Post by Burt65 » Thu Feb 18, 2016 8:23 am

OSWorX wrote: Could you (or someone) define what a 'customer' or 'user' is?
Can someone be called a customer who is able to push the On-Button of his device and think OpenCart is a 'App'??
Or should he know a bit what Internet means, a bit of basic understanding what a 'Server' is, a 'website', etc.?

Or is it someone who can spell 'Computer' errorfree?
Or someone who knows which permissions folders and files on 'his' server should have?

These days where noobs are offering 'best hosting' which security holes greater than the 'Great Barrier Reef', but cheaper than a 'Mac' - everybody think he is the 'King'.

Do you want them call 'Customers' - really??
IMO a customer (especially in this environment), should be considered a person with limited knowledge , (but enough to understand the system), that wants to learn and improve by getting involved in purchasing and installing Theme & Extension for his/her system. Unfortunately (by the look of things), it seems that the majority of customers knowledge is basic to say the least. But you can't blame them for trying...(we all had to start somewhere)

So as you have pointed out, like noobs can offer "best hosting" the same noobs can also upload themes and extensions... Why... Because there is no standard or quality control in place...

Imagine how simpler things would be if (lets take Opencart as example), there was a system check in place so that your theme or extension have to pass a QC before been release in the market. Nothing fancy, just a minimum of tests that your application has to pass to be compatible with the rest of the system.

My way of looking at this problem is that if we are to make money (profit), out of customers with very limited knowledge, the best thing I can do, it to give them a foolproof application. Now we all know that, that is virtually impossible in this environment where everything is in movement.

So the next best thing it is to at least protect them from unnecessary frustrations by at lest providing them with something functional and bugs free! I'm not talking about software conflicts here. In my personal experience with OC I have managed to go through the extremes. From buying extension containing empty folders, to having a developer fixing my problems (my problems, not from his extension) within 5 minutes of me contacting him. Looking back at my experience, I can't help to think that it wasn't fair. I had to go through so much crap before eventually been able to take control of the situation.
I guess what I'm saying here is that, yes the customers knowledge it is a constant problem, but as you go through the forum you can also see the genuine stress and frustration of customers that, while they have the required knowledge, they just did the simple mistake of trusting the community. I don't like that. I'm used to now, but I don't like it.
You can slowly see that this problem is starting to affect everybody around here: customers, developers, Owners...

I believe all of these problems can still be fixed, but time is running out quickly...Someone, somewhere, will eventually get around to fix this common open source problem. I just hope it is us first.

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Post by Qphoria » Tue Feb 23, 2016 11:41 am

The first thing to do when uploading a theme.
If you see a warning about "Do you want to replace this file". Say No and get a refund immediately.
Then publicly humiliate the theme here.

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Post by EvolveWebHosting » Wed Feb 24, 2016 12:03 pm

With all of this being said, who would you recommend for v2.1.0.2? I need to pick one for a client pretty soon.

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Post by flanders » Thu Feb 25, 2016 12:17 am

I can suggest you:

Shopme or Cosyone. Same developer and similar theme but with different css.They include same plugins...

Any plugins included are sells in opencart store.

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Post by Burt65 » Thu Feb 25, 2016 5:27 am

EvolveWebHosting wrote:With all of this being said, who would you recommend for v2.1.0.2? I need to pick one for a client pretty soon.
With over 10000 sales I went for Journal2 and haven't looked back since... It does everything and then more...

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Post by madimar » Sat Feb 27, 2016 5:05 am

I also add my 2 cents for Journal 2. Considering all its features, if it's well coded, well supported and not so pervasive.
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Post by flanders » Sat Feb 27, 2016 10:00 pm

ok...but all the sites with journal2.....they are all the same!
You immediately see a site with journal.

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Post by Freakshow » Sat Feb 27, 2016 10:51 pm

Good thread

/me myself is running 2 shops with plain oc theme, just with some carfully modded colors and a few things more, and its a delight to run, working wise.
i also got one shop running with SuperTheme, witch i to date have not had any trouble with, it even works with most extensions that i use at least.

My reason for using non theme shops is that i use to test alot of themes, and fu..d up alot or just didnt work well enough, got tired of that stuff and focused more on the general functionality of the store.

So yes, some sort of "quality control" would be more than welcome O0

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Post by Burt65 » Sun Feb 28, 2016 6:10 pm

flanders wrote:ok...but all the sites with journal2.....they are all the same!
You immediately see a site with journal.
I guess that's the problem where you reach 10000+ sales... But I haven't heard anyone complain about the look of Journal as you can customise almost anything. Most people don't know how to make changes with the theme and stick to the original 10 default layout. That's probably what you have come across....

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Post by davidbfranks » Sun Feb 28, 2016 8:23 pm

I think Journal 2 is miles ahead of any theme I've tested (and I've tested a lot)

Not only that, their support is second to none!

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Post by JNeuhoff » Mon Feb 29, 2016 12:41 am

davidbfranks wrote:I think Journal 2 is miles ahead of any theme I've tested (and I've tested a lot)

Not only that, their support is second to none!
My experience with Journal 2 is the opposite: It has clashed with quite a number of 3rd party Opencart extensions on some of our user's websites that I can't recommend it.

The sad truth is most themes do not not comply to Opencart standards. The time you spend with fixing broken extensions because of a poorly written web theme is better spend to write your own standard-compliant web theme!

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Post by davidbfranks » Mon Feb 29, 2016 12:58 am

JNeuhoff wrote:
davidbfranks wrote:I think Journal 2 is miles ahead of any theme I've tested (and I've tested a lot)

Not only that, their support is second to none!
My experience with Journal 2 is the opposite: It has clashed with quite a number of 3rd party Opencart extensions on some of our user's websites that I can't recommend it.

The sad truth is most themes do not not comply to Opencart standards. The time you spend with fixing broken extensions because of a poorly written web theme is better spend to write your own standard-compliant web theme!
Any issues I've had with 3rd party extensions, have been solved within 24 hours by the Journal team, there is always going to be issues with 3rd party extensions with a theme that has so many features, but at the end of the day there is a reason it has nearly 11,000 sales - miles ahead of their competition!

+ Due to the popularity of Journal most decent 3rd party mods are now compatible out the box

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Post by OSWorX » Mon Feb 29, 2016 1:54 am

davidbfranks wrote:Any issues I've had with 3rd party extensions, have been solved within 24 hours by the Journal team, there is always going to be issues with 3rd party extensions with a theme that has so many features, but at the end of the day there is a reason it has nearly 11,000 sales - miles ahead of their competition!

+ Due to the popularity of Journal most decent 3rd party mods are now compatible out the box
A template should be a template and not reinventing the wheel!
And adding modules over modules to a template only to make sales can also not be right way.

Finally, if I see a template changing core libraries like that:

Code: Select all

    /* Journal2 modification */
    public function __get($key) {
        return $this->registry->get($key);
    }

    public function __set($key, $value) {
        $this->registry->set($key, $value);
    }
    /* End of Journal2 modification */
I would say there goes something wrong (the more these magical methods are blocked as standard!).

On the other hand, if OpenCart would provide more possibilities for themes, they would not need such changes (while that could be done also in another way).
Of course for a simple 'end user' who does not understand what is going under the hood it maybe useful, but 3PD developers and security is written on another paper.

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Post by davidbfranks » Mon Feb 29, 2016 2:09 am

OSWorX wrote:
davidbfranks wrote:Any issues I've had with 3rd party extensions, have been solved within 24 hours by the Journal team, there is always going to be issues with 3rd party extensions with a theme that has so many features, but at the end of the day there is a reason it has nearly 11,000 sales - miles ahead of their competition!

+ Due to the popularity of Journal most decent 3rd party mods are now compatible out the box
A template should be a template and not reinventing the wheel!
And adding modules over modules to a template only to make sales can also not be right way.

Finally, if I see a template changing core libraries like that:

Code: Select all

    /* Journal2 modification */
    public function __get($key) {
        return $this->registry->get($key);
    }

    public function __set($key, $value) {
        $this->registry->set($key, $value);
    }
    /* End of Journal2 modification */
I would say there goes something wrong (the more these magical methods are blocked as standard!).

On the other hand, if OpenCart would provide more possibilities for themes, they would not need such changes (while that could be done also in another way).
Of course for a simple 'end user' who does not understand what is going under the hood it maybe useful, but 3PD developers and security is written on another paper.
Fair enough, however for me it is about making sales, and providing a good customer experience, something Journal has helped me do extremely well the last couple of years.

I think you will struggle to find a theme with the amount of functionality Journal has that doesn't change core files....

But I agree, that is OpenCart's fault!

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Post by JNeuhoff » Mon Feb 29, 2016 2:36 am

A template should be a template and not reinventing the wheel!
And adding modules over modules to a template only to make sales can also not be right way.
I agree. I also noticed that the Journal 2 modifies 60 core PHP files via OCmod. And it uses 173 '.tpl' files, many of them replacing standard opencart '.tpl' files. No wonder it clashes with so many other 3rd party extensions!

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Post by Qphoria » Mon Feb 29, 2016 4:02 am

As others have said, my problem with Journal is often their desire to reinvent the wheel unnecessarily. For example, they include their own image resizer library. If you look at it, they could have easily just used a vQmod to adjust the one that is in the core. This in turns breaks backend and library features that should be theme independent.

You should not expect a mod that alters the image resize system to be affected by a theme. They also use their own library structure and module structure so it doesn't follow along the normal OpenCart structure. So the potential for incompatibility with other mods is higher and I've often needed to make additional special handling in some of my mods for journal

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Post by Burt65 » Mon Feb 29, 2016 6:57 am

Qphoria wrote:As others have said, my problem with Journal is often their desire to reinvent the wheel unnecessarily. For example, they include their own image resizer library. If you look at it, they could have easily just used a vQmod to adjust the one that is in the core. This in turns breaks backend and library features that should be theme independent.

You should not expect a mod that alters the image resize system to be affected by a theme. They also use their own library structure and module structure so it doesn't follow along the normal OpenCart structure. So the potential for incompatibility with other mods is higher and I've often needed to make additional special handling in some of my mods for journal
As I said in my first post
Been Using Journal 2 for a while now (and definitely not by choice)
I did not expect it either, lots of stuff that came with the Journal theme to be there in the first place...
Journal had to reinvent the wheel so that a simple standard OC + Journal theme can give the owner a chance to run a "decent" shop. Unfortunately Opencart by himself doesn't really offer much as far as functionality. That's why you have so many theme & extensions available for sale and in relation to this, why so many people do the jump...

In response to having problem running other extension while using Journal, in my experience, I can confirm that 80% of the time, if a third party extension have "problems" working in Journal, will also have the same "problems" in OC stand alone. I can also confirm that "well written extensions" (that don't affect Opencart frontend functionality) will run flawless in both OC and Journal. If not, most of the times it is just a matter to copy and paste a couple of .tpl files... I also have to agree with you, as far as Journal having probably to much power over OC, but look at the sales... That's what people wanted. That's business! If OpenCart, out of the box had been a fraction more "usable", do you think Journal would have been this popular and it would have come out with that many features ? Since the introduction of Internet, people have learned to vote with their wallet when things are not designed the way they want them...

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Post by Josetxu » Wed Mar 02, 2016 7:42 am

Hi friends,

I can discuss my particular problem with Journal, I was looking for a more modern and personalized theme that the OpenCart default theme, but with the default theme had never had problems.

Once the theme installed Journal problems have been going on in the last two months. Third-party modules fail, much slower web, ERP Problems with Odoo connector, problems with cache, etc.

At first I thought the problem was the incompatibility of any module, but after seeing this thread, I think I agree that my problems can be blamed on Journal.

Does the change to Shopme theme is advisable you believe that? and you are absolutely sure that does not change the core OpenCart? I do not want to continue with the problems ...

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Post by Burt65 » Wed Mar 02, 2016 8:14 am

Josetxu wrote: At first I thought the problem was the incompatibility of any module, but after seeing this thread, I think I agree that my problems can be blamed on Journal.
Regards
Could you provide a link to your actual shop running Journal, just to see how bad these problems are...

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Post by JNeuhoff » Wed Mar 02, 2016 4:59 pm

Josetxu wrote: At first I thought the problem was the incompatibility of any module, but after seeing this thread, I think I agree that my problems can be blamed on Journal.
It's easy to verify, by setting your Opencart back to the default theme and then check whether the issues still exist or not.

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