time for Perch Marketplace ?

    Yeah I saw that some time ago... which is a great start for sure. But i'm wondering if having an official market where people could pay for an app (a cut of the $ should go to Perch IMO). could even have a licensing mechanism that validates a perch key with the app purchased.


    I'm just throwing it out there as an idea, i don't know if its been brought up as a topic before.

  • I don't think taking a cut is good ethically, or good for developers either.


    I market a very popular app called Chirp. I think what it needs is an "official" list of add-on apps, like other CMS' do (Craft being one). I don't think perch needs to handle anything in terms of licenses etc, but as a developer it'd be nice to get a status and a trust level from Perch to help market and sell my product.


    I think what Clive's done has been a big step in the right direction, so thank you Clive!

  • Don't get me wrong, I totally agree that the list that Clive has curated is great.


    But as a developper, if i create an app and Perch had setup the platform from me to market and sell my app to others, I would personally have absolutely no problem passing over a percentage as commission.

    I don't think we'd want to get in the position where we're taking payments on behalf of third-party developers, primarily because the tax and accounting implications are so complex that it likely wouldn't be worthwhile financially for the commission we'd be able to charge.


    I wouldn't be averse to an official directory (perhaps restricted to those with Registered Developer accounts) but each seller would need to handle their own payments, I think. It would end up being a more formalised version of Clive's listing.


    I did research heavily switching Perch to use Composer for installs and updates when developing Perch 3. At the time my conclusion was that


    1. Perch isn't structured in a way that easily lends itself to configuration with Composer
    2. Composer is convenient for developers, but way too complex for a large section of customers whose expertise is more on the front-end and creative sides of a project

    I'm up for that being revisited, and if some bright spark can figure out a way to have add-ons installed with Composer as an option, then I'd be all for it. It's probably not something I can afford to sink my own time into, however.

  • I completely agree, Drew.


    An official version of Clive's list would be brilliant, it'd also give my app some weight in terms of trust and increase visibility more than likely.


    Some official way to integrate apps would be cool, though as they are so easy to install as long as we could provide a ZIP download, I think it would be more than easy enough without needing composer or anything. It'd just be a matter of how updates are handled (maybe some API development that we could tap into, to go into the 'Updates' section in settings would be cool?

    Interesting points to consider there.


    I played around a few years ago setting up a test satis server to play around with. It came with public and private web interfaces as well, so you could as a user either download the zip from the web or install via composer.


    You can set it up so that the default composer install dir is perch/addons.


    It would be the licensing i’m not too sure how it would work.


    I might look into it again and do some testing when I get some free time.


    ryan - an app installer interface is an interesting idea. You could make an app for that! ^^