OpenCart Community

Hi

I am medium level opencart developer, having understanding of file system, modification system, written my own modifications for front and back end etc.

I am given an opencart site developed on 3.0.3.8 and there have been multiple edits done in core files due to which site is now slow at times.

The site owner wants to fix this issue and are asking what should be the way forward. There is not track of edits that were done in past three years but there are quite a lot because many files in core system are numbered, like header.php, header_original.php, header0908.php etc. Some system of previous developer to keep track of things. When discussed with previous developer, he does not have anything well documented.

So, what might be the best way forward?

1. Implement some caching system for category and product pages to speed up the current site

2. Move to fresh installation of 3.0.3.8 and migrate all the changes one by one with the help of their team but this time use proper ocmod and modification system

3. Move to OC 4 and migrate the changes

Keep in mind that when I say migrate the changes, the process will be that their team will see the fresh installation, write me down the features that were available in old installation which are missing here, I'll revisit the old files based on their description of the feature, find the code and rewrite it properly. So, this will be a manual process

Please guide me what to do, that will suffice for next couple of years

You should do fresh installation of the current stable OC 3.0.4.1. That one supports newer PHP versions 8.x which can improve performance. Then go through your core file changes, and have them rewritten as event handlers or OCMod XML scripts.

But if I have to go through all this manual process of installing a fresh copy then rewriting everything, why not install OC4?

talentive wrote: ↑

Mon May 26, 2025 9:41 pm

But if I have to go through all this manual process of installing a fresh copy then rewriting everything, why not install OC4?

Bugs still in versions 4.x.x.x.
Mike

Does opencart 3.0.1.4 support event based system like OC4.
Because discussions with site owner revealed that they don't want to do any major expense on site after this exercise so we need to plan for coming 2-3 years.

So, will I be able to migrate written code to OC4 if need be? Or I won't need that?

Starting fresh with 3.0.3.8 and carefully moving features over using proper OCMOD is probably the safest bet. It’ll take time but will make future updates way easier.