Updates

Why there is a channel at all

Without one, every customer runs forever the version they happened to install, and nobody finds out that a fix exists. That is the real problem it solves. It is also, openly, the thing a subscription pays for: no subscription, no new versions.

Nothing else changes. There is no licence key in any of the three adapters, no countdown, and no kill switch. We would rather earn a renewal than hold a running shop hostage for one, and an integration that can be remotely disabled is not one a serious agency should let you install.

WooCommerce

New versions appear in your normal WordPress updates screen, next to everything else, and install with the normal button. There is nothing new to learn.

The package itself is fetched by WordPress' own downloader, which does not send the plugin's credentials, so the download address is time-limited instead. The plugin verifies the package's checksum before installing it, so a package that was altered in transit is refused rather than unpacked.

The one thing to know. If the update button errors out on a site you have not touched in a while, press check for updates once and try again. The address stored from an old check can have expired, and a fresh check replaces it. It looks like a broken channel and it is a stale link.

Magento 2

A private Composer repository, added to your project once. After that composer outdated lists new versions and composer update bewise/module-pcon-configurator installs them, like any commercial extension. Your credentials live in auth.json.

The download address deliberately does not expire here, which is the exact opposite of the WooCommerce channel and the right choice for the same reason. Composer sends its own credentials with every request, so there is nothing to compensate for, and Composer writes the address into your composer.lock. A link that died after a day would break the deploy you run next month from a lock file you committed today. Composer verifies the checksum itself before it unpacks.

After installing, run the usual Magento steps: the setup upgrade, and clear generated code and the caches. The module registers nothing that survives a cache it should not survive, but Magento will keep running compiled old code until told otherwise.

Odoo

A button in the settings screen asks the channel whether a newer version exists and reports the answer. It does not install anything, because an Odoo module lives on the server's filesystem, usually inside a container, and replacing it is a deployment that belongs to whoever runs that server.

The four answers it can give, and what each means:

• Up to date. What you are running is the newest release
• Update available, with the version and the release notes. Your cue to schedule a deployment
• No release yet. The channel works and your subscription runs, there is simply nothing published for this platform yet. This is not the same as being up to date, and it says so
• No active subscription. The ERP subscription is not running, so no new versions are served. What is installed keeps working

The Odoo channel sits behind the ERP subscription specifically, not the e-commerce one. A customer running both products has two subscriptions, and each platform's releases follow the one they belong to.

A published release cannot change

Once a release is published, its platform, version, package, checksum and publication date are fixed. It cannot be edited, it cannot be deleted, and it cannot be unpublished. Correcting something means publishing a new version number.

That is a constraint on us, not on you, and it is deliberate. A version number that can quietly come to mean different contents is worse than useless: your lock file, your change log and your incident timeline all stop being evidence. Releases are drafts until published, and publishing is the irreversible step.

When a subscription lapses

The installation keeps working. The catalogue import keeps importing, the configurator keeps configuring, and orders keep arriving. What stops is new versions, and on Odoo the check says so in plain language rather than failing with an error code.

What you lose over time is fixes and compatibility with newer platform versions, which is a real cost but a gradual one, and it is yours to weigh rather than ours to force.