Meta Box

Groups should be native functionality, not a premium extension

Support › General › Groups should be native functionality, not a premium extension

Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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  • September 3, 2016 at 1:40 AM #4005
    agorskiagorski
    Participant

    Hey all,
    I'm a subscriber to the full package (the expensive one). I'm OK with that. I'm looking to include Metabox (the base version) in a separate plugin as a way of managing CPT fields. The only thing that's preventing me from doing this is the lack of Groups functionality. Obviously, I wouldn't want to include a paid extension as a dependency for my plugin.

    My other option is to use the CMB2 framework, which is not nearly as good. Would you consider bringing the Groups functionality into the base Metabox plugin? Would this benefit any of the other paid users?

    At the same time, I understand this is a business, and you don't want to lose revenue. I think you'd find that bringing more functionality to the base plugin will bring in more users overall, which means more chances for paid conversions. I dunno, something to think about.

    September 3, 2016 at 4:38 AM #4006
    agorskiagorski
    Participant

    Also- it would be great if there were support for using the extensions with Composer somehow. I'm not sure how you'd manage access, but it might be a neat idea.

    September 4, 2016 at 10:41 PM #4009
    Anh TranAnh Tran
    Keymaster

    Hi Sam,

    Thanks a lot for your suggestion. Currently, Group is the most popular extension that generates most of the revenue for us. So, making it free hurts the business, at least at the moment. But that doesn't mean that we won't in the future. We need to grow the business while would like to give back to the community as much as possible.

    Regarding the Composer, we did release Meta Box as a standalone package on Packagelist, so using it with Composer is just easy. I'm not sure how to release a private repo on it and share the access to users. If you know any way or method to do that, please just tell me. I'm open to any idea.

    Thanks
    Anh

    September 6, 2016 at 10:50 AM #4023
    agorskiagorski
    Participant

    Cool, that makes sense. How should I handle the situation of natively including Metabox Extensions in a plugin or theme? Groups would be a required extension for anyone using the plugin? Or is there a way I can bundle it within the extension without listing it as an actual plugin on the site and still be OK?

    September 7, 2016 at 11:10 PM #4034
    Anh TranAnh Tran
    Keymaster

    Hi Sam,

    Currently, I recommend using TGM Plugin Activation to include the extensions in a plugin or theme. It's safe and just works.

    But if you want to include it without listing it as an actual plugin, you can simply copy it into your theme/plugin and include the main file of the extension. It works in most cases, but sometimes there are compatibility troubles (not many). You should do this only when you really need.

    Regarding your question about the necessity of the Group extension: it's not always true. Most people and most premium themes only need simple solution for custom fields where the core free plugin is enough. I also make premium themes on ThemeForest and most of them only requires Meta Box. Group is helpful for (I guess) digital agencies where they create complex websites with complex data for their customers. I think you're one of them 🙂

    September 8, 2016 at 5:40 AM #4038
    agorskiagorski
    Participant

    Thanks for the recommendation. I'm currently using TGM for some theme stuff, but not for my plugin. I guess I'm more concerned with the idea of... let's say I create a plugin that uses Metabox+Groups for custom field management. I could TGM-require Metabox Core and Groups. I could TGM-require Groups and bundle the Metabox Core with Composer. Or I could TGM-require nothing, bundle Metabox Core with Composer, and manually include the Group extension inside the plugin files somewhere using require_once or something. All of those are acceptable uses?

    September 8, 2016 at 3:15 PM #4040
    Anh TranAnh Tran
    Keymaster

    Yes, all of the methods above should work. The way we load Meta Box and extensions doesn't matter too much, because the Group extension is loaded on init hook and at that time Meta Box is already loaded.

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