday! Thank you so much for these improvements. Jake

Jake and I are up way too early Zzz. David, thanks, I'm sure you're very tired. Excited. Hope not too many bumps hit you. p.s. I'm going to hunt @Sheri down and find out your birthday, we need a proper way to say thanks and congrats! You hear that Sheri? I'm coming after you! David https://buzztouchmods.com/market

Thanks D! Appreciate all the hard work!

Things are starting to change! My installed plugins page already looks different! Mark

Thank you David and the Buzztouch Team that continue to improve this incredible journey. Mike

@Mark default list view! Much cleaner! Would be cool to have a separate page for custom plugins you created rather than having them mixed with all installed plugins :-) I keep refreshing all the pages, Mrs says I should have breakfast, but then my full attention would have to be divided between eating and refreshing, my priorities are straight. David https://buzztouchmods.com/market

@Mr David sleep deprived goofiness! Love it! 11 more days for international buzztouch day! No problem with my birthday! May 16th birth Sept 23 became BUZZ ALIVE ! Ha Ha! Generally I run away from my birthday to an adventure and celebrate life! Hope our fearless leader will be doing the same! http://www.buzztouch.com/forum/thread.php?fid=7BD14758D219B687103E4E3&sortColumn=FT.id&sortUpDown=&currentPage=2&tid=646AF8DBC03752A231B9BEE&command=confirmDeleteThread

Thanks, David, for all your work. This sounds very promising and I am very excited to see the new system & plugin market. Thanks again Thomas

Fantastic!Thanks David and the Buzztouch gangs BT Rocks!

grazie :-)

Thank you to David and all the Buzztouch team!!! Buzztouch is a fantastic product and keeps getting better!

I just connected with David by SMS, and he is still updating our new software. More to come...all is going well, it just is a huge installation. We appreciate all of your kind words. It means so much to all of us and especially to David.

David, thank you so much for all your hard work. I am nothing but grateful. That is all :) Make sure to get some sleep, it will get down when its done.

Don't you mean up when it's done :)

Progress!!! So, here's the latest. 1) You'll notice the "screens" page in your control panel (when working with an app) has been updated and rolled out to all users. The biggest difference here is the addition of the little icon to access the raw-json for any screen. You can use this independently of what the Plugin Developer "allows" you to modify. You can also introduce arbitrary JSON property/value pairs to use as needed. The usefulness of this may not be readily obvious. BUT, imagine a plugin you create, upload to your control panel, that does NOT contain a complicated landing page. You could easily add / tweak the data for a screen using this utility. 2) Plugin package udpates. All the updated plugin packages have landed on the download server. Before you get all excited...keep in mind that this was the first step. These packages should be complier-error free in iOS and Android but we do expect many of them to need tweaks as iO7 gotchas are discovered. The good news...Plugin Devs should be able to upload new / fixed / better version of these packages before too long. We expect it to take a few days to iron out the kinks with all of them. It "should" be easier now that devs can do it themselves! 3) Upload plugin's to your control panel / self serve updates to market. This is rolling out slower than expected but for sure we're closer than we were 20 hours ago. Amazing how long this is taking! The biggest slow-down here was a single "update query" that affected more than a hundred million rows of existing screen-data. This had to run before some other steps were possible. Crazy off on my estimate that this query would run in about :60 minutes. It took 8 hours! Wow. What's left: Get the iOS 7 package on the download server and available in control panels. Can't do this until the upload plugin package is working because devs need to be able to find and fix issues as soon as folks start downloading iOS7 packages. Giant juggling act!

Thanks for everything, David. Nab some sleep if you can. Cheers! -- Smug

Amazing works the Buzztouch Team !

Thank you David, It is really big progress and achievement. Despite being looking for this update anxiously, I can wait days for these good things. Regards Nsaya

Thank you, David, for the status update :) Jake

Very cool! Thanks again for the update! :) You rock! Ryan

>> The biggest difference here is the addition of the little icon to access the raw-json for any screen. >> You can also introduce arbitrary JSON property/value pairs to use as needed. >> The usefulness of this may not be readily obvious. Sounds pretty damn useful to me. Can't wait to see how this works with the SH panel. Thanks!

Hey all, we are working hard to bring you the best app making software with this new update! Things will finalize soon and we will be running full speed ahead again. We will keep you posted.... Cheers, Tony

Thanks for the updates David, Susan & Tony, highly appreciated! Keep up the good work and wishing for the best. @Sheri, marked my calendar ;) David https://buzztouchmods.com/market

looking forward to the update. Will the icons be refreshed with iOS7 style icons or will I need to source them myself? thanks

Plugin Developers: For those who have purchased Susan's 'Menu With Image' can download the latest version, which is in the format needed for BTv3 (as seen in this morning's webinar). other plugins may also be updated, I'm not sure. But MWI is a sure thing, if you need a 'template' to go by. You'll know; it'll have 3 iOS directories. Some for backwards compatibility with older Self Hosteds, and others for forward compatibility. But it's all there. Cheers! -- Smug

Ok gang, looks like we have this. I'm exhausted and won't write much in this post but here's the gist... 1) Plugin Developers with existing plugins in the market can upload new version now, adjust the availability, price, etc. Do this from Account > Installed Plugins > Click a plugin you created. Upload a new package anytime. BE SURE TO SEE THIS BEFORE UPLOADING A NEW PACKAGE https://www.buzztouch.com/files/howtos/bt-plugins-self-hosted.pdf There is some important info about the new package. It's important to understand that the self serve plugin upload process will NOT allow you to include .php files in your plugin package. This means you'll want to understand the structure of a plugin's landing page before uploading your version - so it works. LOL. It's probabaly best to download the simple menu plugin and review it's contents before trying to update yours? It's all about the control panel and you'll need to understand how it's setup now. 2) The Plugin Market is back on. It doesn't look different (yet) but it's alive again. We'll be rolling out some style changes soon so it's easier to find things. 3) Buzztouch Core for iOS v3.0. You can download v3.0 projects from your control panel now. Yay. Like we've been saying, all the technical stuff is rolled out...the next few days will surely bring individual updates for individual screens...by individual devs. Passing out...turning on the "Create Custom Plugin" feature back on in the morning.

Thanks again for the ridiculous amount of work you and the rest of the crew put in! So excited to dig into it tommorrow morning

So, We're abandoning any BTv2 compatibility with respect to plugins? I'm cool with it; I'm just getting clarification… Because if we can't include a php file, we can't update/modify anything for the v2 control panel… Cheers! -- Smug

No amount of thanks could be enough. Get some sleep.. David https://buzztouchmods.com/market

This is awesome. Thanks for all the restless hard work you guys have done. Kudos to you all.!!!

David...you're a true hero! Burgers on me in San Diego. Mark

@Smug: Good question. No, we're not abandoning this - and maybe I'm missing something here. The control panel at buzztouch.com is the same for v2.0 and v3.0. The index.php file that's part of a plugin package "now" still exists. When a plugin is updated (uploaded to the control panel) by a dev, it will NO LONGER contain the index.php file. This is because these are not allowed to be uploaded. So, new uploads won't have the index.php page. So far so good. v2.0 and v3.0 on buzztouch.com all good. Self Hosted: You're bringing up a good point here. The assumption was that Self Hosters would install the necessary files to support the new plugin logic. Ideally this would mean they update the whole panel - making it Self Hosted v3.0. But, if they don't, like you say, there won't be an index.php file in a plugin package so therefore no landing page. Hmm..this is problematic. I guess it would be easy to include an index.php page in a package that wasn't in our market but that sorta defeats the point I think. Sounds like we'll end up having to get Self Hosted 2.1.9 < earlier folks to install the necessary files (about 7 of them) to support the new plugins if they won't update the 3.0. Or, maybe there's a better approach. All ears. We're all after the same goal so there's gotta be a good way to do this.

@Smug: Can't stop thinking about this. How's this for an idea... 1) Same plugin package concept we're going with now. No .php file uploads. 2) During the upload WE add an index.php page that's in essence just like the generic landing page we're using now with the new concept. Because the older control panel would also not have the "built in sections" for the plugin page, we could inject these into the index.php page automagically during the upload. In other words, the upload process could create the "custom" index.php page using the sections on our backend, plus any custom sections created by the developer. 3) Self hosted installs, that don't have the "new concept" running, would land on the index.php page included in the plugin package. Everyone else would land on the generic plugin landing page. Find something wrong with that logic, else, call it brilliant! LOL. Amazing how much thought we've given this WITHOUT coming up with that idea. One simple question from you, that made perfect sense, FORCED some new thinking. It takes a village - good stuff. I think this is a good plan and it's easily doable. Ponder it, find some holes in it, else we'll get 'er done.

I have a custom plugin and I'd like to do this, " Buzztouch Member control panels (not guests) will be able to upload custom plugins to their control panels." Are there instructions on how to do this? thanks.

You would also need the save json php file right David? - not just the index. Super smart. If Smug can't poke holes into it no-one can. Already have an email written up for you with some stuff I have found so far... hehe. Thanks again! David https://buzztouchmods.com/market

@shenry it's not enabled yet, but your a member and you should see this sometime tomorrow to be able to do what you want :-) David https://buzztouchmods.com/market

LOL, David @ Buzztouch! We'll solve this one tomorrow. Enjoy some rest and the satisfaction of a job well done.

Sent an email your way David for 3 things so far! :-p

David & Team a Big Thankyou and well done to you all. Now stop thinking and get some rest you deserve it. All the best

@MrDavid: "You would also need the save json php file right" Not necessarily. There are many of the routines in the older self hosted panels "built it" that would allow the save routines without including the save_json.php file in the package. It's a matter of wiring up the "save click" to the right routine that's already in the install. No biggie at all. @shenry: Close, so close. We decided to give it a few hours (after turning all this on) before allowing NEW plugins to be uploaded to your control panel. It'll happen. Soon. This current discussion (about the index.php file) suggests a few tweaks before moving ahead with the upload / create your own logic.

@David gotcha.. smug has been talking to me for a few hours now and my brain is hurting from all of his teachings, but I'm understanding all of this much much better then before thanks to him. Thanks David. David https://buzztouchmods.com/market

ok David@BT.... please..please...please... go to sleep now. no more posts till u wake up... and let us know by saying something like "ok I've slept" no one wants a dead David. And its clear all this great work stole more than its fair share of sleep, so we're collectively saying please go to sleep now. we can pick this up when u wake refreshed. € in fact...how about you unsubscribe to this feed till u wake, then u can turn it back on. night, night!

Thanks again, David!

David - Were you able to incorporate any of these features into the new 3.0 core? http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/apple-ii-dos-source-code/ I was hoping the new BT_ViewControllerManager would take advantage of that "FAST SEEK SUBROUTINE" method shown here that looks pretty revolutionary. https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3data.computerhistory.org/atchm/documents/Apple_DOS_RW_30May1978.txt I'm thinking this would speed up adding and reading objects to the BT_items table if we could get that subclassed. If not this update then maybe the 3.1 core?

@Uelsimon, you are just so right! We wouldn't have any of this without David. He is truly a star and one of those people who gives and gives. We are working to make changes at Buzztouch so everything isn't so reliant on the heroic efforts of one person. But it just takes time.

Me with the new BT Core. http://assets.amuniversal.com/8b6f11f00cf3013125b3001dd8b71c47?width=900 LOL

No hurry, more curious than anything else, but do we have an ETA on iOS 3.0 for self hosted?

I'm interested in self-hosted 3.0 as well

Any ETA on iOS 3.0 for self hosted? Thank you!

Haven't heard an eta yet. Although David rarely gives one as it's such a fluid process

ok David@BT.... please..please...please... go to sleep now. no more posts till u wake up... and let us know by saying something like "ok I've slept" no one wants a dead David. And its clear all this great work stole more than its fair share of sleep, so we're collectively saying please go to sleep now. we can pick this up when u wake refreshed. € in fact...how about you unsubscribe to this feed till u wake, then u can turn it back on. night, night!

Great work gang :)