Shopping Cart Operations > Feedback
Feedback and most wanted features after few weeks with AbanteCart
OneMore:
Hello,
I am using AbanteCart 1.2.11 for a few weeks and just imported around 140 products from a previous tentative with PrestaShop.
I am the kind of person who likes to get my hands dirty, formatting SQL INSERT queries though a spreadsheet and a code editor.
There were no exceptions this time, and I imported my products through phpMyAdmin.
To create categories, I used AbanteCart's admin.
Here are few ideas coming from my experience with AbanteCart.
1) Please, show SKU everywhere!
SKU numbers are my personal product references in my catalog.
These are my product IDs, way more that the product ID that AbanteCart's gives to products.
I mostly sell spare parts, and most of them have a model.
But the SKU remains the reference that uniquely identifies a product in my inventory (Excel file, a.s.o.). Even the picture names of my products contains the SKU.
I assume that also for those of you selling new items in quantities, the SKU is of vital importance.
Currently, that my products (identified by their SKU) and their prices were imported, I still need to write their name in three languages, and to upload their images.
I applied this quick-fix temporary solution of duplicating the SKU in the "model" field using this SQL query:
UPDATE `ac_products` SET model=sku WHERE (model='' AND sku!='');
It is the only way for me to know who is who.
To my opinion, the SKU should be displayed at the following locations:
* as a column in the products list, preferably between the product thumbnail and the "name" field.
* at top of the General tab, right to the cloning button
* at top of the Media tab, and of all other products tabs, at a similar location (top left).The SKU being the "instant identifier" of a product, I suggest these locations in the tabs rather than in the product information header, so that the SKU is more highlighted.
2) Attach a product to a category directly from the product list.
After importing my products, I had to attach them manually to the categories for my AbanteCart shop (which were different from those that I had in Prestashop).
I had to open two tabs in phpMyAdmin, first one with the view described in my answer to Old-Paul about bulk moving products to a different category, and second one showing the records of the 'category_description' table.
By comparing, I could manually edit the category IDs in the first tab, but it was painful.
I would suggest a one character wide droplist in the product list, that upon click would expand itself like a popup, Ajax-load categories, and let pick one. The categories could be listed in a classical drop list, or expandable tree.
A good location for the one-char-wide droplist could be beween the checkbox and the product thumbnail.
3) Add an EAN13 column in the backend, and structured data in the frontend.
Nowadays, EAN numbers as well as structured data (JSON-LD) are essentials to e-commerce.
I would really suggest adding a column for an optional EAN13 number in the main product table as a core feature.
Maybe I missed something, but I could not see JSON-LD data as native in AbanteCart.
There is in the market place a "SEO Rich Snippet Microdata for Products" extension that I didn't test.
Prestashop offers natively a field for EAN (as well as a few ones like ISBN which is limited to books).
I'm not in favor of increasing the number of fields excessively, but EAN sounds to me like a "must have".
4) Save and directly jump to next translation.
When saving a new product, if the shop is multilingual, I would appreciate two buttons: "Save" and "Save and jump to next tranlation".
So, after saving, one could directly be directed to the fields in which to edit the next language without having to select the language in the drop list and wait again that everythings loads.
5) If there are few languages: bar of toggle butttons instead of drop list.
I am aware this would increase code complexity, and reduce the core principle of AbanteCart's scalabily unless the drop list remains, but most shops are likely in just a few languages. In the admin, a bar of toggle buttons rather than a drop list would bring some gain of performance when editing products, categories, a.s.o.
6) Don't resize and don't rename the main product images
All my images are pre-processed and optimized (size, compression, ...) depending on the level of detail needed.
The automatic resizing of pictures to a size of 500 pixels is very painful and makes the zoom-scroll feature almost useless.
Make the resize optional with a toggle button in "System > Settings > Appearance" (set on "Off" by default) near to the suggested image size.
For users that upload unoptimized images, a dialog box could be fired, suggesting a resize and asking them if they accept it.
I will detail this idea more in detail below.
7) Older dashboard pictures were better
It is a personal opinion, but I find the dashboard pictures from version 1.2.11 better than those of version 1.3.4.
Although a bit old-fashioned, they were clearer than those of version 1.3.4.
They were more intuitive, without the need for some further cerebral decyphering.
llegrand:
Hello OneMore, been seeing your posts for a few days now. I would like to suggest that you are using quite an old version of AbanteCart - 1.2.11 was release in 2017.
The most recent version is 1.3.4 released in 2023 You can check this page for more info of versions https://www.abantecart.com/shopping-cart-news
Based on your suggestions quite a few if not all have been added to the more recent versions over time. It is easy to update your version BUT you should consider doing in the proper methods - one version at a time. Or you can install the latest version and reimport your product and update whatever you think still needs modification for your needs.
Cheers and joyful holiday season to you.
OneMore:
Hello llegrand,
Thank you for suggesting the newer version 1.3.4.
Good to know that some or all suggested features are already present in the latest version. I should try it.
I was aware of version 1.3.4, but I expressly picked AbanteCart version 1.2.11 as being able to run on PHP 7.1.33.
The fact is that I am creating my websites locally before they go live.
There are several websites that I still develop locally on PHP 7.1.33, mostly because the favorite and most stable version of the CMS that I am using, or its extensions, cannot run beyond 7.1.33. Same for other codebases that I am still using. I even had to port recently some of them from PHP 5 to PHP 7.
It is possible running several versions of PHP on a single xampp installation, but in practice it has revealed excessively complicated for me.
So far, PHP 7.1.33 has revealed for me one the most polyvalent version, as many software that I use can run with it.
I have ported lot of code from PHP 5 to PHP 7, but porting from PHP 7.1.33 to 7.2.5 (or beyond) can sometimes be difficult, and I would have some huge code bases to port. Hence, as for now, I decided to stay with PHP 7.1.33.
To keep tings simple as possible, I also left my remote multi-sites hosting with PHP 7.1.33.
For testing purposes, I also use a secondary budget hosting with PHP 8, but it is slow.
Would AbanteCart 1.3.4 be backward compatible with PHP 7.1, I would have tried this newer version, but this is unfortunately not the case. I didn't try bypassing the installer to see if the newest version could possibly run on PHP 7.
I could compare the files of AbanteCart 1.3.4 with those of AbanteCart 1.2.11, and maybe port AbanteCart backward to PHP 7.
But currently I don't have time enough for this.
Cheers and an joyful holiday season to you too.
llegrand:
Updating - AbanteCart v 1.3.4 requires a min of PHP 8.0
As to updating your PHP version here is my take after 40+ years in computers, the number one reason is security, number two is performance.
Take a peek at this versions supported PHP info
https://www.php.net/supported-versions.php
Since we provide managed services as well as hosting to our clients we firmly support using current support OS and PHP versions again based on security and performance.
Unfortunately for most things in computer world as well as other areas of life - change is the only absolute. But it does keep things interesting.
Most hosting providers now have multi PHP versions. And they can be applied to different domains. So if you have one domain where you can install AbanteCart 1.3.4 - and select PHP 8.0 at the minimum that would leave your other sites running different PHP versions, Just a thought.
8) 8)
Basara:
--- Quote from: OneMore on December 17, 2023, 01:38:47 PM ---I was aware of version 1.3.4, but I expressly picked AbanteCart version 1.2.11 as being able to run on PHP 7.1.33.
--- End quote ---
Hello.
I think 1.2.16 and 1.3.0 can run on PHP 7.1 why did you choose 1.2.11?
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