Progress Towards 1.5.0

jty wrote:Opencart has balls AND boobs.

Sounds like a hideous mistake on a drunken night out

i moved from zen cart to OpenCart because of the simplicity .... the zen cart admin panel made my head spinning.. opencart lack of templates. but that's not a problem as long as opencart easy to handle..

It's not only this site forum that is quiet at the moment Daniel. I think that folks are just chilling out in the garden, enjoying the light nights and digging out those 'outdoor' toys out of endless sheds and garages. Sure they'll all come flooding back when the dark nights creep back in again.

Will version 1.5.0 have any promotional discount system?

For example, BOGOF, 3 for 2, buy any product from one cat and get a product free/discounted from another cat etc.

I love this script and really want to see it become number one! I, to have spent years and long frustrating evenings with zencart, then I found magento (then my hosting company fell out with me for bandwidth usage) then prestashop (in all it's french/americanisms). Now I am where I want to be. I can't program but I can contribute to development with small £ contributions.

Robster

jty wrote:I'm back looking for a more powerful search. I'm losing sales because my customers can't spell
I read somewhere that it's on your road map. I'll upgrade then.

Since someone mentioned search, I'd like to add my thoughts.

First, the model name and the SKU need to be included in a basic search (i.e., the customer shouldn't have to go into Advanced Search). Any product information which is unique to one product, such as name or SKU, should be included in a basic search.

Search needs to find parts of words, not just whole words. For example, I sell a certain kind of bead that I call a "rondel". However, it can also be spelled rondele and rondelle. And then there are the plurals: rondels, rondeles, rondelles. If I make "rondelles" one of the key words, you would think that that would cover the singular version -- rondelle -- but it doesn't. So if I put "rondel" in the name, I then have to put these as key words: rondels, rondele, rondeles, rondelle, rondelles". Also, if I call a two-color bead "blue/green", a search for "blue green" or blue-green" turns up nothing. The search engine needs to be much more flexible. I finally put a note on the home page telling my customers to use the categories instead of the search feature.

Theres going to be ajax search for things like products, customers etc.. in the admin.

I don't know what Ajax search is, but I'm sure it will be an improvement.

What I'm really looking forward to is the wish-list feature.

OpenCart is a wonderful program. You are doing a great job. I'll make a contribution as soon as I raise a little money.

Daniel wrote:Theres going to be ajax search for things like products, customers etc.. in the admin.

sweet we need to spoil the admin page a little

Purebeads wrote:I don't know what Ajax search is, but I'm sure it will be an improvement.

It means, in a nutshell, that results are returned without refreshing the page. It's a more dynamic search method (and the same sort of technology powers a lot of the features in Facebook, such as searches, photos and news feeds etc).

I implemented a jQuery smart search plugin for my site that returns the search using Json for the results. It has made things a lot easier for my customers to find stuff as most of my products people do not know how to correctly spell.

http://www.cabochon.ws if you want to see the search in action just start typing the word green or a couple of numbers. It searches titles and models.

Nice work jayman!

jayman wrote:I implemented a jQuery smart search plugin for my site that returns the search using Json for the results. It has made things a lot easier for my customers to find stuff as most of my products people do not know how to correctly spell.

Where can that plugin be gotten?

jayman wrote:I implemented a jQuery smart search plugin for my site that returns the search using Json for the results. It has made things a lot easier for my customers to find stuff as most of my products people do not know how to correctly spell.

http://www.cabochon.ws if you want to see the search in action just start typing the word green or a couple of numbers. It searches titles and models.

Holy cow that is nicely done!

Purebeads wrote:Where can that plugin be gotten?

I second the motion. Where can we get this please? Is it a mod you can share with us?

What a beautiful site! The mod works beautifully too!

That's great news Daniel. I'll definitely donate a few hundred to you if Open Cart 1.5 (with affiliates) helps my business.

Qphoria wrote:

Rob wrote:

Qphoria wrote:Stable and 1.5.0 are not words that go together. 1.4.9 will be the "stable" build and then 1.5.0 will be a mess of redesign and new features. It probably won't be stable till around 1.5.2ish Go with 1.4.8b and 1.4.9 will be only bug fixes on top of that.

In my opinion the most important thing is the stability. I agree with Twiggy and Skipper. At least 1 of 3 releases should be the version with no extra features just bugs fixed..

That is what we try to do, but it is a very "ideal" way. On paper, yes, no new big features should be added, and that is what I am trying to do with 1.4.9. 99% bug fixes. The only "new features" are going to be tiny things like adding a new setting for the default state of the "subtract stock" setting so that you don't need to change it for each product if you never plan on subtracting or always plan on subtracting.

We, the Part of OC Community, the Part who waits for stable version 1.4.9 kindly ask when can we expect it ?

In the "Development Blog" section he posted that he should have one ready by this Friday (tomorrow).

SteveSherry wrote:

jty wrote:Opencart has balls AND boobs.

Sounds like a hideous mistake on a drunken night out

I live in Thailand where the probability that will happen is like 99.9%! LOL, always check over your purchase before you take it home...

Speaking of checking over your purchase, it's something I failed to do in regards to the last shopping cart service I tried. I downloaded Zen-Cart and then I paid $29.95 for that e-book that walks you though the admin panel step by step. I must say the e-book was fantastic, however Zen-Cart's admin panel is just not intuitive at all. Plus looking over their website, it didn't seem like the mods were updated very frequently (the payment mod I wanted hadn't been updated since 2008 even though there had been several updates to Zen-Cart). Plus, and this was the big one, Zen-Cart is just ugly! I know you can get themes for it and customize it, but out of the box it looks hideous. The e-book I bought really didn't get into how to customize it in detail, so that would have been something I would have had to take the time to learn (which I don't really have). Finally, the checkout process seemed overly complicated. You had to go through 8 or 9 pages from the initial add to cart until you were finally able to checkout. I saw they had a mod called "Fast and Easy Checkout", but there were over 100 pages on the forum about it's issues. To me that's neither fast nor easy.

To get to the point, I came across OpenCart a few days ago, and as soon as I started going though the website, I immediately went into my cPanel, went into Fantastico, and removed Zen-Cart without a second thought (Luckily my store wasn't live yet so I could just remove Zen-Cart without worrying too much). I downloaded OpenCart and installed it, and I can honestly say I LOVE IT. I am kicking myself in the a$$ for spending $30 for a Zen-Cart e-book that i'm not gonna be using at all now, but c'est la vie.

To the developers, please keep doing what you're doing. I appreciate the fact that you update your cart every 2 or 3 months. It shows the community that you are actively trying to make your product better, and from the looks of it, it seems like you're doing a great job at that! It also seems that most of the mods created by the community are updated on a regular basis to make sure they work with the current release of OC. The amount of support on the forums is just fantastic (I've already had several questions answered just by doing a search for it). And can I just say that your back end is BEAUTIFUL. The admin panel for OC is SOOOOO much easier than Zen-Cart's. Not to mention the file structure is so much easier to understand too. And the default front-end shop is very easy on the eyes. I'm not even sure if I will be customizing it too much, cuz it just looks nice to begin with.

I look forward to future releases as i'm sure OpenCart is just gonna keep getting better and better, so whoever said only come out with annual updates, I really hope you don't take that advice. If a person doesn't wanna upgrade then don't upgrade, but for those of us who like new bells and whistles, it's nice that the option to upgrade is at least there! And to the devs of all the wonderful mods, if you are charging for them then upgrading them to work with the current cart is just apart of the job. If you're offering the mods for free though, then it is what it is and we can't expect you to upgrade it at our will (we can only hope )

Thanks so much to the OC devs for all your hard yet fantastic work, and thanks to the community for contributing so much either through Mods or just your support on the forum. You've definitely won me over, and I will promote OpenCart anywhere I can! And as soon as I have some free cash i'll for sure be making a donation!

Cheers!

BEST FIRST POST EVER!