Potion Store

Potion Store 0.3.0 Released

Andy Kim — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 14:45:46 -0700

I just released Potion Store 0.3.0, the latest version of my trusty store code. The most noteworthy improvements are sales charts and automatic credit card type detection. You can get the gory details of the release here and check out the project here. The project page has some screenshots of the administration interface now.

Online Software Store Tutorial

Andy Kim — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 11:22:20 -0700

Here's a nice detailed tutorial on how to go about making your own online web store. The solution will involve php rather than rails, but some of the advice will apply to the Potion Store as well.

Jump to "Processing Your Own Online Payments - A Brief Tutorial [Part 1]"

Potion Store 0.2.0 Released

Andy Kim — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 15:29:31 -0700

The latest version of Potion Store is now available.

It's now better, faster, and stronger!

Google Analytics integration for credit card and PayPal orders. It's nice to see the orders—in gory detail—in relation to all the data GA brings
Add and edit products in the admin interface
Look up orders by the order number
Order process button gets disabled when clicked to prevent double submission
Basic functional and unit tests (thanks to Jamie Hardt)
Admin dashboard statistics had a off by one day bug. Fixed
Code has been cleaned up in general and lots of minor bugs have been squashed.

Link to the Potion Store Project

First Potion Store Based Store Goes Live

Andy Kim — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 15:33:49 -0700

I am pleasantly surprised to see a new store based on Potion Store go live just four days after the project was open sourced.

Scott Gruby of GGT Entertainment LLC has gotten his new store up and running after just two days of tinkering despite being a rails newcomer.

Read about his experience at his blog:

Jump to "Yet another new store" on Scott Gruby’s Blog

Potion Store Update

Andy Kim — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 00:57:14 -0700

In just two days, over two hundred people have downloaded the Potion Store source code. That's not bad, considering how niche this app is.

I was surprised to see a patch submitted already as well. Thanks go out to Jamie Hardt for that.

Infrastructure-wise, there is now a subversion repository at Google Code and a mailing list at Google Groups.

See the updated project page for details.

Announcing Potion Store

Andy Kim — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 18:32:23 -0700

I am pleased to announce that the code that powers the Potion Factory Store is now available to anyone, free of charge, in the form of an open source project.

Link to Potion Store Project

When we first launched Podcast Maker back in September of 2005, we just went with Kagi without giving much thought to the issue. We wanted to get our software out ASAP and payment processing was the last thing on our mind. After all, if it's good enough for Brent Simmons and NetNewsWire, who are we to argue, right?

Well, it turns out that even Brent can be wrong sometimes. After using Kagi for a while, it became pretty clear that it was horrible. Lets just say that the stress of using their web interface was too much to take after just a few months (it could be better now, but I don't care anymore). We had to find a new solution and none of the other similar services looked attractive so I buckled down and rolled my own prior to releasing Voice Candy.

The code has served Potion Factory faithfully for over a year now, which is more than you can say for a lot of rails projects. But! it could use some improvements. Writing store code is not the primary business I'm engaged in and it means that the store has the bare minimum needed to run an ISV business. It also means that the little code that is in there could be made more elegant. I hadn't even heard of REST back in 2006 (gosh, a whole year ago!) and I haven't taken the time to refactor the app to fit that paradigm, because, you know... working on actual apps that put bread on my table is better use of my time.

The important thing though, is that it works for me, rather well too if I can say. It's not a turnkey solution, so don't expect to get up and running in five minutes, but if you are not afraid to get to know Ruby on Rails and need a basic store that you can mold into shape, this could be right for you.

What it provides is payment processing through a PayPal and/or Google Checkout merchant account, an administration interface that lets you look up orders, add orders manually, resend purchase receipts, generate coupons, and look at basic sales statistics. It also has a "lost license page" so that users can service themselves.

What it doesn't provide you is a license key generation algorithm. If there is enough interest in this, I'm open to gathering forces to develop a really good one that we can distribute amongst each other outside of the open source project. Aquatic Prime is an obvious candidate, but I actually took it out of the store and my softwares after discovering that it caused a higher than necessary support load.

The project page is rather sparse right now, but I plan to put up a forum, wiki, or a mailing list to encourage collaboration to make this the best store for selling software for ISVs.

On a final note, I need to thank Panic and Gus Mueller for providing the inspiration for the store. If you guys saw a bunch of bogus orders one week last year, I confess now, that was me.

Please email me if you need help. I would appreciate hearing from you if you decide to implement your store with it as well.