Archive for August, 2012

Announcing the arrival of Blue Jalappeno!

Posted by: Karen Friday, August 31st, 2012

Back in 2010 I realised that WebShopApps was expanding fast and I needed some help with the non-shipping extensions. I sent a mail to an ex-colleague Genevieve (Gen), someone I consider to be an excellent developer but more importantly one of the best all-round software engineers I have ever met.

Gen has taken over some of our extensions since 2010 and really pushed these forwards. She has also built quite a few new extensions and worked on the consultancy side with many customers who had non-shipping requirements, mainly around the post-order workflow area. Some of her extensions include Tiered Pricing across Multiple Products, the Order Export extension and Price Updater.

Genevieve has always worked on the ‘side’ of WebShopApps, earning her own income, and with the launch of the AppShop it seems sensible she moves to her own branding. So we announce today the launch of Blue Jalappeno. Everyone at WebShopApps wishes Genevieve every success as she moves forwards under Blue Jalappeno.

Genevieve passed me this piece so she can introduce herself:

“I’m really excited about Blue Jalappeno. We have some great extensions and much more to come.  Our newest is Percentage Off Tiered Pricing, it is a great app that really simplifies the tiered pricing process.
You can set a percentage discount for your tier pricing and you never have to update your tier pricing again. The percentage discount is calculated at “runtime” from the products price – taking into account customer group pricing and special pricing. You take a look at the live demo and documentation to see it’s full potential.

I hope everyone who is a fan of WebShopApps takes the time to check out what Blue Jalappeno has on offer. I also want to acknowledge what a fantastic company WebShopApps are. They are leading the way in what the Magento community can expect from extension providers.  At Blue Jalappeno I hope to do the same.”

Announcing the AppShop

Posted by: Karen Thursday, August 9th, 2012

Today we are pleased to announce the launch of the AppShop, which will become the place to go to find all the best Magento extensions.

Check out the great launch video by The Buzz Lab to see what its all about.

 

Why Launch the AppShop?

People have asked me why WebShopApps is launching this when we have Magento Connect.  Well there are a couple of main reasons:

  1. We get a lot of requests in for us to build extensions in areas that are already covered or just non-strategic and we have nowhere to refer them to
  2. Our customers have complained that its hard to search Magento Connect to find extensions, and even harder to find extensions that are of good quality, maintained and fully supported

The motivation by WebShopApps here is not financial, we have a profitable extension business and we have our own work to get on with. We really hope that by launching the AppShop we can clean up the marketplace a bit and improve the standards not just for extensions in the AppShop but also outside.

Have your Input

We are presently in the process of identifying and signing up extension providers. We aim to have between 50-70 paid extensions on the site by end of October, and a similar amount of free extensions.  We are also looking at how we can bring on board subscription based extensions which we know are increasingly popular.

But what are the best extensions? Who are the extension providers you trust? We really need your input into the first ever survey on magento extensions. Please take the time to enter our survey, you may also win a great prize in return!  We will be publishing the survey in full on our blog and also approaching the providers you recommend and asking them if they wish to join the AppShop.

Interested in Participating?

If you would like to get your extensions on the AppShop please by all means drop us a quick mail to appshop @ webshopapps.com. The AppShop program is at present invitation only but we are keen to hear from good quality providers who wish to be considered. We are also keen to hear from Saas based extension providers, and those of you that think you have a great free extension. Get involved too on Twitter and our Facebook page and join the discussion!