Chris Cyvas

With the next release of dashCommerce, I have released most of the providers from their prison. By this I mean that dashCommerce 3.0 will come with the PayPal Standard and PayPal Pro Payment Providers, a SimpleWeight Shipping Provider and a RegionCode Tax Provider that takes the place of both the ZeroRate and FlatRate Tax Providers and for those of you that just want to charge a real flat rate with no dependencies on Zip Codes, or whatever, then you can use the RegionCode Tax Provider for this as well because it has a default rate override.

Having all the providers in the code base is proving to be a non-starter - we just can’t test all the permutations.

In one of my previous posts I mentioned that part of running this project is about releasing some control and so the other Payment, Tax, and Shipping Providers will be made available for sale on the new dashCommerce.com site that will be out with the 3.0 Release. So, if you are a component developer type, then you’ll be able to put them up for sale on dashCommerce.com as well. I’ll be writing some new providers as well, such as a Tax Provider for US and Canada that will use tax rates that are updated monthly and we will probably make this available to the folks that host with us as well. The aim of this initiative is to allow for the most amount of provider components to be developed for dashCommerce.

dashCommerce 3.0 is moving along well and there is a lot more functionality in the core product, but in order to add this stuff, I’ve had to pull somethings that were in the 2.2.0 version that were not complete in my mind. Specifically, Promotions, Campaigns, and Bundles. These were more like starting points or proof-of-concepts in my mind, so for the time being, they will not be in the 3.0 release. I don’t have any feeling as to when or if they will be added back in. There’s not a whole lot in the forums on them, so my thinking is that most folks aren’t using them. As I’ve mentioned before, this release is about removing obstacles, so the focus is on having a stable product that does what it is supposed to do and does it well.

dashCommerce is currently licensed under the MPL 1.1 and I am reviewing that for the 3.0 release - does anybody have any strong feelings about this? - please think about the success of the project long term - I get a lot of comments from folks looking out for #1 and not the project, so if you have an opinion, please give me some good, solid thoughts behind it.

Also, I’d like to take the opportunity to clarify something that I have seen bubbling around on the forums that I feel it is important to clarify . . . I don’t work for Microsoft or PayPal, nor do I receive any support or contract work from them. (Well, Microsoft gave me an MSDN Subscription, so that was nice.) Nor do I receive any referrals from them. But, I think folks should know this fact because I think there is an impression that I work for Microsoft, PayPal, or CodePlex. There’s actually a post on the forums thanking the CodePlex team for writing dashCommerce.

And finally, screencasts are coming soon . . . I promise.