Today, GitHub Discussions are being enabled for the PrestaShop Project. This feature will provide a more organized and easily accessible way for community members to collaborate, ask questions, and share ideas.

What are GitHub Discussions?

GitHub Discussions is a new feature in GitHub that provides a space for community members to discuss directly on the project’s GitHub page, similarly to traditional forum boards. This feature is a great way to ask questions, share ideas, and collaborate with other community members, and it has proven its value in other open-source communities.

Why was it decided to enable GitHub discussions?

We want to make it as easy as possible for everyone to participate in the project. This space has been set up specifically for conversations and ideas that can’t find their place in the existing issue system. This is where you can propose suggestions for improvement, discuss ideas, and ask for help without feeling pressured to come up with a fully formed solution immediately.

We think GitHub Discussions will be beneficial for both community members and project members. Upvoting posts will help direct discussion and attract contributions around the most important subjects. GitHub Discussions is also better for Q&A: it is possible to highlight the best answer to a question and mark it as answered, which should contribute to building a knowledge base that will encourage the community to help and learn from each other. We believe these features will help streamline communication and collaboration across the project.

How to use GitHub Discussions in the PrestaShop Project

To access GitHub Discussions, click on the “Discussions” tab in the PrestaShop repository. From there, you can browse existing discussions or start a new one by clicking on the “New Discussion” button. To participate in a discussion, simply click on the discussion and write a reply.

Discussions are organized into categories:

  • Announcements
  • Ideas
  • Q&A
  • Showcase - show your PrestaShop project to the community
  • Kind words

Announcements

This is where we share news, updates, and important information about the PrestaShop project (e.g., new releases). Please check back here regularly to stay informed about what’s going on with the project.

Ideas

This is a place for open discussion about ideas you find valuable for the PrestaShop project. Feel free to share your thoughts on how PrestaShop could be improved for everyone.

You can also browse through other ideas and vote on your favorites by giving them a thumbs-up. This helps project members and contributors understand which ideas are most popular, and the higher visibility will encourage the community to engage in them - and perhaps even submit a pull request!

Let’s have a constructive and respectful conversation about improving PrestaShop together.

Q&A

This is the place to ask for help, discuss any issues you may be experiencing while working with the software or ask the community for guidance.

If you have encountered a specific bug or error in the software, please report it as an issue on GitHub.

Showcase

This is a place for the community to share links to online stores or other projects created with PrestaShop. Let’s get inspired and learn from each other by showcasing your amazing work! If you built an online store built with PrestaShop, an open-source module, a theme, or a tool useful for the community, we’d love for you to share it here!

Kind words

This is a place to spread positivity and show appreciation for the hard work of project members. Share a kind message, give a shoutout, or just say thank you for all the effort put in. Let’s make this community a little brighter with our words.

What happens to the Issues?

From now on, issues should be used for bug reports only. Feature requests are, in fact, “ideas” which should be discussed in the appropriate Discussions section.

There are over 1,200 open feature requests currently on GitHub issues. To avoid polluting the newly created Discussions space with hundreds of topics, project members will progressively go through all existing feature requests and either close them or migrate them over to the Discussions platform, based on engagement criteria like the number of reactions and duplicate reports. Rest assured that nothing will be lost in the process: migrated topics will keep a link to the previous issue, and all previous comments can be retrieved even if the original issue is closed.

If a feature request is closed, it doesn’t mean it cannot be done and never will be: it just means that right now, it hasn’t gained enough traction to get done by anyone. If you think one of those is still worth doing, consider submitting it again as a Discussion, and see if it is upvoted by the community. Remember: ideas are most useful when people get interested in making them come true.

Join the discussion

We hope that GitHub Discussions will become a valuable resource for the PrestaShop Project and a way to build a stronger and more collaborative community. I encourage all community members to take advantage of this new feature and get involved in the discussions. While we can’t be certain of the outcome, I believe that with your participation, GitHub Discussions has the potential to be a valuable asset for the community.

Please note that while members of the PrestaShop project may occasionally chime in or offer assistance, this is primarily a community-driven forum where people help each other.

Join the discussion!