ZOO release date

Mar

First of all we are a little surprised by all the buzz in our comments of our latest article about the ZOO licenses. This is the first time that we release an extension that big like ZOO and it was somehow obvious for us that the ZOO extensions will be a YOOtheme product of its own along with its own website and subscription model.

We want to give peek behind the scene of the ZOO development process for better understanding why we think this way. First time we came up with the idea to create a catalog system was at the end of the 2007. Then in early 2008 we started to write down notes about the new catalog system extension we had only in our mind until this time. This whole planning process took over three months and it did not involve any programming yet. It was just about expressing our ideas on paper and before actually creating the first prototype. Then we started the development for the extensions code basis in May 2008. To help you to get an estimate how many hours the development has taken we have some interesting statistics for you.

Today we run a tool to count the lines of code the ZOO extension and compared them to the numbers of our YOOaccordion and YOOslider modules. Following files are covered: PHP, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, XML, SQL. No images are included in these statistics.

ZOO lines of code: 24 741 (232 files)
YOOaccordion lines of code: 686 (19 files)
YOOslider lines of code: 903 (25 files)

In conclusion one YOOtools module or plugin has approximately 3.6% of the amount of lines of code compared to the ZOO extension. These are just the numbers... when we developed the ZOO extension over the past months you cannot compare it with a race where you have a fixed start and finish line. It is more like you have a constantly moving finish line, because you always have to review and learn from the steps you took already. Even sometimes you go a few steps back just to change the direction because you have found a better path to follow. All in all you can imagine how much effort we put in the ZOO extension.

We stated four weeks ago in one of our comments to “expect something like the current YOOtheme memberships“. But we can also understand that this was not clear enough and our terms of use seemed misleading to some of you. But of course the terms of use on our YOOtheme site apply only to the template club memberships (Platinum, Gold and Silver) and the templates and YOOtools licenses are clearly stated. So everybody who felt misled and bought a developer license only to get the ZOO extension can drop us an email to info@yootheme.com and we will refund the template club membership.

Further the subscription model for ZOO Pro edition explained in our previous blog post is final. You can read about all the details on the upcoming website to inform you about the ZOO features of the Pro and Lite edition. That said we are looking forward to enjoy our ZOO release which will be later today. We started a countdown on http://zoo.yootheme.com

By Steffan | 19 March, 2009 | Posted in ZOO

Comments (31)

Del

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This is the news that i was waiting for! Thanks!

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Simon W

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The comment “expect something like the current YOOtheme memberships“ made it clear enough to me that this would be separate to the templates club. However I think this should have been in the blog post itself not the comments. My membership ran out a long time ago as I've not needed any templates so this doesn't really affect me much but I do see what people are moaning about. I am happy to pay for the Zoo extension should it suit my needs. One thing that does worry me is the 3 months thing - I think this should be a longer period...

For example you have said that frontend submission is planned for the future... Now, if this meets my needs I will be using it on my site. At the moment, while I'm building up a following the catalog will only need updating from the backend but in the future I will want this integrated in the frontend too. Now, to me this would mean that if you haven't released this feature within the 3 months I will have to spend another 99 Euros just to use the component on one small site.

I am looking forward to seeing the end result and I hope all your hard work pays off for you

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Nikolai H

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Thanks for this informations!
Will there be a package of yoothemes and the zoo-component?

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james.macdonald

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You're working hard. You deserve to get paid.

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Julien

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Is the time past by the team making this component affect the development and support of other extensions that I've donate for?

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- bertrand.hue
  
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  I agree with Julien
  
  If you think the disappointment of your members is a buzz, it is sad! Your members including myself have trusted you and many feel betrayed. How not to be disappointed when we know that at the same time you could give us 30 additional products included in the package that we have donate for? Your argument is simply mistaken for people who appreciate your work and who have supported you so far. Is it not because of your current members that you could take time and ensure the development of ZOO?
  
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Tom T

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Will Zoo be as idiot proof as all the other extensions/modules ? Also as (from what you have been saying) Zoo appears to be one very big massive component with lots in it, would a PDF document be available also detailing features, how to's, what things do etc as opposed to just using videos or lots of seperate short articles?

This would be a nice addition :)

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- sascha
  
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  Yes, we have a documentation and video tutorials ready...
  
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Captain bbob

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I will very happy to pay for this tool, I'm sure your guys have done a great work, but the 3 months licence is a joke in my opinion. Please consider to extend the licence period to one year. Thanks.

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- matteo.beretta
  
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  Another solution may be this: 1 year access to a download area with bugfix and security update and 3 month access to a download area with enhacements and new ZOO plugins.
  
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matteo.beretta

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Many compliments for the hype you have created. It’s like for Apple products. :D
What about a newsletter on tuesday morning to inform your users (who aren’t on the countdown page) about ZOO?

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noblecode

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looking forward to checking this out.... still concerned about the 3 months support but oh well - if this component does what I think it will I will have to bite the bullet and renew when needed. Please consider multi - license discounts and discounts to ppl who sign up for both yoo and zoo together.

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Jones

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I agree that the 3 months is too short. If the component is soooo big as depicted it will take at least 4-8 weeks to get into a live environment - after all we are not talking about a 40 user website. Thus, just as the bugs start coming in the support is gone. I give you an example where this is already happening. The template club as a 3 months membership. Pinboard came out and in my opinion still does not work properly - if you paid your 3 months membership just before Pinboard you will not even be live with it when the support expires. Thus you can forget about using it in a production environment because the support is too slow to fix the problems. In fact, they do not wish to acknowledge some of the problems saying it is designed this way. Given Zoo is sooooo big, the 3 months support will evaporate. My observation. Wait 6 months before you buy and let the bugs get sorted out. Let the forum build up so you can do your own research when the bugs hit you. Note to Zoo developers. I believe somewhere you said this commenting system is based on Zoo. There is a problem with this Ajax module. The characters get all fuzzy and overlap each other.

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- Martyn Mills
  
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  Hi Guy's
  For the developers out there that can not afford 99 euro, well then you are not promoting yourself or you are undercharging your clients. I will be charging my clients 299 for this feature and I am confident that each client will have received value for their money and if you stagger the customers then you wont have to worry about the support period. Start pricing your webs as professional webmasters.
  
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sander

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The video tour looks already very impressive! 2 more hours to go.

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matteo.beretta

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I have a fresh Joomla! installation ready for ZOO :)

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biracunha

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Very disappointed... 3 months support, 1 site installation.... Very expensive!

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jazzz

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I agree that you're working hard. You deserve to get paid! On the other hand the 3months is total JOKE! Extremely expensive... in my opinion there are thousands of user that would be thinking twice before they buy something for so much money... I also think that you could generate much more money if it's cheaper - basically just because more people will be using it and it will spread faster! For me, it's too much and I'm out! Shame... was waiting such a long time for finding that! Very disappointing!
:( !!!

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Cesar

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Bug Found!!!!!!!!

Lite version doesn't work.

When you create a new type, the 'elements' field at 'jos_zoo_core_type' doesn't save the xml properly it saves this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<type version="1.0.0">
<params>
<param type="text" name="" label="" display="3" />
<param type="image" name="" label="" display="3" directory="images/stories" />
<param type="textarea" name="" label="" display="3" feed="0" editor="0" rows="20" cols="60" />
</params>
</type>

No data at 'name' and 'label' attributes in any param and the type table isn't created.

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- jacob.whitaker
  
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  Yeah.... can't wait for the fix! :) Early adopter misfortune. No doubt the bugs will be worked out shortly.
  
  Good work YOOTheme! The product is one of the best.
  
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jones

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"We provide a rich set of elements like forms, images, videos, ratings and more." What is the more?

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Amador Jaso

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I just love the comments wow people fill so entitled. bunch of cry babies... If you think you can do better and their buisness model is so wrong than stop supporting it and move on.

Mean while yooteam love what you do. Only wish you started building templates for the compnents as well. This would really help to tie the components to match the template...

Cant wait to see what zoo can do.

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lanesa.stubbs.9

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3 months of support is ridiculous. Drupal offers the extension for free. The least you can do is offer a year support. It's no wonder alot of Joomla folk have adopted Drupal. I understand that you guys need to get paid for the development time, but 3 months and then having to renew another 3 months is a ripoff to me. With all the projects a person such as myself have, I might not access the forum until 1 month or two later because clients some time delay projects and I have to move to the next project. Why should I have to pay an additional 3 months for a subscription. You guys need to get real. I take it you developed the extension for yourselves.

Joomsuite already has one and someone else will develop another one soon!

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- vdrover
  
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  ZOO has a free version also. How much support comes with CCK for drupal?
  
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- Amador Jaso
  
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  What does yootheme subscription model have to do with people moving to Drupal? And if your stupid enough to quote a project and not charge you client for lost subscriptions or time then you deserve to pay more for bad project managment.
  
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- Punsh Drunk Love
  
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  3 month are really hard, i agree
  
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mjc22131

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Can't get it to do anything. It displays the catalog name but is unclickable to get to categories

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victso

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The 1-site license for a full monster in 3month is really too small market.
So far I can not see any of my client need all the feature, but they all need longer time.
If you want to sell license by site, can we only pay for some of the plug-ins and for a longer time??
Please make your support and package as plugable and expendable like zoo itself.
Charging a fix amount for all scale sites, and just for a short period, really is very strange thing.

Let the core be open-source so all users can debug for you, and all the fancy plgins as membered feature.
You can see another membership like Yootheme is structured, people need only 1 plug-in can join happily.

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Punsh Drunk Love

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wtf is K2 ?

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sascha

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We updated the Pro and Lite Edition to 1.0.1 Should be fixed now.

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Antonio

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Great component! About the download catalog I hope that is aviable a module like favorites, most, popular and realted download and recent file upload. A function with licencing before download file is necessary. Thank YOO

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