Hello,
I’m discovering CS-Cart 2.0 Beta Online Storefront and Administrator back-end demo.
Tag cloud is a good news.
Filter features is a really good addition!
And, of course, yes… Design blocks. You can manage blocks with {if} statements in CS-Cart 1.3.5. So, Design blocks is NOT a new feature.
Why I’m disappointed?
Where is very useful Snorocket XML Sitemap? Not added.
Lee Li Pop
PS: Let’s hope new year would come with gifts bonuses!
I am disappointed also. Half year ago I moved from another shopping cart and it was major pain in…
The only thing why I purchased “sp3” that it will become widely spoken 136 (now 2.0) with huge set of new features.
I was hopping new large cs release will have online update like magento has store connect or shop script has installer were all files are updated online.
I like overall changes, but they are more cosmetic then improving speed or ease of use.
Darius,
1:
[quote name=‘Darius’]ease of use[/QUOTE]
CS-Cart 2.0 is more ease to use. Winning bet!
2:
[quote name=‘Darius’]I like overall changes[/QUOTE]
They are really not many, apart from the blocks, of course. But it is a hard work, I must admit.
Blocks is a real good thing for non-geek 
3:
[quote name=‘Darius’]they are more cosmetic[/QUOTE]
You can change any “cosmetic” settings with CSS file.
Thanks God, CS-Cart keeps Smarty engine!
4:
[quote name=‘Darius’]improving speed[/QUOTE]
Yes, Yes, YES!
The only great truth in e-commerce:
A fast website makes more money!
Why? Because customers don’t want to wait!
[QUOTE][COLOR=“Red”]Internet usability studies tell us that most visitors will leave a Web page that takes more than 7 seconds to download[/COLOR].[/QUOTE]
[url]http://www.w3schools.com/Site/site_design.asp[/url]
Increase speed is “Top #1” priority.
Lee Li Pop
Where is the ebayyyyyyy section?
Maybe the CS-Cart 2.0 Beta Online Storefront and Administrator back-end demo is still new. I guess they are fixing the things you’ve mentioned that is lacking.
[quote name=‘tristanj’]Maybe the CS-Cart 2.0 Beta Online Storefront and Administrator back-end demo is still new. I guess they are fixing the things you’ve mentioned that is lacking.[/QUOTE]
I wonder how this beta will be updated ? Beta 2 will be released and everything has to be reinstalled?
[quote]
Thanks God, CS-Cart keeps Smarty engine!
[/quote]
I never understood the popularity of Smarty. Like other Smarty apps CS-Cart is a pain to modify. Why do you think there are so few templates available? Because it’s almost impossible to create one. Even modifying an existing one is a painstaking process, even for experienced designers. The difficulty in customizing and creating templates is one of the weak points of CS-Cart in my opinion.
[quote name=‘argosmedia’]I never understood the popularity of Smarty. Like other Smarty apps CS-Cart is a pain to modify. Why do you think there are so few templates available? Because it’s almost impossible to create one.[/QUOTE]
Yes, it’s almost impossible to create a totaly new template from A to Z.
[quote name=‘argosmedia’]Even modifying an existing one is a painstaking process, even for experienced designers.[/QUOTE]
No, it’s very easy to modifying a template. Even for new comer. Of course, you need to want to learn Smarty basic language
[quote name=‘argosmedia’]The difficulty in customizing and creating templates is one of the weak points of CS-Cart in my opinion.[/QUOTE]
In my opinion, it’s a real powerful tool, because you can to extreme customize and you never mix up PHP code with HTML code!
Other solutions cart mix more or less PHP code and HTML. This is why it’s VERY difficult to extreme customize templates (OSC and its branches, Virtuemart, etc…).
With CS-Cart you can to extreme customize easily!
CS-Cart powered by Smarty is a real diamond!
Lee Li Pop
The basic design modification is easy enough.
What I don’t like is the 3 column websites. I find best looking websites made in to two colors, one is for categories and some ads…, the rest is just for products list and product details. Best thing is when categories are in horizontal menu and product detailed page is like the one page checkout with no distractions, plain and simple.
Some of the things like my account options are in sidebox, I wish it would be just a link for it and then you would get all options in ist own page.
So if you wish to create a site very different looking from original template it is hard enough.
I was just playing around with the beta, the “blocks” approach seems like it would be good for most people to aid designing.
I could not install yet in my local machine - v.2 demanded PHP 5, MySQL 5 - I do not have time to play with it in sale season so I had a look at demo at the Cs-Cart site. I expected that all those features from the “Wishlist & Future Requests” thread would be included :-).
At the first glance version 2 is a step back but not forward, there is nothing special there that would make me to upgrade from version 1.3.5
My goodness this is a beta. It sounds as though you’re all looking for a final release here. It’s my guess that is why the download did not appear in the file area.
I had no problem downloading or installing this release and like the disclaimer says ‘this is not for a production store’.
[quote name=‘roban’]My goodness this is a beta. It sounds as though you’re all looking for a final release here. It’s my guess that is why the download did not appear in the file area.
I had no problem downloading or installing this release and like the disclaimer says ‘this is not for a production store’.[/QUOTE]
You got that right. Its a Beta and I don’t see this going stable for months. There are a lot of bugs. It does require PHP5 but works with mysql 4 . I have PHP 4.3 so I ran this under PHP5 as cgi and it worked.
I have been playing with it for few days, its a different software altogether and needs getting used to it. Some of the new features are great but I was expecting more, hopefuly in the final release we’ll see more of what we asked for.
It would be nice if the developers let us know what is to be included so we can have an input on how things should work.
[quote name=‘baballuci’]It would be nice if the developers let us know what is to be included so we can have an input on how things should work.[/QUOTE]
I agree Charlie. I’m also tired of trying to squash that bug in your avatar.
[quote name=‘MikeFold’]I was just playing around with the beta, the “blocks” approach seems like it would be good for most people to aid designing.[/quote]
Yeah, the design blocks are a great feature and big improvement on the ListMania stuff.