I can see the whole concrete cms site has changed yet again. Im trying to update an older add-on that has broken my site. In the past the old add-ons were listed but now I cant find any reference to them. If I search google I can see the link but when I click it, it just takes me to the new page with nothing displayed other than a search box.
Im really stuck now, any suggestions?
I wish concrete wouldn’t keep doing this, it’s getting tedious constantly having to fire fight as they update things. There must be thousands of sites that are still running older versions. We cant all update every single site every time there is an update.
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I couldn’t agree more. It is completely unfathomable to me why they keep cutting off access to the past. I retired so I have no say in the matter anymore but as an open source project, why these old add-ons can’t find a home in some repository somewhere is beyond me.
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I appreciate that the marketplace has changed, but this does not help my situation in that I have a site with hundreds of images using an gallery add-on that I cannot update to the latest core. To rebuild these galleries would take months as they go back to 2014 and I would have to do it for free for my client.
There is no workaround on offer.
Looking at building sites as a whole, I’m now thinking of moving away from Concrete after using for over 15 years. It is a good system, but just hasn’t got the flexibility that other platforms provide (obviously Wordpress for example) where extensions are concerned.
If a whole site breaks because of an out of date extension (as mine has) and that site has to be trashed, it cannot sit well with any site developer.
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Which gallery add-on r u using?
A site will only suddenly break if something is changed. For example, was the ‘out of date’ extension a result of updating the host php version (a common issue is changing php7 to php8) or updating the concrete core?
Is there an intention to move all of the 8.x extensions into Git Hub so that they can still be used to maintain the existing websites?
I find it strange that regular updates are being released for 8.x, but any related support for that version has been discontinued. Sadly I am under the dictate of my client’s will to upgrade to 9.x which is still lacking support of so many extensions that were popular in 8.x
Today, I am trying to rebuild a broken site that I have had to move to a new server host that will support older versions of PHP. The Image Optimizer extension refers to a now-non-existing configure instructions page. This means I will have to spend time digging through the code to understand what has to be done.
Sorry if this is a bit of a ramble but the more I think through this the less I like Concretecms, maybe its time to seek a new platform!
Martyn
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The v8 core updates have been limited to security updates and essential bug fixes since 8.5.something. v8 has been advertised as end of life for getting on for 2 years. Please search back for the numerous posts where @frz explains such.
The sticking point with abandoned addons is that they remain the property of the original developer, even if free. Efforts were made to contact such developers and, where they gave permission, addons have been moved to the community GitHub. But where they could not be contacted or did not give permission, moving them to a GitHub under an open license would have left those involved in the move open to copyright infringement.
Having said all that, if an addon was abandoned, then it would not have been fixed for any of the issues sites have with it, so leaving a broken addon available in the marketplace would only lead to more old sites vulnerable to the bugs in it without doing anything for the sites that have already encountered a bug in the broken and abandoned addon.
Which leaves a contingent of v8 compatible addons that were still maintained by active developers. Developers have updated these for v9. Some developers (myself included) don’t rule out back compatibility with v8, but for most of us it is no longer reasonable to actually test for back compatibility with v8.
Anyone requiring an addon that is maintained, i.e. is now v9 compatible and in the v9 marketplace, but originated back with v8, should contact the developer and they can advise of back compatibility. Anyone doing such may need to tweak the compatibility settings in the package controller, manually install, and should test on a dev site before inadvertently bricking a live v8 site.
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Because it’s not our code to give away for free mhawke.
While there certainly are some MIT licensed extensions, the majority of them are commercial packages that someone wrote many years ago with the expectation that we’d sell their work and everyone would make some money together.
I’ve come to understand that open source means quite a few things to different people. Personally I do love the idea that if I buy something, I’ve fully bought my copy of it. As a tinkerer, I don’t want my car’s hood to be welded shut.
We’ve worked hard and honored that promise here. No one’s Concrete site has changed because of the marketplace changes we made. All the code we sold you is still yours and was delivered to your site successfully when you first downloaded it, enjoy! All we did here is stop offering free updates to old packages that we’ve been yelling about being end of life for literally years.
To stretch this metaphor, what you’re complaining about is that we no longer offer an autoshop you can take your old car to and have parts automatically swapped out with new ones at no cost. Additionally you’re befuddled that we didn’t just take all the old parts we used to sell (that we don’t actually own - consider them here on consignment) and just put them out front of the closed shop for anyone to take, because “open source.”
We’ve offered many times to help people get a copy of their old packages from the archived marketplace if they reach out to us with some specifics and ask.
I dunno gang. I understand you have every right to feel any way you want. No one here has ever woken up and asked “how can we really make someone’s life harder today.” I’m not sure what open source means to everyone here, but if the expectation is everything works perfectly for ever with no maintenance effort for free (or a one time $30 purchase 5 years ago), I’m struggling to see how I can play along.
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appreciate the clarification
HI Frz,
I appreciate you taking the time to clarify this issue, and I fully understand its reasoning and agree it is a quandary. But I would agree that it was the commercially correct path to take.
I am interested in building an add-on repository for the add-ons I have written and purchased. Have you released the market.concretecms.com or an opensource implementation that I could use internally?
Thanks
Martyn
I don’t think you need/want all our old marketplace just to offer a repository of old packages. There’s nothing keeping you from sticking a few zip files on your website for the world to enjoy today.
I’ll tell ya what, if you want to help on this…
I believe the composer delivery of packages from the old marketplace continues to function today. That works with copies of files in S3 buckets so we’re not really exposing our old marketplace code to the world to leave it be. If you wanted to use that resource and pull all the free packages down and put them on github, I’d be happy to link to it.
Thanks frz I will check it out