Extensions and Open Cart

Is it just me or is anyone else totally fed up with buying an extension then not getting any support and not being allowed to report it?

I for one am absolutely sick to death of Open Cart leaving extensions up that no longer offer support but can still be purchased by unsuspecting visitors thereby giving the author AND Open Cart money for nothing.

IMO it is one of the biggest problems with Open Cart and the way they deal with rogue extensions or unsupported extensions and whether they like it or not Open Cart are as guilty as the author in taking visitors money under false pretenses.

Why aren't the extensions monitored more closely and why aren't members allowed to report them so they can be removed if the author doesn't continue their support for them?

Open Cart is fast becoming the new Prestashop where it became all about how much money they could make and not how good the cart is or the after sales service is and whether Open Cart like it or not there is no way that this is an OS project anymore as they steadfastly refuse to add any useful mods or extensions to the core files whilst an author and they are making money from them.

The whole idea of OS is to have a project that is added to and made better at no cost to the user not keep it as basic as possible so that a user simply has to buy extras. Not only that but buying an extension that isn't kept up to date which appears to be happening more and more means you have to buy a similar extension again otherwise that feature is lost to your store.

I agree, there are a lot of bad developers out there, trying to make a quick buck. The best way to verify whether a developer is good quality is to check out their comments, number of purchases, and ratings. If they're active in the forum, you can generally get a good idea of how they respond to things.

It's also why I created OpenCartX, where I only allow developers who have proven they have good support. I'm pretty selective about who I choose, so you can generally be confident that you're going to get a quality extension with good support from the site.

I know what you are saying Johnathan but some of the developers have been going for a while and have good previous ratings, number of purchases and support but IMO Open Cart now needs to be weeding out those that either do not update their mods (I had one who didn't update it but 'produced' a new version of the same mod) or offer no support.

It is simply not good enough to leave visitors to their own devices and leave bad developers work on there just because someone somewhere might buy it and make Open Cart a few dollars.

Oh and BTW I still think that Open Cart do not introduce new features when they update and IMO that is solely because they make money out of the sales. Feel free to tell me I'm wrong and show me but from 1.4.9 to the now 1.5.6.4 that I am using I have seen very little additional features that have become standard.

Since 1.4.9 there's been:

• Multistore
• Reward points
• Gift vouchers
• RMA system
• Store credit
• Affiliate system
• Wishlists
• Product filters
• One-page checkout
• Reports
• Additional payment gateways
• Additional shipping gateways
• ISBN, UPC, EAN, and JAN support

Well thank you for that list RPH although I wouldn't give a thanks you for most of them anyway and the only one that's of much use to me is the one page checkout.

No point getting into a debate but as a store owner none of them are of much use to me although I'll admit they maybe to others.

Basic HTML anywhere, HTML Status emails, tracking facility etc.. are the type of upgrades that would make me happier.

I could go on but no doubt it is an area we wouldn't agree on although I notice you don't fire back at me on my opinion that Open Cart needs to curtail some of the developers and remove some of them if they won't support their work.

I agree work needs to be done. There have been internal discussions on the best approach. I'm sure Daniel will make an announcement once plans are finalized.