OpenCart Community

Hi
I am very frustrated with the lack of support from an extension developer and wanted some advice from fellow Opencarters.

I purchased an SEO Extension by a developer called NerdHerd a while ago. A few months ago the extension stopped working and I tried for several months to contact the developer to see if there was an update. I never received a response so I purchased a new SEO extension.

I disabled the old SEO extension by Nerdherd but it is still causing conflict issues with the new extension. When I tried to remove the files and folders associated with the extension, my website stopped working, so I had to restore the site. I tried many times over the past few months to contact Nerdherd to ask how to completely uninstall the old SEO extension but I have not received a reply. The developer is still selling the extension on the Opencart Marketplace and it seems that it was updated very recently, so I wrote a comment on the extension page but the developer ignored it and deleted the comment.

I then sent a message through the Opencart Support page. The developer finally got back to me with this response:

"You should contact that new extension developer, he knows what is conflicting with them, he can easily solve this."

But I don't think it's the job of other developers to remove other extensions from sites to get their to work properly. Especially when the extension in question can't simply be disabled. The developer of a new SEO extension that I purchased (privatemtx) can of course only give support for his own extension, and he told me:

" if you need to remove your other SEO extension, its support should help you to remove it or they should at least provide you full instructions about how to remove it without breaking your site. Because it's not installed via Opencart's installer (ocmod), nor vqmod - it or a part of it is forcely installed in Opencart's system folder ( public_html/system/aios1.ocmod.xml) .

The developer Nerdherd is now ignoring my replies through the Opencart Support messaging system, after sending that first reply above. I feel frustrated that developers do not need to provide instructions on how to remove their extensions once installed.

I am completely at a loss now about what to do. My new SEO extension can not work fully because of the conflicting files from the old extension.

Any suggestions about what I can now do please?

Thank you

1. Explain the full situation to the OpenCart team at https://www.opencart.com/index.php?rout ... rt/contact ---- they may not be able to force the developer to assist you, but at least it will go on his record. That way if others complain in the future OpenCart may consider dropping him as a developer.

Also, if you've had bad experiences like this with this particular developer, I would not trust them with your admin/FTP info in the future. If they suddenly seem to take an interest in resolving the issue, make sure you duplicate your site, give them access to the non-live version, and use different passwords for it. There's no telling whether you could trust them on your live store, and some developers have no scruples.

2. If the old SEO extension used an ocMod file in the /system/ directory, you should be able to disable its functionality by renaming that file to .xml_ (or deleting it) and then refresh your ocMod cache in Extensions > Modifications. That should remove any edits it does to the system. If you still get issues after that, it could be because it replaced core files (which is a really bad idea) or it has another mod file somewhere (which is unlikely, but possible).

If you are unable to resolve this yourself and the original developer won't do anything, you should consider hiring someone to resolve the issue. Hopefully it wouldn't be too difficult or costly. If you need to find a developer, you can post a request in the OpenCart "Commercial Support" forum, which is checked by a number of OpenCart developers. You can also try checking out the OpenCart "Partners" area.

Hi Johnathan, thank you for the reply.

1. I already tried to explain the full situation to the Opencart Support team through their contact page, but they just merged that ticket with the existing ticket that the developer is ignoring, and did not comment on the ticket.

Thanks for the advice about not sharing credentials with this developer. I have learnt the hard way about only purchasing extensions from reputable developers (I have a few of your extensions on my site!) The extra money that is saved is just not worth the hassle and stress of dealing with these poor quality developers.

2. I have renamed the ocmod file in the system/ directory like you suggested, and I will keep an eye on the error log to see if I'm still getting the errors. I hope this resolves the issues but I have a feeling that some core fires may have been changed, because when I tried to remove the files for the extension, through ftp, my site broke. So I am very reluctant to try to remove files in case the same thing happens again. But then again, the extension is quite big and I don't really want it taking up space on my site if I'm not using. It's very frustrating that the developer has made it so difficult to remove and will not offer any support, and that I may have to pay someone to resolve this.

An additonal problem could be also, that the old extension is changing or installing some through the integrated module installer.
This is an automatic process when an extension is installed new.

If this happens, these changes should be also be reverted at unstalling the extension.
Unfortunetely I have seen (and still see) many extensions doing not so!

Beside this, reading the installer files (.xml - no matter if OCMod od VQMod) should show all required actions to take back.
If an OCMod, simply disabling the extension and refreshing the extension cache, should revert all modifications - except the installer issue mentioned above!

A third possibility could be "events".
Some extension are using these only, some a mixture if all.

But in any case, you would be better if you contact the developer you trust and let him work on it - should be a task of 1, max. 2 hours (if not lesser).

Thank you OSWorX for that detailed reply.
Unfortunately I think the extension is working like one of the situations you described, because even after disabled and renaming the XML file, I am still getting errors in my error log related to the extension.

I have complained to the Opencart support but he is again ignoring the requests from them to give support for his extension. Its annoying that I have to do this, but I guess I will have to find a developer to resolve this for me.
Thank you

Guess finally you are wasting your time when you try to contact this "developer" - does no matter which channel you might use.
But if you want, you can contact me - I will take a look into that (without any charge, because I am curious why it cannot be disabled).

Thank you OSWorx, I have sent you a PM.