As this is my first post here, I have been building PHP applications for years including the entire backend for a pay-as-you-go cellular company.
Version 1.2.16.
Don't mean to rant here, just offering some outside perspective. The overall concept of the store is very well thought out and usable, but overly complicated in some places - especially in the code.
The Scriptaculous script is a mess. It forces the install of Demo items, which are a pain to remove - for no reason. There is no option to include demo items or not.
As far as demo items go, what do you mean, "click on each one and select delete?" Why put that on the person you want buying your extensions? There is code for that.
We were forced to do a clean install and reconfigure everything because of the lack of an upgrade version of installer and AbanteCart was triplicating our orders. We only have flatrate shipping, store pick up, and Square installed as extensions.
In addition we had no idea the reports were not reporting any useful information. They were tabulating cart items not order items - which the clean install also does. This should be noted and clarified in the next version. When there is already other issues going on, this appears as another install bug.
During the import of the 220 items that took a week to add to the Scriptaculous version, we found extra database fields were in the exported source data that were not in the clean install version for tables such as orders. My suspicion is that extensions caused that, but they should not be touching the source tables. Two days doing exports and imports - again this should be automated-=>export company / store.
Appears to me Customer->Orders->Items is much simpler to work with than what the devs burdened themselves with.
In any case, it is my opinion that the Scriptaculous installer be fixed or removed. Ways to improve it:
- Set the demo items up in a demo store, not the default one
- Have two installers: demo store for learning and one for actual use.
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