[brandonvd]

Struck,

Hah, it isn't just me then. I've been wondering what happened to my upgrade.

I usually don't mind how CS-Cart doesn't do all of the upgrades at once, but I find it odd that they send out an email to everyone about it and then don't make the upgrade available. You'd think there would be a better solution.

Oh well.

Thanks,

Brandon

[tbirnseth]

Note that cs-cart has a really bad habit of using the same version number but with multiple versions of code. I.e. they send out an update to a few sites (and load up the files directory) and find there are problems. They fix the update and update the files area with new code. Then they roll it out a bit more (fix, roll, fix, roll) all the while the version number remains the same.

Unfortunately if you were one of the early ones, you got bugs. and if you downloaded the archive from the files area too early, you also got bugs. But they will all report Version 3.0.6.

This is a really bad software practice. It would be better to admit there are issues, and simply roll the version (or notify people the the archive has changed so they can grab the correct one when it's all done).

So if you don't have an upgrade availability in your store... Be grateful, the one you do get will actually work!

It's hard to develop a cart that works in multiple versions of PHP, different Web Servers and different hosting platforms not to mention the wide variety of ways that merchants actually use the software. But multiple versions of the same version number should be strictly avoided....

I think it's good that they have a staged roll out process. A Beta program for early adopters would be even better and provide greater stability to the resulting product. The Demo Store just doesn't cut it for testing.

[Flow]

something I learned from experience: always wait at least 2 weeks before doing an upgrade.

[Struck]

Struck,

Hah, it isn't just me then. I've been wondering what happened to my upgrade.

I usually don't mind how CS-Cart doesn't do all of the upgrades at once, but I find it odd that they send out an email to everyone about it and then don't make the upgrade available. You'd think there would be a better solution.

Oh well.

Thanks,

Brandon

Brandon, you & I have both been down this road many times & typically know what to expect.

Although, this particular 3.0.6 (minor maintenance release) was posted like a week ago and it is still not available in my site, which is non-typical from past experience, so they must have retracted it due to "something"?

[Struck]

something I learned from experience: always wait at least 2 weeks before doing an upgrade.

Come on Flow, life is too boring if you can't live on the edge a little, I normally just closely follow a few of our beta tester friends for a few hours, then let er rip!

And Remember, Newbies are truly our friends & we could never survive without them!

[Struck]

A Beta program for early adopters would be even better and provide greater stability to the resulting product. The Demo Store just doesn't cut it for testing.

That would be a great idea & I would also like to see this! The upcoming 3.1.1 version would be a prime candidate to have a Beta release available for final real world user testing just prior to the production release. I believe in the end our friends from CS-Cart would also greatly benefit from this in allowing for even more stable releases.

[StellarBytes]

I've done beta testing as a selected group prior to public releases for shopping carts I've used in the past. There was usually a group of a dozen users - both shop owners and shop owner-come-developers - and any bugs we discovered, we would have confirmed by others taking part in the beta testing, before submitting it as a bug. A lot of the time what is reported as a 'bug' tends to be error operator, so this approach definitely cuts down on the "real World" bugs discovered by shop owners rather than software testers.

CS-Cart could easily do this - take a group of well versed users and offer an incentive to take part - discounted licenses, free upgrades, etc.

[Magpie Don]

So if you don't have an upgrade availability in your store... Be grateful, the one you do get will actually work!

tbirnseth,
I couldn't agree more. As a CS-Cart user since ver1 and a prior CTO, I can attest to the fact that your entire post on this topic is absolutely correct.

A lot of the time what is reported as a 'bug' tends to be error operator, so this approach definitely cuts down on the "real World" bugs discovered by shop owners rather than software testers.

Additionally, the amount of time that would be saved researching bug reports that are not coming from your test bed could be spent on creating documentation and tutorials, which in turn will reduce the amount of "user error" bug reports.

[notehi]

Fix Store Import from 2.2.x to 3.0.6 ?

[tbirnseth]

That would be a great idea & I would also like to see this! The upcoming 3.1.1 version would be a prime candidate to have a Beta release available for final real world user testing just prior to the production release. I believe in the end our friends from CS-Cart would also greatly benefit from this in allowing for even more stable releases.

Unfortunately, when you are unwilling to expose your development staff to key customers, it is impossible to conduct proper beta testing. I've had discussions with developers in the past only to have agreements reached be backtracked and overridden by someone else. Communication with the developer subsequently stopped.

I have been suggesting for years that they have a group of about a dozen users (1/2 developers and 1/2 merchants) to review and help prioritize future changes/enhancements as well as to be early adopters for new releases. I've also suggested that they adopt a more logical strategy for version numbers and make it so that the 'minor' number (last) be a bug-fix increment and then one could then do an upgrade from say 3.0.1 to 3.1.0 and leave it up to the user as to whether they want to upgrade to any specific minor release. I.e. if I'm on 3.0.1 and I see something in 3.0.5 that I must have, I should be able to upgrade directly from 3.0.1 to 3.0.5 or 3.1.0 without having to do all the incremental steps. This would make things so much less painful when it comes to upgrades. So in concept, a 3.0.x release is really a patch to a base of 3.0 and is inclusive of any/all patches for 3.0 to date. Bt an actual "upgrade" happens between 3.0 and 3.1 only....

Also a pre-upgrade preview would be excellent. I.e. identify all conflicts in advance of making any actual changes to the store. Expecting an hour for an upgrade and having it take days because of unexpected changes is frustrating at best.

[Flow]

Come on Flow, life is too boring if you can't live on the edge a little, I normally just closely follow a few of our beta tester friends for a few hours, then let er rip!

And Remember, Newbies are truly our friends & we could never survive without them!

Haha, very true! And some of you know I have lived life on the edge for quite a well. I'm just a lot more sane -and boring - now.

As for the upgrade: I always have some dev stores running on my server for stuff like this

[Magpie Don]

3.0.6 upgrade was the easiest upgrade ever.

[StellarBytes]

3.0.6 upgrade was the easiest upgrade ever.

True, CS-Cart should do this each and every time as Tony said. I've got stores I really can't be bothered to upgrade because I know there will be a lot of conflicts - why not offer incremental updates which include small fixes, not a 3.0.1>3.0.3>3.0.4>3.0.5 which includes dozens of fixes in each release. If it ain't broke, why fix it? In the end, this mentality only heightens CS-Cart's costs as they need to keep support staff trained for V1, V2 and V3 because the upgrades are just too much of a headache for store owners to bother with, so the minority use the latest build while the majority are running V1.xx>V2.2.5.

[kingsleypress]

Kingsley, the "Envelope" option is under the Configure tab in a drop down list for "Type of mail". It's in the form that includes your USPS account number:
1. Choose Shipping Methods
2. Click Edit link next to First-Class International Large Envelope
3. Click Configure tab

After following your instructions here, everything worked fine. That is, until I upgraded to 3.0.6. Granted, this was a very easy upgrade. But it impacted the shipping methods on my site in two ways:

1. International Large Envelope now shows up as the SECOND choice for international customers, even though it's the cheapest of the four offered.

2. International Large Envelope DOES NOT SHOW UP AT ALL in Twigmo. But I know it was before upgrading to 3.0.6 because I had customers who used it from Twigmo.

I've mentioned this in a ticket to support, but don't have much faith they will do anything.

[Magpie Don]

Regarding problem #1 - the order that the shipping options show up in has nothing to do with cost, and is determined by the POSITION you assign to the shipping method.

I don't know anything about Twigmo. I find it mostly useless (and I wish I had a good application to create orders on an iPad at conventions - one which connects to my web server and updates the inventory and such.)

[kingsleypress]

Regarding problem #1 - the order that the shipping options show up in has nothing to do with cost, and is determined by the POSITION you assign to the shipping method.

OK, got it. Fixed. Thanks.

I don't know anything about Twigmo. I find it mostly useless.

Really? Why? It seems to work quite nicely for me (except it's not playing well with the Stripe payment add-on right now...works fine with PayPal Pro though). Because of the problem I'm having, a customer left my site after getting "Order Failed" about five times and presumably would have gone elsewhere if I hadn't called her and taken the order by phone. More and more people are using their phones to buy stuff online...and some of those people don't seem to have a computer.

[jhagg]

OK, got it. Fixed. Thanks.

[/font][/color]
Really? Why? It seems to work quite nicely for me (except it's not playing well with the Stripe payment add-on right now...works fine with PayPal Pro though). Because of the problem I'm having, a customer left my site after getting "Order Failed" about five times and presumably would have gone elsewhere if I hadn't called her and taken the order by phone. More and more people are using their phones to buy stuff online...and some of those people don't seem to have a computer.

Stripe add-on working fine for me with 3.06 FYI

[kingsleypress]

Stripe add-on working fine for me with 3.06 FYI

And it works with Twigmo? Stripe works fine for me too, on the desktop browser version.

[NDanecker]

I downloaded 3.0.6 from my files area and it is only ~40mb in size. I extracted and compared to a previous download from a few weeks ago which is ~46mb in size and there are lots of files missing. Thinking there might be something wrong with my ISP or computer I tried the download from another computer with different ISP and same issue.

Is this common for them to update the version in your file area without you knowing it or changing the release number in addition to having it omit a bunch of files?

[tbirnseth]

Yes, it's normal. Cs-cart has a bad habit of changing the archive as they roll out the product. I.e. they find major bug, fix it, then change the archive.

This is very bad practice, and they've said they corrected it, but evidence indicates they really haven't stopped it.