Come on mate you are showing one lack of programming knowledge there…With all due respect…After 30+ years in IT I wouldn't upgrade a live site and I can't see anywhere in this thread where I have said that so please reread the thread.
Hooks are very limited and are only useful at the exact point where the hook is. Many issues like CSS also as pointed out in this thread can't be fixed with hooks, again any coder would know this, plus keep it simple, keep all your changes using the same method and WELL COMMENTED, otherwise you end up with a dog's breakfast of changes done this way, that way and every other way.
Why update, because as cart is riddled with bugs so you need to fix as many as you can and updates are best way to achieve this hoping the new bugs are in areas of smaller importance. Why upgrade to 4.2.1 because of the responsive designed silly, a must have in today's Web development. If I had your mindset I would still be using vs 2 and not getting any benefits for my money but then perhaps I may not be in a looney bin by now and still using windows 3.11…good one mate…30+ years in IT means I do know windows from basic
Besides, show me where CS-Cart list what templates they have changed so even if you do use hooks, even create your own, how the bloody hell are you going to know what is stuffed up without going through every line of html again anyway. The last screen shot I showed can't be fixed with a hook as it requires bigger changes to a template again and again you have no idea when going from 4.2.1 to 4.2.2, which they said is a bug fix release, what they have done.
Every software developer should list EXACTLY what they have changed right down to the actual template for everyone, why they changed and a brief description of the change…but they are professional developers unlike what CS-Cart are like and doing to their customers. You are showing an enormous amount of naivety with your post…again with all due respect!
Note that this is an open forum. So if you're already using a cloned site, that's great. But there are many who are not.
Given that you have 30+ years in IT, then you are well aware that the way cs-cart operates is that they NEVER stabilize a particular release stream without adding new features (and therefore new bugs). It is not part of their business model to have customers use a version of software over a long period of time. They make their recurring revenue via upgrade fees and want everyone on the latest and greatest because it's easier for them to support.
So there will always be bugs. My suggestion (also with 30+ years in software development and management) is to pick your demon with care. If I were running a site like the vast majority of merchants (no I have not visited your site), I would still be on V3.0.6 and would NOT convert to the V4 stream until it gets to at least 4.2.4 (that's my experience from watching when cs-cart becomes commercially stable in new releases). Then, I would stay there until there was some compelling reason for me to move. It takes them at least 4 versions to stabilize (used to be 6-7 so things have improved).
There are responsive themes available for most versions of cs-cart and could be adapted to your needs.
Regarding all changes… They do not publish the files that change. However, you can look at the XML data for an upgrade to identify what's changed. But my point was that after an upgrade, they do list the conflicts that were discovered (there will be some false positives) and the provide the color coded “diffs” to identify differences between the new files and the old (for templates). So if you address the conflicts in your development site you can then upgrade your production site and just overlay your production from your development. At least that's the process that I use.
But yes, this is all time consuming and in a perfect world it would be great to have a pre-install that did the diffs before anything was done so you'd have some idea if you have a couple of hours of work or a couple of weeks. But it just isn't the case with most web based products today. They also stopped having revision strings in their code so there's no way to identify if the archive I get on day 1 has the same files in it as the archive I get on day 3 (they have been different - and silently updated - in the past).
I'm usually one of cs-cart's greatest critics. And yes, I do understand your frustration. In reality, if there were a better and more cost-effective solution available, then people would be using it. Until then, we all have to live with cs-cart's model of development and releases and with the bogus bug-reporting/tracking that occurs. I for one have simply stopped reporting bugs because I'm so tired of CYA versus actually trying to reproduce problems to demonstrate that the bugs exist.
I try not to use 3rd party addons simply because of extra issues they bring in terms of integration, debugging of cs-cart issues and reliability of upgrades. I had a phone call out of the blue by another cs-cart customer complaining of the same things and he has spent $1,000's trying to get their company's site right so he is giving up and looking elsewhere…how many cs-cart customers are leaving for the very same reasons but the thing is, no one would know…it takes $1 to keep a customer happy which gets 10 more customers for free or spend $10 to get 1 new customer and hope you keep them happy, so keep your current customers happy and word of mouth gets your new 10 free customers and you don't get threads like this not just here but all around the internet. I think he is now looking at OpenCart (refer to my reasoning with addons why OpenCart is only number 2 on my list) or Majenta.
CS-Cart need to drop the smarty system and modernise its code and change their business model drastically if they want to differentiate themselves from other cart software and along with a different customer approach could become the “Leading” cart software product which means getting 10 new customers for only $1 instead of spending $10 to get 1 new customer and losing 9 existing ones.
Just for interest here are some screen shots of how great Xenforo do theirs and I note that only after 2 years, Xenforo from being brand new is now the biggest and most popular forum software around even now thrashing the once great vBulletin.
- User changed templates are highlighted in red:
[attachment=8449:1.jpg]
- Templates are easily edited and save plus the coding they use is extremely easy even for a html beginner:
[attachment=8450:2.jpg]
- You can serach across all templates for anything, any instances of code:
[attachment=8451:3.jpg]
- After an upgrade any template that was not automatically updated which means it contains a change you have made to the template are listed for you to look over and change if necessary:
[attachment=8452:4.jpg]
- You can see a list of all the templates you have made changes in:
[attachment=8453:5.jpg]
- Apart from a template that can contain all your global css changes, each main area has a separate css template for easy editing:
[attachment=8454:6.jpg]
- And you can see how you can create an entire new template, in this case for a block, and insert it anywhere you want on your site:
[attachment=8455:7.jpg]
Xenforo is EXTREMELY fast and on my site I have over 10,000 registered users and over 325,000 posts and it is much faster than cs-cart with only 500 products:
My forum site: www.recreationalflying.com
My shop site: www.clearprop.com.au
there are many many more great things about the way that Xenforo does their software and I have only shown just the template system but in just 2 years they achieved so much by just 2 developers in the company…cs-cart have a lot to learn about how to develop software, their customers and being in business.
Note, I see these forums have not been updated to overcome the Firefox and flash uploader bug…when clicking to add an image, your file list appears behind the forum window so you have to minimise the forum window to select the image file
Not sure comparing the complexities of forum software to ecommerce software is quite equivalent… But point taken. Don't think using Smarty is the/an issue. The trouble is that they've broken their own architecture within Smarty templates by using it as the business layer as well as the presentation layer. All that logic should be pushed above and Smarty should be used for data and control constructs like looping. Get rid of the countless {if $config.some_value == 'y'}class=“xyz”{else}class=“abc”{/if} stuff with the lines that are 4 physical lines long to make one html tag.
But to your earlier point about stability… Go look at Xenforo's release history. Every time they do a major release, they do an upgrade every month for (on average) the next 3-4 months to address the bugs introduced or features miss-applied. Not sure that equates to anything different than cs-cart other than the updates are spread farther apart and cs-cart tends to stuff new features in minor releases. But you can't run your store on Xenforo.
This is a good conversation. My opinion is that I'd prefer a feature set for every release (I.e. V2, V3, V4) and then the incremental version within that (V2.2, V4.2) should stabilize those features and fix business release defects, and sub-versions (V2.2.4, V3.0.6, 4.2.2) fix the less important defects. All new features/functionality are deferred until the next major release (I.e. V5.0.0).
Xenforo provides payment facilities as well so basically it doesn't take much to add extra functionality for a cart system…you have database entries, you have php code, you have the functionality of listing something and then paying for it already in Xenforo. However what XF does do is JUST fix any small bugs that are found which doesn't introduce more bugs plus the way they do it the point I am making, they list every template that is changed, they advise why the change was needed and the way they have made the change. But, the only thing you can't compare XF with cs-cart is the number of fixes they need to do.
I am at the point that I may end up paying a developer to create an XF cart as all that is missing is a list of tagged entries to display as a cart and shipping methods…in fact a cart addon has already been released but is buggy at this stage as it isn't from a reputable developer.
I would suggest you have another look at their releases as I just did and I think you are exaggerating the releases and what they are for…
But basically I agree with you in that a version and subsequent updates SHOULD ONLY be related to that version in terms of creating stability and nothing more.
v5 cs-cart should start from scratch with new modern technologies and coding starting from a clean sheet of paper and inline with the points I have mentioned above. Because I am sick and tired of them having been a customer of theirs since the very first release and a life time license