Information for new Maintainers / Discussion

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:warning: Thread information
This topic is open for possible new maintainers only. If you are interested in becoming a new maintainer please contact me via direct message!

Hello interested users,

I opened this thread to discuss the future of the InvoicePlane project directly with users who are willing to help maintaining the project in the future.

First, I will summarize all tasks related with the project so you have an idea of what needs to be done.

Administrative Tasks

Manage all websites and services that are used by InvoicePlane

These tasks include to take care of the sites and services and update them whenever it’s needed.

Information about the used server
InvoicePlane has it’s own server hosted by ServDiscount.com. The server is paid until February 2017 so there is no need to hurry to find a new server for the websites. I already got several offers from different people who were willing to sponsor servers.

To host all InvoicePlane websites and services there is at least a virtual server needed that has to meet the following requirements:

  • CPU: not that important, but should have at least 2 cores with 2 GHz each. The current server has an Intel i7 with 4x3 GHz.
  • RAM: Very important, should be at least 8GB, more would be good. Discourse and Jira take the most of the resources.
  • HDD: The current server is using about 60GB so the new HDD should have at least 100GB.

The current server costs about 20 € per month, 240 € per year.

Domains

InvoicePlane currently owns several domains but only one, invoiceplane.com, is needed. The costs for this domain is about 12 € at the moment.

External services used by InvoicePlane

Social Media

Social networks used by InvoicePlane

Community Management

A healthy community is very important for an open source project. Take any requests serious and try to solve them as good as possible. If you can’t solve an issue, explain why. Also: do not say yes every time. It’s important to make decisions against some ideas or requests.

Offer support to the users

Take care of all user requests. Support requests mostly need help from an involved developer. Feature requests needs to be added to the issue tracker.

Inform the community about news

Write news in the community forums and promote them in social networks and via newsletter.

Development

Basics

InvoicePlane is build with CodeIgniter 2 and uses jQuery 2, Bootstrap 3 and some other smaller libraries. The software is versioned by the Semver method. The repository uses Git with this branching model.

Hotfixes

Take care of small issues or bugs and release them in smaller packages as hotfix versions.

New Features

Develop new features, test them and release them in larger packages as feature versions.

InvoicePlane 2

InvoicePlane needs a major overhaul. I already started with it but there is very much to do. The issue tracker already has a version that tracks all features and task for InvoicePlane 2.0.0 and these tasks need to be completed. As it doesn’t make any sense to build InvoicePlane 2 from the ground up I decided to rewrite major parts of the software with CodeIgniter 3, jQuery 3 and Bootstrap 4. I also overhauled the used libraries and moved to newer tools.
The work on this task is very heavy and should not be done by a single developer. All tasks should be split and solved by different developers.

These are all tasks that I was currently facing and I will try to continue most of them as good as possible.

Requirements for new Maintainers

For me it’s very important that there are multiple people who are willing to continue the project. Nobody should face the same problems like me now in the future. I think it makes the most sense if someone takes care of community management while other developers work on the software itself.

In my opinion there are at least three people needed: one community manager and two developers. I would be very happy if a company could offer monthly financial support for the project.

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New roles inside the project

Community Management

Developers

Server Management

Financial Management

Thread for planning the project

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And I’m not dirty to work together with other people for maintaining this lovely program! :slight_smile:

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Me too, i think it could be a great opportunity.
I just arrive from a long trip, tomorrow i update that thread with more info.

thanks!

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Hi, again.

First, let me talk a bit about me: I am José Pedro Andrés, from Zaragoza (Spain). I have work as Sysadmin, LAMP developer and proyect manager for more than 15 years, mostly in PHP, Perl and Bash. I am a Open Source lover and work on it from 2002 (first proyect debianitas.net). Currently, i host my own hosting server and work on orix.es, both uses internally InvoicePlaner.

I uses for a long time Invoice Plane with Trello as task manager and Plus for trello as time tracker. About 3 months ago i start to think in develop mi own “InvoicePlane” with all this features, so when i saw that you are loking for a new manteiner, i offer me to do that.

The way i would manage IP, seems similar to:

  1. Review all community enhaced request, and use it to run a version 2 ROADMAP for Invoice Plane
  2. with that on mind, set approximate times to features, so people can see how it works.
  3. Invite every one who can join devel to do it :wink:
  4. Allow users to propose or vote new features, send new translations or request support on the same app, so they can be more involved on IP.
  5. On current VPS hosting ends, i move all sites to my own server, and maybe try to simplyfi it (use more github services instead Jira, in example)
  6. Try to move all sites development to only one Framework, to simplify develop.

IMHO, v2.0.0 of IP (wich should have same features as current version), should be operative on about 3/4 months, depending on support request. First 2.0 version, if necesary, should have also a migrate script.

On a code basics, i work with Code Igniter, Laravel, Yii, Zend, Cake and some others, and i a Yii2 lover. It works like a rock, is fast and easy to use, so, i think about use it. Even that, if RamonSmit or other developer think that is better use other framework, i got no problem on that.

About get multiple people work on it, i think is an important thing, but there should be a CTO or manager who takes responsibility on project and can asume (if necesary) the costs it has.

So far i ready to develop my own Invoice Plane, i sure i can do the work and manage the project. But, and i think this is important, if you simply prefer @RamonSmit to do that, i also help on IP.

Thanks in advance, and sorry for the huge text and misspellings
José Pedro.

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Greetings Friends!

My name is Landon Teranski Owner and Manger at T9FD Services (www.t9fd.com) a web and app development company.
I love the fact that we can say that our company uses InvoicePlane on a day to day basis. We are a small company and it works perfect for what we need it to do! I see so much potential in this beautiful piece of digital art. I have been programming for several years now and love every minute of it as well as able to manage things efficiently. I would love to help out where i can in this project as it would be awful to see such a thing disappear.

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Hello! I want to introduce myself.

I’m a user and lover of this software since the days when it was Fusion Invoice. I am a part time programmer and have done projects with Python, JS and NodeJS, HTML, MariaDB, LAMP (mostly CentOS for the “L” part), Juniper route/switch, and HAProxy. Most of my knowledge is self-taught. I’m 24 and I love the open-source communities. Everything should be open source :slight_smile:

I don’t have any experience with managing a project like this but I’d like to learn and am willing to jump in where needed. I run a few servers for business and have access to some free VPS and/or co-lo space if that’s helpful.

@macklus seems like you’ve done this quite a bit. Your bullet points sound good to me. Maybe you could use an apprentice? haha :wink:

I love using this software and want to see it move forward, get better, and help more people. Thanks for reading!

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I just wanted to share my thoughts on the recent posts

About what @macklus said:
I really think that the development roadmap could be reviewed and maybe made more streamlined. But I don’t think that it’s a good idea to build the app again with a new framework as it’s simply too much work. As I already started with CodeIgniter 3, which is quite powerful now, it makes the most sense to continue an that base. Maybe IP could be rewritten from the ground up for version 3.
You also stated to use Github as the issues tracker which is a good idea in general. The problem is that even if if would costs less to simply use Github, I had much problems with the fact that everyone can use the issue tracker for everything and there is currently no option to limit the use of the issues to contributors only. Also there would be several hundreds of dead links in the community forums and elsewhere if the project would switch to a new issue tracker.

@lteranski
I already stated hat I would really like to see a company offer financial help for the project. As you are the manager of a company, do you think it might be possible to spend 10-20 €/$ per month for the project to run a (smaller) server and pay for the domain? If yes it would be no problem to host all IP websites and also the community forum and the Jira issue tracker.
Also, would you think that you might be able to fit into the role of the asset manager of the project? I mean that you take care of the finances and the server infrastructure?

For all others please let me know which part of the maintaining team you would like to cover. I already added some hints to the team list above but this is just an idea from me.

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Let me introduce myself,

I’m Ramon Smit from The Netherlands. Currently owner of a hosting company since 2008. Worked in PHP and Bash since I was a youngster. CI doesn’t have any secrets for me, which is nice!

Since InvoicePlane came out, the company I created switched to InvoicePlane and I know it kinda from the inside out. Already got spare money for projects like IP, so financial stuff is not a big deal for us. So as owner of a company, I can invest in InvoicePlane, no big deal :wink: Just let me know @Kovah.

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@Kovah

I find fine with CI 3 ;-). I proposed Yii because its really fast work with it, but its only an opinion.

About the VPS, actually i manage a dedicated server on OVH (https://www.soyoustart.com/es/ofertas/sys-ip-1s.xml), that only cost 30€/month. If @lteranski or other can afford that ammount (i think is no so much money), it could be a good option. If they not, i offer myself to host al IP data on “Website and infraestructure” rol.

Looking a bit on IP code, i found task and projects modules who are not linked on top menu. Are this future options not explained yet ? Is there any code detail on it (like UML schemas or similar) ? I think its really important define what is going to be develop to be agile.

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As @RamonSmit is the owner of a hosting company I hope he could provide a server for InvoicePlane in the future? That would save some money.

About the tasks module: it was written by a contributor last year but he never finished the module and I couldn’t spend some time on reviewing the complete code and finishing the integration into the invoices and quote modules. The related issue can be found here: https://development.invoiceplane.com/browse/IP-162
@Araziel wanted to take care of the module.

I just created a Kanban board for InvoicePlane 2 so you can take a look at all issues.

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@Kovah, Servers, no problem at all :slight_smile: Sure I can arrange that kind of stuff!

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Hey There sorry for the slow response

We can do up to $100 per month to run any hosting on servers and maintain the domain(S) etc.

As for your Asset Manager roll what fully would need to be done in that roll. I understand the Asset Infrastructure as in maintaining servers etc but for financial what would that require?

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Well it’s a good question who is going to manage different tasks at the moment. As Ramon mentioned he would offer the servers thus also manage them. Maybe he could offer access to you or someone else so there are multiple persons who can update the sites etc.
With the financial asset management I meant that there must be somebody who takes care of the PayPal account and all donations being made.

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Everything is possible, unlimited I would say :slight_smile:

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I am familiar with Paypal for non profits. I run a 501c3 here in the US and run the monthly transact reports. If there’s already a structure or “to-do” list every month/year/etc then I’d be happy to do that. I imagine that’s it’s a 3-5 hours a month commitment and I can easily handle that. I throw my hat in the ring for the Paypal’er role

I have performed monthly server updates for my work on CentOS, Apache, and MariaDB. I would like to assist the person that maintains the server infrastructure so I can get more experience :slight_smile: plus any content updates are easy enough for me to do as well.

There’s my input, let me know what you think. Thanks for reading!

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Sounds like a slick plan! :smirk:

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Lookings like @zefcat zefcat might be a better person to take care of PayPal Donations etc seems he has plenty of experience in this area. If @RamonSmit wants to host things and get me access thats no problem im happy to help on site maintenance and updates as needed. Again i am more then happy to maintain the domain and hosting charges up to $100/month.

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I would like to help out as I currently have a vps cluster I run(5 servers total right now in a cluster)
and besides that I also do php and other development as well.
I remember seeing this somewhere online
and I wouldn’t like to see this project die because of no one wanting to help out.
as I can do anything that is needed.
besides I have to admit I work on my code a lot so I have plenty of time to work on projects like this