With the release of 0.7.9, and the upcoming development of 0.8, we, the development team want to find out what you do like and don't like about OpenCart.
Why did you choose OpenCart over any other e-commerce platform?
If you could kindly sum up what you liked about OpenCart and why you decided to use it, it will help us keep those considerations in mind for future versions.
In your opinion, what sets OpenCart aside from the rest? Let us know what you think!
Thanks for your support.
Because:hm2k wrote: Why did you choose OpenCart over any other e-commerce platform?
1. Open Cart is easy, peasy, clean and fast.
Virtuemart's admin was too complicated
Prestashop looked good initially but too hard to modify
Magento blew up my server and did my head in.
Viart - lacking in support
Cubecart - didn't have what I needed
Zen Cart - I couldn't even install a template
Storesprite - payment methods too limited and all those ads were very distracting
2. Support, support, support. Answers can be found in this forum very easily and when the answer was not here, there was someone to answer questions quickly
In a nutshell - Open Cart is the best I found for a shop owner with a bit of knowledge to make custom mods but not enough to pass Magento's requirement for an Einstein's degree in programming.
Downside - not enough "standard" features. Not straight out of a box (yet). Upside of downside - made me learn php which is easier than French.
How to make Open Cart better ?
- Initially, to include the mods as standard features
- Templates. Prestashop wins on this one.
- Easier checkout. Reduce number of steps
Curious: Why do you think templates are better in Prestashop?- Templates. Prestashop wins on this one.
As regards Opencart:
I have chosen it over OSCommerce, Zencart, Agoracart and others because of its simple and clean MVC design and, in my opinion, easy to customise templates.
Export/Import Tool * SpamBot Buster * Unused Images Manager * Instant Option Price Calculator * Number Option * Google Tag Manager * Survey Plus * OpenTwig
I started my first shop in osCommerce
Shortly there after zen-cart was released and I was with them from day one, it was all I really knew. I suffered through it, learning to develop around mixed content. They had some great ideas, but not always the best implementation. Seems they tried to band-aid too much onto the osCommerce base. Which to this day still shows through zen's attempts at a facade. This is what led to my decision to "have affairs" with other carts
I developed a handful of contribs and 2 themes for zen-cart, all the while keeping a strayed on something new. But zen has a huuuuge following, which means a lot of user made contribs, adding a lot of cool functionality, which was hard to leave.
Finally I got tired of it and came across opencart from www.opensourcecms.com. I was impressed with both OpenCart and Magento. But the first thing I tried to do in both was to see how easy it was to add features. After 10 minutes with Magento, I realized it was not meant to be friendly to the hobby coder. So OpenCart was it. I liked opencart right from the frontend, but after a little playing around I got to realize that it was still a young cart and it would be a good place to start creating some useful contribs. After figuring out the structure, I realized how easy it was to mod this cart, and after spewing a boatload of ideas and contribs, I joined the team.
I do agree with jty that it is still not quite "out-of-the-box" ready. But since hm2k and I have been hacking away at code for the 0.7.9 campaign, we've made some great progress in terms of new ideas, and performance improvements.
0.7.9 was designed around stabilizing existing code
0.8 is designed around adding new features to the stable codebase and improving Opencart in terms of features, out-of-box-readiness, and overall marketing as a turn-key ecommerce solution.
Shortly there after zen-cart was released and I was with them from day one, it was all I really knew. I suffered through it, learning to develop around mixed content. They had some great ideas, but not always the best implementation. Seems they tried to band-aid too much onto the osCommerce base. Which to this day still shows through zen's attempts at a facade. This is what led to my decision to "have affairs" with other carts
I developed a handful of contribs and 2 themes for zen-cart, all the while keeping a strayed on something new. But zen has a huuuuge following, which means a lot of user made contribs, adding a lot of cool functionality, which was hard to leave.
Finally I got tired of it and came across opencart from www.opensourcecms.com. I was impressed with both OpenCart and Magento. But the first thing I tried to do in both was to see how easy it was to add features. After 10 minutes with Magento, I realized it was not meant to be friendly to the hobby coder. So OpenCart was it. I liked opencart right from the frontend, but after a little playing around I got to realize that it was still a young cart and it would be a good place to start creating some useful contribs. After figuring out the structure, I realized how easy it was to mod this cart, and after spewing a boatload of ideas and contribs, I joined the team.
I do agree with jty that it is still not quite "out-of-the-box" ready. But since hm2k and I have been hacking away at code for the 0.7.9 campaign, we've made some great progress in terms of new ideas, and performance improvements.
0.7.9 was designed around stabilizing existing code
0.8 is designed around adding new features to the stable codebase and improving Opencart in terms of features, out-of-box-readiness, and overall marketing as a turn-key ecommerce solution.
Last edited by Qphoria on Tue Feb 03, 2009 3:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
I agree, templates were a biggie for me when I started. PHP based templates > smarty. I believe there's no point using a template engine, when PHP is a perfectly good one to begin with, after all, that's why it was originally built.JNeuhoff wrote:Curious: Why do you think templates are better in Prestashop?- Templates. Prestashop wins on this one.
As regards Opencart:
I have chosen it over OSCommerce, Zencart, Agoracart and others because of its simple and clean MVC design and, in my opinion, easy to customise templates.
I believe presta is smarty based. I despise smarty, however I have thought about supporting it in OpenCart.
I mean from a "users" point of view.JNeuhoff wrote:Curious: Why do you think templates are better in Prestashop?- Templates. Prestashop wins on this one.
Us shop owner users (not developers) don't know and don't want to know intelligent things like smarty, MVC design, sql, php etc
All we are interested in is - is it easy, is it fast, does it look good and where can I get help.
We want something straight out of a box that requires only a few brain cells to get it up and going
From this perspective, the French one is a great option. Their default template is sleek. The community has contributed more designs. They are "prettier" than us >:(
We intend on rolling out a new template with 0.8, in my opinion, presta's demo template isn't all that good looking.
Hi everybody, I can't say I have chosen this yet but I am certainly thinking about it. I totally agree full with all these comments about other carts. Magento did look good but "my word is it slow"!! I thought it was their site but when I also looked at all the big corporates using it in the showcase I realised how it must be slow.jty wrote:Because:hm2k wrote: Why did you choose OpenCart over any other e-commerce platform?
1. Open Cart is easy, peasy, clean and fast.
Virtuemart's admin was too complicated
Prestashop looked good initially but too hard to modify
Magento blew up my server and did my head in.
Viart - lacking in support
Cubecart - didn't have what I needed
Zen Cart - I couldn't even install a template
Storesprite - payment methods too limited and all those ads were very distracting
Cubecart and Zen cart seem to be very boxy and looking very typical of some shops that are usually a bit iffy. Even the templates you can get are boxey.
I'm not a coder so I do need solutions that are easy to sell. I only do cheap sites so I don't want to spend a load or I would have to charge bomb and lose my market. Storesprite is costly to remove branding.
I have just installed presta and trying to setup for a client and thought it is looking very complicated in the admin for a small charity of OAP members to manage. I haven't even thought how I was ever going to style it.
I'm now thinking of dropping it in favour of opencart. It's amazing to see a project like this arrive of UK based origin. It looks very fast and not over bloated. I could still do cheap sites with this and also not have to pass on a load of learning skills.
The only thing so far it did not seem to be seo friendly as it was not html extensions.
It would also be good if you allowed link removal for a small fee for such a good product.
I read in the presta forums how to remove the footer link.
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