Post by Saahib » Wed Apr 01, 2020 11:36 pm

After hearing praise about OC in various places online, I decided to give it a try for new small project . I downloaded, took a peek at documentation , at first all looks good but then I went to see its GIT repo : https://github.com/opencart/opencart
It looks almost dead, no activity since last Nov or very few.
I got curious and have been going through lots of discussions and posts... it all scary :

A shocked developer :
viewtopic.php?t=206552

Its from 2018 .. it seems people are not very pleased with oc V3 upgrade
https://multimerch.com/blog/opencart-3- ... rt-2-2018/

Uncertain future:
viewtopic.php?t=184842

Developer's last post in June 2019 June
search.php?keywords=&terms=all&author=d ... Search&t=0

In nutshell, I was looking for a system which is opensource, easy to deploy and customize if needed (and should have good documentation) and light. I found OC to be suitable as it as not too many features and its said to be user friendly.

But after spending so much hours on almost dead forum talking only broken extensions, so called confusing documentations, lacks of standard features , I am looking for honest advice from users here that should I invest my time on Opencart and don't want to regret later for my choice.

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Post by IP_CAM » Thu Apr 02, 2020 1:37 am

Is there any future for Opencart ...
Well, in a World, where just about everything is about Money, it's more a wonder,
that OC still exists, in the way as it does. :laugh: But a lot of people are still depending
on it's Existence, or then, they would have to look around for something else, to
generate at least parts of their income. It's a rough Territory to survive on, over an
extended period of time, that's for sure. And sure not a Place, to make many friends.
But it's all about Competition too, and from that point of view, it's really a Wonder, that
OC still exists. And a Tendency exists, to scare away the last real Fans, and that left a lot
of scars already, by a lot of nice + helpful fellows, who suddenly faded away for good. :P

Still, I would not worry about such questions, but rather act accordingly, by keeping
as independent from OC's Future as possible. And that would mean, to just use an
OC Version, already known to be solid, instead of hunting for latest Releases. This
way, one would not have to rely on Help + Contributors either, and/or found Misses,
just to make the Baby work again, if something breaks, for what reason ever. ;)

And in a few Years from now, one might still decide on something new, of then change
a Software Brand, if new Web-Spec's eventually keep an old Version from further doing
it's Job. The World is changing very fast, and so does the Industry, related to the Web.

It's forseeable, that in a few Years from now, nobody would download a 4200+ File heavy OC
Download Package or a 1300+ File Journal3 Theme Extension anymore, just to run a simple
Online Shop. :D It's therefore not about OpenCart, it's about the entire Industry, forced, to
find new ways, to eventually succeed. And under the Aspect, that OC Extensions belongs to
the most stolen Code, it's understandable, that most 'real' Coders walk away, and no longer
play, in a Game, where is nothing to win anymore, without encrypting one's contributions,
to keep 'em from beeing spread all over the Darknet Sites.

Just don't take it personal, after all, it's just about Code. :laugh:
And the Rest if human Behaviour, as it exists. Especially in a time, where Corona tends to
seperate the World even more .... ;)

Good Luck !
Ernie

My Github OC Site: https://github.com/IP-CAM
5'200 + FREE OC Extensions, on the World's largest private Github OC Repository Archive Site.


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Post by Dutch Pride Code » Thu Apr 02, 2020 2:26 am

As OpenCart is opensource, meaning it's a project that everyone works on, I don't see it dying any time soon. There will always be programmers that work on this project. Besides, doing business means taking risks as well. And from all the risks I have taken so far, including but not limited to: buying thousands worth of stock products, investing significant amounts of money into advertising, having customers wait for products I'm not even certain about whether they will arrive anytime soon... Using OpenCart is pretty much the lowest risk so far.

And if OpenCart ever happens to get in trouble, I am confident there will be a smart guy in some country around the world who buys it and turns it into profitable software for store owners. That smart guy could be me ;D

And if this does not happen, business owners would have to look for a different platform.

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Post by Saahib » Thu Apr 02, 2020 4:51 am

IP_CAM wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 1:37 am
Is there any future for Opencart ...
.....
Good Luck !
Ernie
Hi Earnie,
Its nice to see your reply , actually have seen lots of your posts already. I suppose there was a post few years ago where you said that in future, people mightuse VOICE to search for product and later on , may be just think about it to get the result. Well, your first prophecy is true, people indeed use voice on smartphones to search... waiting for next to come.

And yes, you like to use ENTER key a lot.

Besides, you always there with posts about uncertainity to OC in future. I loved your insight but I was looking for something more like what makes it weak, is it codebase or management here or what ?

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Post by Saahib » Thu Apr 02, 2020 4:56 am

jonagoldapple wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 2:26 am
As OpenCart is opensource, meaning it's a project that everyone works on, I don't see it dying any time soon. There will always be programmers that work on this project. Besides, doing business means taking risks as well. And from all the risks I have taken so far, including but not limited to: buying thousands worth of stock products, investing significant amounts of money into advertising, having customers wait for products I'm not even certain about whether they will arrive anytime soon... Using OpenCart is pretty much the lowest risk so far.

And if OpenCart ever happens to get in trouble, I am confident there will be a smart guy in some country around the world who buys it and turns it into profitable software for store owners. That smart guy could be me ;D

And if this does not happen, business owners would have to look for a different platform.
I understand the sentiments but most of the time, store owners are not really one working on backend or maintenance, they hire other people to maintain their store and they do not understand nitty-gritty about it, they just want to get job done. So for a developer or guy setting up store, its kind of risky if he makes a bad choice as it could cost him his job and reputation.

I need to know that even if its inactive, do you think its code-base is adaptable for future improvement without whole rewrite ? Specially 3.x branch, is it dependable enough that if someone with developer background works on it, will he be able to maintain it for his custom needs ?

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Post by paulfeakins » Thu Apr 02, 2020 6:54 pm

Saahib wrote:
Wed Apr 01, 2020 11:36 pm
It looks almost dead
The community is going strong and we're extremely busy with clients using OpenCart.

In our opinion it's still the best ecommerce solution out there.

Saahib wrote:
Wed Apr 01, 2020 11:36 pm
But after spending so much hours on almost dead forum
What do you mean?

I'm on the forum every single day replying to questions and several other experienced OpenCart developers are also constantly replying to questions, usually in a matter of minutes!

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Post by openwes » Thu Apr 02, 2020 7:01 pm

Having worked with Magento, nopCommerce - too heavy and sluggish,
Joomla, Wordpress - too limited for ecommerce,
in my opinion Opencart 3 is by far the best option for ecommerce.

If you are capable, you can do a lot yourself, and there are many great extensions and programmers available.

Good luck with your project!

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Post by Dutch Pride Code » Thu Apr 02, 2020 9:55 pm

Saahib wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 4:56 am
I understand the sentiments but most of the time, store owners are not really one working on backend or maintenance, they hire other people to maintain their store and they do not understand nitty-gritty about it, they just want to get job done.
"Free" is often asociated with low quality products or very limited trial offers. OpenCart is nothing like that! In my opinion OpenCart being 100% free makes this amazing to start with. I am not going to lie, scaling for larger businesses may cost a little money here and there. On the other hand, by the time your store becomes large enough to host tens of thousands of products, it probably earns enough profit to hire a programmer as well.

For me personally it took some time to discover how it all works. Hosting about 300 products soon this system is pretty much perfect for my store. Extensions don't cost a lot of money on itself, but chances are you may need multiple to do different things. This is going to cost an awful lot! Hiring a programmer may be cheaper in some cases. The great thing is that the price is one-time and not a monthly subscription or some other sleazy ways to keep you hooked. What you see is what you get. All you have to do is basically add products and advertise them in the beginning.

When your store starts to grow, that's when you may want to decide to keep using OpenCart, hire programmers, buy extensions or perhaps even use a different platform that fits better.

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Post by Daniel » Thu Apr 02, 2020 10:46 pm

We are not dying! Doing a release now.

I had to spend some time to finish of the cloud version of opencart. we are in the process of setting up a new site for the cloud. I need to fix a few things on the main site then will be back on getting the next main release ready. We are also setting up the new company to get outside investment. So no the project is not dying. Will be getting more staff soon.

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Post by Vector224 » Fri Apr 03, 2020 1:01 am

What do you mean?

I'm on the forum every single day replying to questions and several other experienced OpenCart developers are also constantly replying to questions, usually in a matter of minutes!
Totally agree!

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Post by straightlight » Fri Apr 03, 2020 1:03 am

usually in a matter of minutes!
Sometimes in matter of seconds even.

Dedication and passion goes to those who are able to push and merge a project.

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Post by Saahib » Fri Apr 03, 2020 4:40 am

paulfeakins wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 6:54 pm
I'm on the forum every single day replying to questions and several other experienced OpenCart developers are also constantly replying to questions, usually in a matter of minutes!
Before starting this topic, I had spent lots of time on this forum, documentation , offsite information, on-site (this official website) it gave me impression that its not active (whole project as it used to be). I have shared some of the link in my First POST for reference.

For example, I know if I use OC then will need mobile app for it and see there will be need of API, I searched and found this :
https://docs.opencart.com/system/users/api/

Its a blank page, other I found as an extension which is second choice but will always prefer if there is inbuilt API. Similarly there were many things which leave impression that its behind the curve.

I had many question that why like other SOLUTIONS , basic things are not built in (like structured data) and few more.
Why there is no proper standardization in extention development (as mentioned at many places online ) in OC etc.

However, as @Daniel said, he is busy in taking further, I sure in couple of days things will start looking less dormant here.

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Post by Saahib » Fri Apr 03, 2020 4:47 am

Daniel wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 10:46 pm
We are not dying! Doing a release now.

I had to spend some time to finish of the cloud version of opencart. we are in the process of setting up a new site for the cloud. I need to fix a few things on the main site then will be back on getting the next main release ready. We are also setting up the new company to get outside investment. So no the project is not dying. Will be getting more staff soon.
Its nice to see you coming here in this kind of discussion, I am sure future if someone has similar doubt and if he stumbles on this discussion, it will give him reassurance about project's future.

And I was wondering whole time that where is this lead guy, whats he is doing. Although you are already on it, but still want to say that probably you should focus on getting new people to buy CLOUD version to support OC development with more passion. As new user it took me a while to understand that there is also CLOUD HOSTED version available for OC other then self hosted. CLOUD hosted solution should be more prominent and must presented that it looks more tempting than own-hosted solution.

BTW, do we have API feature build in core with OC to connect to other app or its in pipeline ?
Last edited by Saahib on Fri Apr 03, 2020 4:51 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by straightlight » Fri Apr 03, 2020 4:50 am

BTW, do we have API feature build in core with OC to connect to other app or its in pipeline ?
On recent OC versions, the controller/api folder is available where the login.php file inside that folder provides availability to store owners to connect via an API from other platforms. However, either an extension is required to initiate the hook or to create the hook ourselves might be amended.

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Post by Saahib » Fri Apr 03, 2020 4:53 am

straightlight wrote:
Fri Apr 03, 2020 4:50 am
On recent OC versions, the controller/api folder is available where the login.php file inside that folder provides availability to store owners to connect via an API from other platforms. However, either an extension is required to initiate the hook or to create the hook ourselves might be amended.
Any plan for its documentation or its already there ?

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Post by straightlight » Fri Apr 03, 2020 4:55 am

Saahib wrote:
Fri Apr 03, 2020 4:53 am
straightlight wrote:
Fri Apr 03, 2020 4:50 am
On recent OC versions, the controller/api folder is available where the login.php file inside that folder provides availability to store owners to connect via an API from other platforms. However, either an extension is required to initiate the hook or to create the hook ourselves might be amended.
Any plan for its documentation or its already there ?
admin/view/template/sale/order_form.tpl / twig file is the documentation. By referring to jQuery, the api/login URL is already built-in. People simply need to take a look at the routes by using a search tool. This has been covered many times on the forum already.

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Post by Saahib » Fri Apr 03, 2020 5:20 am

straightlight wrote:
Fri Apr 03, 2020 4:55 am
admin/view/template/sale/order_form.tpl / twig file is the documentation. By referring to jQuery, the api/login URL is already built-in. People simply need to take a look at the routes by using a search tool. This has been covered many times on the forum already.
May be I was not clear about my query, by API, I was asking about REST API ( eg: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/0 ... -rest-api/ )

I don't think template (twig) files are required for API thing.

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Post by straightlight » Fri Apr 03, 2020 5:28 am

I don't think template (twig) files are required for API thing.
While a REST API is not built-in at this time but is available on the Marketplace as extensions, it has not been dictated on my previous replies that using the api/login was a requirement but rather stated that it is already built-in with jQuery in Opencart with the indicated folders and file to use an Ajax request.

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Post by Saahib » Fri Apr 03, 2020 11:21 pm

straightlight wrote:
Fri Apr 03, 2020 5:28 am
While a REST API is not built-in at this time but is available on the Marketplace as extensions
Thats big disappointment, I prefer to have API built in system rather than depending on extension. Already have heard horror stories about low quality extensions on market place.

I suppose it will not be very hard to develop REST API in core. May be @Daniel want to shed some light on it.

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Post by paulfeakins » Mon Apr 06, 2020 7:31 pm

Daniel wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 10:46 pm
We are not dying! Doing a release now.

I had to spend some time to finish of the cloud version of opencart. we are in the process of setting up a new site for the cloud. I need to fix a few things on the main site then will be back on getting the next main release ready. We are also setting up the new company to get outside investment. So no the project is not dying. Will be getting more staff soon.
There you go guys and girls, from the main man himself, OpenCart is alive and well and a new release is imminent!

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