Help us build Big Brother 2

Hopefully this wont happen, but it's a fair question.

If we don't hit the primary goal of €5.000, we'll still work on Big Brother v2 but will need to spread out the work over a longer period of time to make sure the work is paid for by our normal "open source allowance", basically a portion of the license sales of our premium extras dedicated to our open source projects. For example if we only get half of the funding we're looking for, it might take twice as long to complete.

Universal Analytics is the version of Google Analytics pre-2020/2021. It's easily recognised by the property key, which starts with "UA-".

Google Analytics 4 is the new version, which has been rolling out since 2020, but has been gaining more steam in 2021 which is why we're now looking to release Big Brother v2 sooner rather than later. Its property keys do not have a prefix, but are numeric.

A single account in Google Analytics can support both types of properties, so the property key is the best way to identify the type of property. It's still possible to create Universal Analytic properties at the time of writing, but that is hidden behind an advanced options toggle, so new properties default to GA4.

Big Brother v1 will remain supported and maintained for 2 years after v2 is released. It will however not receive support for MODX3. After two years we'll consider it end-of-life and do not expect any new releases to be made.

During the development of v2, you'll find regular alpha releases in our own package provider. The first alpha will likely be available around the end of May. 

Once Big Brother 2 is stable, it will replace Big Brother v1 on the MODX extras site / package manager. We've also already released v1 on our own package provider, which allows you to choose which version to download.

So to summarize the situation after the v2 release:

• To use Universal Analytics, you need to use Big Brother v1 on MODX 2.x, available only from the modmore package provider. 2 years of support before considered end of life.
  
• To use Google Analytics 4, you need to use Big Brother v2 on MODX 2.x or MODX3, available from both MODX and modmore package providers.

At the moment we've already made plans and confirmed availability to deliver on the promises made in the crowdfunding campaign.

But if you're a developer with the skills needed to build Big Brother v2, we'd love to hear from you so we can keep you in mind should there be unforeseen circumstances that cause a delay which some extra help may resolve.

As we'll do the work in the open source repository (2.x branch), you're of course also welcome to contribute pull requests but there are no bounties available as we are expecting to build it in-house.

We totally get you may want to wait until the project is done to see what it's worth to you. However, we also need to pay our team for the work they're going to do and need some assurances to make the feasible.

So if you can, we ask that you use the crowdfunding page to donate up-front. 

For agencies that would like to make a larger contribution (€1000+), we do offer the option to  pay 25% upfront, and the remainder when Big Brother 2 is feature complete. This requires signing a contract committing you to the final payment and is only available if your company has been in good financial standing with modmore in the past year. Please get in touch to discuss this possibility.

Murray has reserved 2 days/week on Big Brother for May and June (on top of the 1-2 days/week he's currently working on Commerce so that work can continue), and Mark is reserving up to 4 hours/week out of his full-time schedule to help.

Ahead of launching the crowdfunding campaign, Mark has also been preparing for the project by writing up a spec and verifying what we're trying to accomplish is technically possible in MODX and the Google Analytics 4 API. Work on the authorization is also in progress and expected to complete before the May 10th date, so Murray can hit the ground running building cool widgets as soon as the funding is confirmed.

No worries – get in touch and we'll answer as soon as we can.

With Excelidraw - worth checking out!

One can dream!

We have some ideas on additional metrics and widgets we could implement if we exceed even the most lofty goal of €12.500. We'll also generally improve Big Brother by spending more time fine-tuning the design and charts. 

Additional ideas are also welcome via [email protected]. What more would you like to see on your dashboard that isn't already covered in our current plan?

There's very little risk in this campaign. modmore is financially healthy (has been for many years), and is not going belly-up right after you help fund this project.

We also have a reputation in the community to uphold and if this model of crowdfunding for bigger projects turns out to be worthwhile, it's something we may want to do again in the future for our own projects or work on MODX itself. So we're definitely going to do everything we can to get Big Brother 2 released on time and according to plan to earn your future trust.

In terms of scope and functionality, we've done all we can ahead of the crowdfunding launch to make sure the features we're promising are technically possible within MODX and the Google Analytics API. 

The biggest risk in this campaign is that we underestimated the work and it takes longer to complete then planned, or something bad happens to the individual people on our team causing the project to come to an unexpected pause. Thanks to your help with funding the project, these risks will be reduced as we can try to find someone else to step in to help.

There's also a risk that we don't hit the primary funding goal. In that case we'll have to make a decision on how to move forward, depending on how much funding we did receive. That might mean modmore takes a loss on the project, that we trim the scope, or that we drop the timeline we've promised entirely and develop it during our normal open source allowance. This last option would mean it takes much longer to get done, and also comes at the cost of having less time available for MODX and other open source projects we regularly contribute to.