General Development Process for Maximum Extensibility

Hello OpenCart community,

I would like to know from any experienced OpenCart users/developers out there what their process is for developing a store that is easily extensible. I'm very interested in the tools and lifecycle that are utilized (do you use wamp? vqmod? svn? What do you do when you want to update OpenCart, the theme, or extensions? how do you deploy to a live site from your development environment without breaking anything or losing valuable data etc.)

I have set up a site with OpenCart 1.5.4 using Shoppica2 as a theme. Changes have been made to the theme, model, and OpenCart admin. I would develop on my local using WAMP, then move working changes to a protected subdomain (my development site). I expect to do this until I am ready to deploy to the live site. This process has been working for me quite well however I am not using vQmod and it's beginning to dawn on me that with my changes upgrading OpenCart (if I ever need to) will be a pain. Full disclosure, I am new to web development but do have a background in software dev.

I would love some constructive criticism or advice on my current process and hope to hear a process that has worked for you.

Thanks a bunch!

That a broad topic and would require more of my time than I have available.

One thing to note though is that Shoppica2 theme is quite a large change to OpenCart and it modifies core files. If you are new to web and OC coding, do your initial customizing on the default theme or a simple responsive one. Then you'll know what is "normal". The way shoppica2 works there are other extensions that are not compatible with the theme.

And I think you should get to know and use vqmod as soon as possible. It should be able to run under WAMP, it certainly does under XAMPP (which is the one I use).

A good start to vqmod would be to do the changes to core files made by shoppica2 using vqmod. THat is how I learned vqmod, convert an extension that modified core files into a vqmod version.

I would definitely recommend working with vQmod sooner rather than later. It's an extremely powerful tool once you get some experience with it.

If you're going to be doing a lot of changes or installing a lot of extensions, I'd also recommend not using Shoppica. It can cause a lot of issues with other modifications and extensions, and you may spend more time getting support for those issues than if you just switch to a theme that conforms to OpenCart standards.