The Future of OpenCart

Hi all, I have one simple question about our future - are we moving in the correct direction?

Maybe its time to make in 3.0 something more useful and actual, than twig integration or built-in marketplace? Its not a secret at all, that OpenCart's popularity is going down from 2014, and if nothing changes, the fate of the osCommerce awaits us

Joined Fri Aug 13, 2010
well, no wonder, you sound so negative, OC-born on such a lousy date...

But to the point, everthing has it's time on earth, but it's an enduring task, to stay
in front. And as longer something exists, as more professionality is required, to
keep a position and so a market share.

Personally, I was rather surprised, finding out, how the OC-Idea worked (so long),
after being around, since the Web exists, and seeing many Projects, eventually
failing, most likely because of unrealistic attempts, to 'combine' financial interests with
Open Source Software and GPL like Ideology, over an extended period of time.

OC is not much different, with one exeption, OC is still a one Man Show, despite of
the fact, that lot's of knowledge probably came from outside people too. And some
of those Helpers also made some money, participating as Extension Seller, whereby
others just turned away again, after not beeing 'honored', or even feeling 'exposed', after
just trying to add some of their 'OC-wisdom', in one or the other way.

It's lost potential, like the only partly functional Forum, or the only partly functional Extension
Section. Not to speak about the masses of Mod-Sellers, seldom or never seen here, to
also assist for free, as they frequently should, according to OC Seller Regulations.

It's therefore hard to guess, how the OC Future will look like. If I would be in charge, I would
probably copy the Magento-Way of doing it, by offering a commercial Version as well as
a free one, it's the cheapest and fastest way, to find problems and errors, without requiring
lot's of paid Testers. And OC could likely still rely on some of the famous Dev's, it they could
rely more on at least having some influence on/to the Project itself.

But depending on 'external' Coders and Mod's, to create the sole income, means depending
on uncontrollable Facts, and no Business will survive in such a way on the long run, those
Coders can be gone by tomorrow, if something new and promising hit's a Market, and there
would not be much left, to eventually fill such a gap again in time, in order to further survive.

In the UK, people would bet on it, I guess. But UK people do many funny things, others
may not understand. So, better just relax, we'll find out, either way.

My very personal opinion only, from what I see and read...
Good Luck
Ernie

Theme Journal + Open Cart at the moment is one if not the best open carts out there. Magento is bs in terms of modifying it.

Shopify plugins are pricey and 1 per site Plus they arent best in terms of SEO?

There are plenty of developers and it does not matter is some come and some go. Code base at the moment is good and flexible.

OC is popular in Russia, there are some extensions there that are not listed there

What can be good - some FB groups for a shop owners talking about money making

OC is popular in Russia, there are some extensions there that are not listed there

well, this is correct, but OpenCart does not make much profit with the russian/ukrainian scene anyway,
because they do most on/by themselfs. But if a business cannot not make a profit, a business cannot
survive, on longer terms, regardless of, how many developers exist, mostly just trying to get their share.
But I've got some russian Goodies, so, the Knowledge is not all lost for english speaking users, some of
it has already been re-published here, in one or the other form and way !

But many don't care much about 'legal' matters, even when it comes to 'stolen' knowledge, and such will
endanger any Project, because real DEV's may leave the Scene, full of frustration, and never come
back again.

Also, I doubt, that OC ever made money on JOURNAL Themes, that stuff is most all offered 'outside' of OC,
so, I would understand, if/that OC is looking for new ways. It's not much fun, to work for others, just using
others knowledge, to hopefully get rich quick.

What can be good - some FB groups for a shop owners talking about money making

I doubt it, who would really tell others for free, how to run a successful Online-Shop !? The
Internet is more and more a LOCAL Place, and every new OC User could eventually end up,
beeing in Competition with those, telling him/her their Secrets, only Nut's would do such.
Nut's like me, probably, but I don't even plan, to run an Online-Shop!

It's probably one main reason, why most existing Facebook-OC-User Usergroups don't work,
they mostly consist out of Visitors, interested in getting something for nothing, I just visited one
of them yesterday, it has a few thousand Members, but only a handfull of them add's postings,
mostly even regarding commercial Mods.

I am aware of, that all this sounds very negative. But it's not, in Contrary, it's just the way it works,
in real Life at least. OC is no 'Common-Wealth' Project, planned, to make everybody running an
Online-Shop, for as free as possible. And those, not familiar with BUSINESS in daily life, will likely
not succeed with OC either, regardless of a nice looking Journal Theme, or something else...
Good Luck!
Ernie

And just to complete this, kind of ....
---
I was looking for an extension, after someone made a posting here, and it was priced 30.00 Dollars.
After clicking the link shown to the Seller Site Contact Page, I found the same Extension, but priced
10.00 Dollars (instead of 15.00, as advertized! )
---
It's just one of those things, adding to the uncertainty, what the future of Opencart may be, without some
strict kind of Controlling and Enforcement, potential misuse is a logical consequence. And such could
eventually be a decisive aspect, when it comes to plan the future of a Project like this.

Ernie

Hmm, I agree, there is no way Opencart future will become that bad, atleast in near future. Even though I'm quite new in Opencart but the leader in my company used to use Opencart and he said that it's among the best in terms of commercial right now.
Correct me if I'm wrong but still, that's what I believe when I see his work.

xrgb wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 07, 2017 9:10 pm

and if nothing changes, the fate of the osCommerce awaits us

Having spent quite a bit of time on the fringes of osC, I can tell you what went wrong there. All development is in the hands of one person (much as I understand OC is), and while he is good at what he does, the product is not keeping up with industry trends and standards. osC's updates are on a very irregular and lengthy basis -- the developer would much rather work on new versions over the course of years. Long ago, he promised the imminent release of v3.0 -- still no sign of it. Then later he announced that 2.4 was almost ready to go out the door, but several years later, it's still in beta. Releases have included "milestone" development releases and "release candidates" that should have been withdrawn (superseded) within a few months, but sit there as "current" for years. The lack of regular updates to osC has led the market to declare it dead, and it doesn't matter how great a new release is -- osC has to start all over in terms of market mindshare. The developer just can't wrap his mind around that fact. The currently offered release is something like 3 or 4 years old, and won't even run on most servers (supports max PHP 5.3 or 5.4). Meanwhile, a still-enthusiastic group of users has released a community-supported fork (which may or may not become the basis for 2.4) with bug fixes, PHP 7 support, and a built-in responsive design, and the support forum has to keep telling people to install the community-supported version rather than the official version!

What lessons can be drawn from the sad fate of osCommerce?

• Never go more than 12 months without a major refresh. Any longer than that, and the market will declare you unsupported and dead. The community-supported responsive version (2.3.4BS Edge) should have been officially released as the 2.3.5 version over a year ago, but the Head Developer suffers from severe NIH syndrome.
• The Head Developer should be able to delegate maintenance responsibility to trusted lieutenants, even if he wants to have final say over what is released. He needs to commit to the community that official bug fixes and upgrades will go out on a regular basis (not just be described in the forum by contributors).
• Keep the site updated with the current release, and remove anything that shouldn't be there. The osC developer left a very buggy 3.0 alpha release out on the download page for years, and lots of innocent people downloaded and tried to install it, with disastrous results. Put bleeding edge stuff somewhere else, such as GitHub, rather than on the official download page.
• Remove old clutter, such as PHP 4 support, change the old $HTTP_*_VARS (etc.) to the current $_* forms, declare End of Life for old versions of the product (2.2) and cut off support in the forum. Bring the product up to date with reasonably current PHP and MySQL versions.

I know this is an old thread, but it came up in a google search. I really hope OC is not a dying cart. I started with OSc and jumped to Zen Cart because the reasons folk list. As Zen Cart seemed to be follow the same slow-death path I jumped to PrestaShop, but found that buggy as hell so jumped to Open Cart. I love it.. dead powerful and simple to use, but since 2016 I've been working more and more with Magento (I hate it) and WooCommerce. for no other reason than OC still lacks (IMHO) an essential feature of good modern eCommerce. That is the ability to manage stock by multiple variant (Waist size + leg length + Colour for example).

There seem to be no movement on adding this feature and as far as I can tell, only OSc, Zen Cart and OC are the main players that still lack this feature with out an add-on (Welford media's addon for this feature is utter crap)

so, i hope I am wrong.. but I cannot see OC being in the top 5 carts by 2019/2020

... but I cannot see OC being in the top 5 carts by 2019/2020

Well, I am not so sure, if such is really of big importance, it might push the
self-esteem a little, but for those, looking for a top Online Shop Software,
other Values, like a critical view into User Forums and technical Documents
will much more be the decisive Factor, to select on a future Online Moneymaker
Software.

And 95 out of 100 Shop Owners will eventually fail anyway. But this because of
lacking Knowledge, since it takes much more than a strange and huge free Software,
to be installed onto a strange Server, to get rich quick with an Online Business
Software.

In Addition, Online Shop Software automatically means Competition too. And
who in the world would share hard earned Wisdom with potential (future)
Competitors, so, whoever expects to have found 'free Heaven', and a lot of nice
and helpful friends, will, at best, be disappointed after a while, after beeing
confronted with the reality of everyday life, with/on OC, like in all other places
as well.

And this leaves not much choices for Software Designers, but accepting, that it's
not done with a real shiny Front, as long as, what's explained, and how it's explained,
does not meet the needs of likely fully 'unpro' Users. But such would be a very costly
task, and it would still not keep many from screwing up, since many came to a SIte,
not to get smart, but to get online, without doing anything to it, and this as quick as
possible.

One solution could be the Cloud. But only for those, willing to pay for others work,
like in real life too. But then, one can really concentrate on the important matters,
and leave the technical part to those, capable of handling them.

And the Freeriders have to take, what they get, but better not expect anything with it.
Despite of what might be published on a 'free heaven' Front. It's common sense, to
understand this, with a free Software, and with Users, who (should) also play their
part in this Game, by beeing Testers as well. It's the only way, to keep such a 'free System'
running, in the case of Magento, like here.

But I cannot compare OC with other Brands, one just always has to consider the fact,
that OC also depends on income. And if most everything nice & useful would be included
in a default distribution, there would not much be left, to make a profit out of it.

And in your Case mentioned, a lot of different Extensions exist, to achieve such, by example,
with not very expensive prices, like one of those:
https://www.opencart.com/index.php?rout ... n_id=20811
https://www.opencart.com/index.php?rout ... n_id=15074
https://www.opencart.com/index.php?rout ... n_id=32434
found here:
https://www.opencart.com/index.php?rout ... ist%20size

For my personal purpose, OC has been an ideal Source, since no comparable Assortment of
Extensions and Informations existed anywhere else. And I was lucky to profit from already
existing wisdom, it saved me from asking many dumb questions, wich would likely often
not even have been replied to. Similar to many, receiving help, but not replying to found
'solutions' anymore. It's possibly all just wasted time, and at the end for both. Who knows !?

You see, OC is not so easy to explain ..., out of the past, so, who could be able to know about it's future...
In a few Years, Products will be entered by Voice, and in 10 Years by Brain, that's the only Bet I would make.
Good Luck!
Ernie