OpenFreeway 2.0 is coming
Written for OpenFreeway by Damian Hickey on 2008-11-28
Introduction
With OpenFreeway 1.x, we have been successful in our original goal of proving it is possible to create a broad based ecommerce application which sells not only products but also a wide range of services. It has been a great learning process and we have broken a lot of new ground in ecommerce.
We have learned a lot. We’ve learned how to manage and intermingle quite complex sales methods in ways that solve business needs that are quite innovative. We’ve helped businesses sell in ways much more suited to their style of business than previously available.
With OpenFreeway 1.x, a layer of the economy can get online and sell without making huge compromises to their business processes.
We have the choice to incrementally move to towards 2.0, gradually adding new features and catering to a wider range of businesses. Instead, we have chosen to take a much more dramatic choice.
Now it is time to throw out version 1.x track and start again with a 2.x track employing the best of what we have learned and reaching for much higher goals. It’s a bold decision to proceed in this manner but only as bold as our initial goal to cater to the needs of services based businesses.
2.0 Goals
Its time to build something quite audacious, a secure, scalable and extensible eCommerce layer on top of a modern, well supported, well coded and highly featured PHP Framework. Taking what we have learned, we can build something that serves the needs of businesses as diverse as movie cinema chains, commission payments for financial services agents, schools for fee payments, online product malls and B2B services industries.
We understand ecommerce well enough now to build something that works from the micro business to the enterprise.
Scalability
Out of the box, we want to support one million each of customers, products, event tickets, services bookings and subscriptions. Customer management and reports etc. must also scale well.
Security
OpenFreeway 2.0 will be PA-DSS certified at time of release. This will not only cover the application but will also extend to a detailed best practice method of installing and configuring Freeway for Level 1 Visa enterprise use.
Admin Usage Goals
OpenFreeway 1.x installs really easily but there will be lots more industry types supported so the installation process will also have to become modularised. The admin tool UI in OpenFreeway 1.5 is quite advanced and does not need to be radically modified. Here are some more features we will support:
• Wizard based store builder
• Simple interfaces to ensure OpenFreeway can be used by micro-stores as well as enterprise.
• Advanced options to be easily available but hidden
• Fully integrated help
• Application and extension updates with compatibility checking
• Integrated extension repository to simplify adding modules
Design constraints - eCommerce
We must be conscious of the limits to the types of sales methods we will support. OpenFreeway 2.0 will be broad based. For example, in terms of products sales methods, we’ll support shopping malls but not intermingling of products between stores in the mall or the B2B cross selling marketplace between store owners. Lots more work will be done in this area before we commit to the final design.
So here is a draft list of considerations around what will be included in OpenFreeway 2.0 so far.
Evaluation Process
We are currently involved in a process of evaluating what will be included in 2.0. Of course OpenFreeway can’t be everything. For example, we have reached the limit for us with our mini-CMS which gives the store enough flexibility to inform the customer about how the store operates but does not employ the heavy CMS functionality we don’t need. We’ll better integrate the CMS feature into OpenFreeway but not deepen its functionality. Similarly, OpenFreeway is not a CRM. We have a lot of CRM functionality with the automated eMarketing and SMS Marketing but it dies not make sense to go down the CRM track of establishing deep relationships between customers.
Our sweet spot is clearly identified as making online sales work better. We need to stay focussed on this point: most service based businesses do not have efficient ways of selling online yet. Our job is to help them branch out confidently online.
Framework
We have outgrown the current osCommerce base. It’s not really a framework and does not give us anywhere near the database structure we need to support the types of sales methods we envisage to be built. So thanks to all the developers who built oCommerce but it’s time for us to go totally independent.
• Review a series of PHP frameworks to find the most appropriate base to support our goals. The Zend and Joomla Frameworks seem early favourites.
• Non – negotiable features
o MVC architecture
o Very granual logging functionality (for PA-DSS support)
o PHP5 only
o MySQL 5 only
eCommerce - Base layer approach
Instead of the current application architecture, we will create a thin ecommerce base layer on top of the generic PHP framework. This will support a modular approach to adding the completed sales methods and other functionality.
Functionality Details
The OpenFreeway 2.0 Functionality Blueprint at https:/
Development goals
The design process is estimated to take one month. There are enough committed resources to complete the ecommerce framework layer in another three months. Completed modules to build up to the current OpenFreeway core functionality will be completed over the course of another 3 months.
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