It doesn't seem that long ago that we were ringing in the new millennium (remember the dreaded Y2K bug) and a very baby osCommerce [then named The Exchange Project - if anyone remembers that name, you're an old timer] was available, running on NNTP (no forum, so it was all on news groups in the early days) - how time flies by without noticing. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, was super excited about this new piece of software that would bring e-commerce to anyone who wanted it.
Did osCommerce change the face of e-commerce? Absolutely it did - we should thank the originals for their hard work; HPDL, Jan, Sparky and others I've forgotten. It seems strange that so many years have flown by - 25 years of open source Commerce.
Well done HPDL, Jan, Sparky and others. You all made a real difference!
10 years of Phoenix
As for Phoenix, we've been around for 10 years in various guises;
First of all the "BS" version, it's my favourite "play on words" name, but I think my humour was not appreciated so much
When the BS version became sort-of-half-accepted as the new official Responsive osCommerce, we changed the the name to "CE" Version - Community Edition. We still have "CE" in our official name...
When we were asked to remove ourselves from the osCommerce umbrella, we became Phoenix and have since gone from strength to strength in terms of codebase and flexibility of that code.
With all that said, I wish all members a happy and prosperous 2024.
I'm hopeful the Dev Team is going to have Phoenix fly higher and burn brighter then ever in 2024. It's going to take the help of everyone here, no matter if you are a 10 year veteran or a Day 1 new user.
Off the cuff plans for 2024 include;
- updating shop side to Bootstrap 5
- a new more modern look for "out of the box" installation
- squashing as many bugs as we can find
- and more, just watch this space
I really believe we have a community who are wanting Phoenix to be the best it can be. Your help, in any way you can, will allow us to achieve this. Let's invoke the spirit of 2000, when everyone was pulling in the same direction to learn new ideas, make new code and have a really good community experience.
So, here's to 2024. May it be a good one for all of us.
