It occurred to me that I should explain the strategy that I have for integrating my scripts with the $7 Secrets scripts. The $7 Secrets forums have a number of different ideas for fixing and improving the 7 Dollar Secrets scripts and—with some effort—one could edit the scripts to get just what they want out of them.
One problem with doing that, of course, is that when a new version of the script comes out all of the changes you've made have to be redone. (Or, perhaps, not redone, because the new version squashes prior bugs or eliminates the need for the change.) Admin Expansion Lite, for example, incorporates seven sections of code that would need to be spliced into a new version of 7DSS in order to retain the same functionality.
I chose to make integrating Expansion Pack and following products much easier for the end user. First, enabling the product is as simple as adding one line to the 7DSS index.php file. There's no counting lines and pasting code willy-nilly; just one edit to get all the features of the product. Second, adding additional expansion products from $7 Tools is as easy as uploading the files—no further edits are necessary! That's because Admin Expansion Lite (and the soon-to-come Admin Expansion) are designed to automatically load all of my expansion products as it sees them.
Designing this way also lets me avoid modifying 7DSS. The $7 Secrets scripts are Jon Leger's code. They're not an open-source project. Making changes to his code is—in my mind—disrespectful to Jon and quite possibly violates his copyright. And I would certainly never distribute a modified version of 7DSS (as some people have done); even as a Master Reseller of the scripts I do not have that right.
However, there is a downside to designing in this manner. Since I'm not modifying the scripts, I'm limited in what features I can offer or in how I implement certain features. Still, there are a lot of features I can add! Stay tuned for more.
