sybrew
commented
7 years ago Hi @LeBaux,
That's quite a broad question, and I can't give you a complete answer: because I don't have a complete answer. Nevertheless, I'll try my best to make things clear.
The fine line between Free and Premium
Premium: The software requires an API connection in order to (partially) function. This allows for awesome and yet unheard of features. Free: Almost everything else I publish.
Are there any other differences?
Well, from the user's perspective: not really. You can view all available extensions right from your dashboard, both free and premium.
The premium extensions will generally also receive more love (like visual effects, extended AJAX support, etc.), as people pay for it, but that still doesn't make a big difference. You can already see these efforts in the "Plugin" and its admin interface. It's written according to the Flexible Box spec (almost all browsers will fail) with the help of Browserstack, just try resizing your window 😄, on any browser (all browsers will pass).
What does make a big difference is that the Monitor extension, for example, took me 3 months to set up, and it's still far from finished. The server software of which is 18000 lines and counting, it requires a database, hardened security, exception handling, parsing of data, etc.
Whereas the Title Fix was a single all-nighter to get built. The premium extensions are essentially written with completely different environments at hand.
These features, at their current state, aren't worth the full price. That's why there's an "Early Bird" initiative. I hope to make this difference more clear as the project grows.
Although, in perspective, the Extension Manager alone could've bought me a Tesla model S (P100D) if my time building it was spent at an IT company. Nevertheless, I hope people don't take that all for granted 😄.
All code is open source
For both premium and free extensions. This was a requirement to get it on WordPress.org. However, the premium software has dedicated software running on my servers, which will be - for both privacy and security reasons - closed.
My main concern will always be security and performance
And this is why the premium extensions also take so much more time to set up. They don't run completely local, and I must weigh in on how often an API connection is actually required, and I must verify its integrity at all times.
Extensions Roadmap:
Free extensions Premium extensions
There are some planned behind the scenes, which will be made public when I can clear their requirements and possibilities.
Setting up FAQ's
...and the like. These things take up loads of time, of which I currently rather spend in building 2.8.0 and 2.9.0. Thereafter more extensions will rapidly follow 😄. If I ever were to find the time to document everything... I'd then even rather automate the documentation. Nevertheless, I hope my scattered data will suffice for now. I should definitely need to pick this up and store it somewhere, someday.
P.S. About the following, please don't. I hope I clearly stated why in one of your linked-to posts 👍
but if you want I can repost this on wordpress plugin discussion site.
LeBaux
This is more of discussion piece on onboarding & marketing, rather then code issue but I think github is able to facilitate discussion on this front. As a bonus, you are not fragmenting discussion on more platforms - but if you want I can repost this on wordpress plugin discussion site.
I am currently very fresh user of TSF, so I am encountering some questions that other transitioning webmasters might face. Currently the biggest question is what is difference between premium and free - specially since I can activate extension manager for free. Are all modules there, or are premium hidden? Is there dev roadmap for plugin and extensions?
You answered some of these questions to some extend here and here, but I think you should consider adding FAQ to both your website and wordpress plugin directory and even maybe here on github in project description. Thanks for your time!