A new owner - just purchased an OpenCart website tonight.

I purchased a dropship turnkey business tonight, and hope I did the right thing. Anyway, I got the website at a good price and it's purchase protected through PayPal. I wanted to share the url so maybe someone here could check this site out and give me some feedback. I have two weeks to back out of the deal. I don't like the design or colors (very loud), and the "add to cart" and "+wishlist" buttons are not presenting correctly. The print drops off the buttons and cannot be seen. Coding seems off (?) Hopefully the ugly design can be changed. I would much prefer to have the website look like this template: http://themes.webiz.mu/opencart/herbal/

Here is a link to the website I bought: (update - the seller reimbursed me, and now I'm starting over)
I bought it for the interest in the actual product definitely not the website design.

You cant use that template you looked at because the theme is for oc 1.5+ and seems your store is on 1.4.x

That's not good is it. I thought the store was built on the most recent version of opencart. Hmmmm, I was wondering why they never did answer my question about which OC version this website was built on. Now I know. I may just contact PayPal and let them know there's a problem. Also, didn't version 1.4x have the PayPal security issues?

I did not say wether to keep it or not, what I did , was just to state the the theme and store arent compatible. The rest is none of my bussines.

I know you didn't state that. I made a decision based on the version information for this website. I went into the admin panel, and there is no footer with a version # indicating this may be an even older version than I thought which does present problems. I have no knowledge or skills on how to upgrade to a newer version and I did have my heart set on a new look based on templates that are compatible with version 1.5+

Just ask the seller what version it is and if he does not answer you know what to do.

If there is no version in the footer this could mean 2 things:

1. Old version.
2. Version removed for security reasons (hackers look for versions so they know what vulnerability to use).

Just upgrade it here:
http://forum.opencart.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=50292

I totally appreciate this feedback. I contacted the seller, and still no response. Qphoria, the possibility of upgrading using this script is a hopeful alternative. I would consider working with this seller on this as I do not prefer to install this script myself. I've worked with php modifications on a forum I own and run, and I know what a headache this could be. I've been paying a programmer to install all my updates for my phpBB forum because of all my mods.
At this point I'd much rather pay someone to install the upgrade. That's if I end up keeping the site.

I do offer an upgrade service here:
http://opencartguru.com/opencart-upgrades

Qphoria wrote:I do offer an upgrade service here:
http://opencartguru.com/opencart-upgrades

Just what I need!

I will contact you to get it done.

Wonderful, Qphoria. Your price is what I pay for my forum upgrades. And so worth it since I don't want to mess around with scripts and problems anymore. The guarantee is worth its weight in gold as well. I did hear from the seller today and they said they would try and update the site, but if they couldn't get it working they would give me a refund. I sent them the info on the Beta3 upgrade script. Thank you so much for all your help.

P.S. - They still never mentioned what OpenCart version this site was built on.

Looks like the seller hasn't tried to upgrade this site yet. I'm posting the image of the default template from the admin panel. Sorry it's blurry. That's the best I could do. Could someone here let me know what version this is? According to the info I found, it looks like this may be version 1.3.2 or lower. I do have a business plan, and wanted to be up and running by the end of June. If this seller doesn't contact me by next week, I may just pay to have this updated.

Did you buy this website because of the "brand" or did you like the domain name that it came with? Is this like a drop-shipper or something who is selling pre-made websites? Please don't take offense, I'm just curious as to why you didn't download the most recent version of OpenCart and create your shop yourself. Seems like that would be cheaper and simpler than having to go through all the second guessing and hassle that you are apparently having to go through with the seller.

No offense taken. I bought this website because it came pre-loaded with around 500 products of the brand I am interested in selling. I didn't purchase for the domain name. I have my own domain name that was going to be transferred to this site. At the time it seemed a convenient alternative. I thought if I bought a turnkey site, I would be up and running sooner than if I had to learn how to use the software and load all the products myself. I also thought it would provide me with the support I needed because I am completely new to e-commerce. I realize now that I was naive because there are turnkey companies out there that are selling websites with outdated software. This seller is trying to update the site, but when you view the site now, you can see the updating did not go well.

A lesson to be learned: Yes, I would have been better off downloading the recent version of OpenCart and creating my own shop. One good thing though is through discovering this turnkey website I was introduced to OpenCart and all its wonderful features I've been reading about. I was going to go with a different e-commerce platform, but now I can see that OpenCart is more of a perfect fit for me.

zarah wrote:This seller is trying to update the site, but when you view the site now, you can see the updating did not go well.

Thanks for the reply. I noticed that the site was messed up when I visited it today. In all honesty, if the seller of this "website" is not even able to update it correctly or in a timely manner, I would definitely take advantage of the "two weeks to back out of the deal" which you mentioned in your first post.

I don't want to be too critical, but the CSS does not represent a salable product. Divs given names like 'r', are difficult to parse and fix.

Would have been nice if the insertions made to the code base had been via VQmod. Stated because I see errors which point to code base mods not available in the updated code base. Could take the seller more than two weeks to fix it.

With that stated, you mentioned being interested in turn key ops, well you are essentially getting that with the database which holds all the goodies and none of the fluff. I would suggest running through the upgrade process with full knowledge that the existing look and feel won't be there until you choose a theme you like that fits the look you want. Between the upgrade process and switching to the default theme, all of the existing CSS hacks will be destroyed. Be advised though, there is a bit more than code base and products to complete your online store.

There is SSL, there are payment methods to configure, there are shipping methods to configure. In any case these would have to be configured because the first two involve personal transactions, and the third involves personal choice. The wealth of Open Cart comes in the variety of payment and shipping options included as modules, but there exists no cart that includes a pre-configured payment method to your bank account. You should also be advised that even if the store itself is turn key, the admin portion is not. There is a book available which would help you out on that end. It is not complicated, but you will need to know what to expect when an order is placed and other essential configuration settings.

Hope this does not scare you off, I am certain that all in all, this will be easier than running an online forum once you get going.