Zero One multi-purpose e-commerce theme (in a plugin)

Plugins Kirby 3 plugin šŸ§©
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Although it exists for almost two years Iā€™ve never officially presented it on the forum topic. Now is probably a good time.

Because finally, Zero One has e-commerce power :rocket:

It took longer than we expected, but it turned out to be better than anticipated. It is a full-featured e-commerce shop, with the help of Snipcart.

You can see the shop demo at

And documentation pages Shop page - Zero One Documentation

We tested it thoroughly, but it is a pretty large system with many options, so we consider it to be in beta still. Please, test it out yourself too, let us know if there are some problems, and give suggestions.

The next update will bring even more power, primarily variable products.

Why Snipcart?

After testing all available options for Kirby CMS e-commerce integration for many months comparing pros and cons, we chose Snipcart as the best solution for most use cases, and because of its reliability.

The main reasons are:

  • Many payment gateways + custom payment gateway integration if needed
  • Advanced tax support
  • Advanced shipping support with most popular providers automation support
  • Advanced invoicing support
  • Advanced regional and currency settings
  • Multilanguage and multicurrency support
  • Advanced emails support with abandoned carts recovery campaigns
  • Digital (download) products support
  • Subscriptions support, although for now in beta, and only available for Stripe payment gateway
  • It is free to start, no expensive subscription
  • It can be fully styled to support the website styles

I must mention that Merx plugin is also great (and we intend to integrate it as an additional option), but at the moment Snipcart integration offers more power.

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I donā€™t know if itā€™s just my version of the plugin (4.3.0) but I had to change the nested-menu and the menu-mobile.php to include date in the sorting of blog posts. Specifically sortBy(ā€˜dateā€™).
menu-mobile.php

 // get all children for the current menu item
      $children = $item->children()->listed()->sortBy('date')->flip()

I also had to do this for the blog articles in the articles.php collection script because it failed to show the most current articles otherwise.

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Hi, @dracmas, you are right.
The next update will bring fixes for that.

Thank you for reporting!

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5

Although the Zero One 4.5.0 version was released a month ago, I am announcing it here today, after two smaller updates, because now is officially compatible with the latest Kirby version and PHP 8.2.

Many new improvements and features:

  • New Main Menu Builder :rocket:
  • Mega menu possibilities
  • Icons for menu items :rocket:
  • Additional icon for right-side navigation :rocket:
  • Products search block :rocket:
  • Products list block :rocket:
  • New Audio/Podcast block :rocket:
  • New Typed (Animated) text block :rocket:
  • New Syntax Highlighting option for Code block :rocket:
  • New custom navigation block :rocket:
  • All theme files revisited and improved

The full list and more on the ā€œWhatā€™s newā€ page

Besides working on new demos, we are working on new improvements where most prominent ones are:

  • Form Builder
  • Translatable panel
  • Structure data (Schema) integration

So Zero One is following Kirby all the way, and to the Kirby version 4 too! :rocket:

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I finally found time to update the documentation for Zero One Layout Builder.
The block that is a game changer in creating more complex layouts with fine-grain control is the Column Options block. Check it out!

Some fun things you can create with it are displayed on this demo page

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Hello,

i find your Zero One theme very exciting and am considering using it for my projects.
Are you already working on a version for Kirby 4? Iā€™m also happy to use an alpha version for now.

Thanks a lot!
Best regards from Germany.

Stephan

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Hi Stephan!

No, we are not using Kirby 4 yet. There are two reasons for that:

  1. We generally donā€™t update right away to Kirbyā€™s latest versions, we always wait a few weeks after the release and just test. There are always some bugs to resolve. It is an extensive system and the Kirby team canā€™t cover all scenarios however they try. And Kirby 4 is in early Beta still. Many things are yet to be done.
  2. We are making some improvements and new features of Zero One, and our plan is to have two different Zero One downloads (for all users), one compatible with Kirby 3 and one compatible with Kirby 4. Both versions will be available for download for a while, where we will only do security updates for Zero One compatible with Kirby 3, and continue general improvements for Zero One compatible with Kirby 4. Because not all users will update right away to Kirby 4.

We are also working on several new themes, but they will not be finished this year for sure.
But, what is great about new themes is they will be compatible with Zero One. This means, that Zero One users will be easily able to change Zero One to our new theme(s) without losing any of the content. New theme(s) will generally have similar options (although not exactly the same) but will have different front-end styling.

So, thatā€™s the current plan.

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I bought a license of your theme, but will not use it in a productive context. you have brought out everything, from the programming side . There are useful and sensible features integrated.
However, your theme is very overloaded with features and therefore error-prone. In (too) many places something doesnā€™t work as expected or I get an error message. Kirby stands for simplification, ā€œZero Oneā€, however, reminds me a lot of a WordPress theme.
Compatibility with Kirby 4 maybe take a lot of time, also considering the many plug-ins used.

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Hi @GB_DESIGN, I am sorry if you had a bad experience. Although, I donā€™t know how much time you spent working with it, and what is your server setup. People get errors even when installing Starterkit or Plainkit. Probably 40% of our support requests are related to server setup.

I have to answer this properly.

Concerning errors

As far as I know, there arenā€™t known errors in Zero One. We are using it as a base for of many our projects, and many users are using it too. Our biggest clients are web development agencies using Zero One as a base for their projects too. Our support is always available, and we answer pretty fast, but we havenā€™t received a support request from you. Can you please tell me what error have you found?

The only errors we know that happened were this year after the PHP 8.2 release, and only in the early PHP 8.2. And they were actually not errors but warnings about the removal of PHP dynamic properties in PHP 9. Those warnings are not from the Zero One code itself but from two plugins not maintained by us (now updated). Also, those warnings happened ONLY on PHP 8.2 early version from several repos, not all, and it is something out of our control. Unfortunately, people have a big urge to be on the latest version of everything, so we couldnā€™t explain to everyone to just keep the PHP version on 8.1 for a while, and be patient. And everyone who wrote support requests got solution from us. It was an easy fix. 95% of people didnā€™t even have that warning.

Simplicity/Complexity

We spent a large amount of time representing all that Zero One is. Both on the demo itself, and in documentation. Almost everything is clearly visible. We even made videos. And we never say it is simple. Although, I wouldnā€™t say Kirby is simple still. Maybe a couple of years ago. Now it is a real powerhouse. Kirby is simple, but their website isnā€™t. Any of the websites you see in Kirbyā€™s showcase is not simple.

But this subject is something that could be debated. How to have a simple website with all the modern features you need? Kirby is for simplicity, but when you start building a website with it, unless it is a very simple website, it will inevitably become complex.

We started simple, but users asked for this, and that, and in time it got a lot complex. And this how it is at the moment is great for many. You can do so much only from the panel. And if you need more, you can easily extend anything Theme extending - Zero One Documentation by not even changing Zero One files but overriding. You can also remove everything you donā€™t need to.

Yes, we use a number of plugins Credits - Zero One Documentation and from developers we trust. Most plugins can be turned off from the panel. Also, we update regularly every few months, and weā€™ve been doing that for more than 3 years. If some plugin is having compatibility issues, we always find solutions.

So, our service is not only the theme. You practically have a developer for help. Like Kirby itself has. We had more than 3 thousand support requests so far.

ā€œoverloaded with features and therefore error-proneā€ is like saying Windows or IOS has many features therefore they are error-prone.

Zero One is now very complex, and that is the fact. It takes some time to learn it. But when you learn it. it can become your best friend. And yes, it is not for everybody, and it is not for every project.

I like creating website themes, thatā€™s my passion. But that is a very hard work, for a number of reasons. You donā€™t have one client but hundreds. And everyone has their own opinions and wishes. Someone needs complexity, someone wants simplicity, someone wants the navbar left, someone wants the navbar right :slightly_smiling_face:, and I canā€™t please everyone. If one theme could do that it would be a miracle.

But what canā€™t be put on Zero One, is that it says it is something that it isnā€™t. Everything is very clearly explained, and even double explained.

Kirby 4 compatibility

It will not take too much time. Kirby 3 migration to Kirby 4 is not that drastic a change as it was from Kirby 2 to Kirby 3. The Kirby team is already helping with Kirby 4 compatibility, many plugins already have Kirby 4 compatible versions.

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Thank you for the very detailed and constructive response. Great that you take so much time to respond to inquiries.

I would love to go into more detail on your response, but unfortunately due to time constraints itā€™s not possible to expand the conversation.

Therefore, I would only like to comment on the error messages. Either the debugger was displayed when opening a page, or settings in the panel did not behave as expected. So today I had experimented with the settings and hid the navigation bar in the page settings. That worked. However, after activating it, the navigation was still hidden.
Unfortunately, I canā€™t trace back which page was displaying the debugger.

However, I use your template for learning to get a better understanding of how Kirby works. As a newbie, such a comprehensive template is ideal for that.

I wish you continued success with your template and your future projects.

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Yes, I must admit I take Zero One and its support very seriously. It is not just a ship-and-leave product.

Nevertheless, your opinion is acknowledged, and it is something I have been thinking about for a while too. How to make a perfect Kirby theme. To be simple, to be extendable, but to have all the needed features. That is not an easy task, structurally.

If you find any error please donā€™t hesitate to write to us directly Support - Zero One Documentation. You can write about any other thing you need help with, related to Zero One.

When we finish the next update you are going complain even more (form builder, heavy blog and articles improvements, a number of new blocksā€¦) :slightly_smiling_face:

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Yesterday we released the Zero One update that fixes various Safari browser-only issues.

This is also a warning for everyone developing on Chrome or Firefox to always test on Safari. The issues Safari has are with:

  • HTML elements background images, in some states
  • Absolute positioning, in some states is required to add a z-index even though the element comes later in the sequence
  • Animations, some donā€™t work, some flicker
  • Javascript classes for hiding/revealing elements sometimes donā€™t work
  • SVG icons, donā€™t show up in certain states

If you have been to the Zero One demo using Safari recently and noticed something is wrong (primarily some background images were not displayed), you can check it out again. We found compatibility solutions.

Safari had several updates this year that brought up many differences in functioning compared to Chrome and Firefox and from now on we are including Safari testing as mandatory in our workflow.

Everyone using Zero One is encouraged to update to the latest Zero One version released yesterday.

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And finally! We canā€™t believe this update is finished. But the struggle is finally over! And it was worth it :rocket:

Zero One version 5 is finally released, Kirby 4 compatible!

You can check out two videos with instructions about:

Also, one of the great new features is the Translatable panel, plus the panel is now in English, Deutsch, and FranƧais!

All demos are refreshed and rebuilt in Layout Builder (old Page Builder is removed). Check out, especially this demo The Zero One Kirby CMS starter theme | Architecture demo, it is smoother than ever!

Thank you for your attention, and the biggest thanks to the Kirby team for the magnificent CMS, Kirby 4 is a blast! :rocket:

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