WordPress Toolkit

It’s a great tool! I’ve integrated my framework for testing and worked well, but i will wait for a while to update my themes.

Also I’m not sure it’s the best solution, I always thought that simple notification by sending email to buyers after theme is updated would be enough.

stmcan said

Also I’m not sure it’s the best solution, I always thought that simple notification by sending email to buyers after theme is updated would be enough.

+1 for sending email notifications

That’s what I do also. I send email/twitter update notifications.

It’s really helpful when you do an update to wait a few days for feedback before sending notification. This way, just in case something was missed in testing we can fix it before send out the notice. It protects most existing customers from little bugs and is a very good system.

0. Awesome feature!

1. I think password login would be better suited for login then API key – If I was a buyer, I could share my API key with 8-9 friends without any risks but I would never share my password ( access to deposit and the other critical stuff )

2. When will this be ready for plugins ?

Since posting and reading the thoughts of others, I’m leaning toward this being an over-engineered and negative solution.

I tend to agree with what @Parallelus said:

I estimate I’ve had 10 requests in the last 3 years for automatic updates. As far as I’m concerned this is not even close to a top priority for the marketplace. It feels a lot like a waste of resources unless there are future plans related to this which I’m not aware of.

1. For un-informed buyers, this will make licensing more confusing. 2. For end users, clicking ‘update this theme’ may break the site. 3. For pirates, it makes distributing copyrighted material even easier.

What is the real problem? Authors can’t inform buyers of updates.

Why? Because authors don’t have a buyer list (another rabbit hole entirely).

It’s disappointing that Envato focused on a WordPress solution to a problem that affects all items. Even more so that it introduces new and worse problems.

A simple “email buyers an update notification” button solves this in a cleaner way for the whole marketplace.

P.S. I’m glad Envato is discussing this in a public forum. Openness is good.

Parallelus said
The current system protects against overwriting modifications. Not to generalize too much, but most WP users aren’t all that knowledgeable when it comes to coding. If they make a customization it’s likely they won’t realize it can be wiped out by 2 clicks to update the theme. This is further exaggerated when a developer uses a theme and turns it over to a client.

+1

I completely agree with the majority of concerns expressed by other authors, especially by Parallelus and sevenspark.
I wish you guys re-consider your decision to make it mandatory, at least not for a while. If I had a choice I would not implement this right now. We want to make sure that the benefits clearly outnumber the potential issues.

Just to be clear, you don’t HAVE to use this, do you?

Please, could someone give an example of how to use this in theme ? And, I’m beginner in themeforest so I’m not sure about that api keys too … Does the buyer have to enter it’s username and api key or seller ? Sorry for the noobness …

LandonWilson said
Just to be clear, you don’t HAVE to use this, do you?

internq7 said
I completely agree with the majority of concerns expressed by other authors, especially by Parallelus and sevenspark.
I wish you guys re-consider your decision to make it mandatory, at least not for a while. If I had a choice I would not implement this right now. We want to make sure that the benefits clearly outnumber the potential issues.

• You DO NOT have to use the plugin or the library if you don’t wish to. Using them is NOT mandatory
• The only thing that has become mandatory is to upload a “theme only” version of your theme when submitting a new theme to ThemeForest even though right now the field is marked optional:
  

An updated version of the plugin and the library are now available for download on Github.

They include minor enhancements. In particular we have introduced caching. Since themes aren’t updated on minutely basis, both the plugin and the library cache their results for a short period of time to avoid contacting the server every time they are used. This should make the process feel faster to use.

Please let us know if you find any issues.