Post by Qphoria » Mon Dec 10, 2012 8:39 pm

kellysko875 wrote:
Qphoria wrote: It is also important to follow the basic Theme developing guidelines
Does this exist anywhere now?
No idea. Daniel appears to be updating documentation.

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Post by hasantar » Wed Dec 12, 2012 2:38 pm

I'd like to add the perspective of a store owner running Shoppica to this thread.

The reason we use Shoppica is because of the quality of the design and usability of the theme. In fact, I looked at the themes first and then decided the cart software. Shoppica ticks off most of the features and design elements we need out of the box. Also note that I not new to ecommerce.

Opencart default theme works in a very 'primitive' way. Imagine wanting to add 5-8 different products to cart on the same page and having scroll down again and again. In my opinion carts should be sticky in the first place anyway.

No way to set category specific banners? This is a big one. How am I suppose to cross promote? Use the primitive featured/latest mods which show the same 4-8 products across the whole site?

I get some mod developers giving me negativity because we use Shoppica. Well hey, just mention it is only guaranteed to work with the default theme and offer customisation for an hourly fee.. no dramas. Nobody would want to run a store off the default theme or a fancier version of it.

As a store owner, I want less fuss but more buzz. Shoppica2 gives me that out of the box.

Just my 2 cents.

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Post by JNeuhoff » Wed Dec 12, 2012 6:25 pm

As a store owner, I want less fuss but more buzz. Shoppica2 gives me that out of the box.
Good to hear that you got it to work.

As an addon developer, I can only repeat what I previously said: Many addons won't work with Shoppica themes, because Shoppica does unecessary changes to the OpenCart web theme conventions. So we won't support Shoppica for our addons.

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Post by Qphoria » Thu Dec 13, 2012 12:39 pm

hasantar wrote:I'd like to add the perspective of a store owner running Shoppica to this thread.

The reason we use Shoppica is because of the quality of the design and usability of the theme. In fact, I looked at the themes first and then decided the cart software. Shoppica ticks off most of the features and design elements we need out of the box. Also note that I not new to ecommerce.

Opencart default theme works in a very 'primitive' way. Imagine wanting to add 5-8 different products to cart on the same page and having scroll down again and again. In my opinion carts should be sticky in the first place anyway.

No way to set category specific banners? This is a big one. How am I suppose to cross promote? Use the primitive featured/latest mods which show the same 4-8 products across the whole site?

I get some mod developers giving me negativity because we use Shoppica. Well hey, just mention it is only guaranteed to work with the default theme and offer customisation for an hourly fee.. no dramas. Nobody would want to run a store off the default theme or a fancier version of it.

As a store owner, I want less fuss but more buzz. Shoppica2 gives me that out of the box.

Just my 2 cents.
No doubt that shoppica is pretty... the term "Lipstick on a Pig" comes to mind...
Then again, a LOT of people using opencart like shoppica, so you are just another "me-too".
But if you want less "Fuss" then you don't want shoppica as most mods will cost extra to support.

There is no reason why shoppica couldn't be designed using the OpenCart formatted method. The choice to botch it up is the real problem.

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Post by ecoleman » Fri Dec 14, 2012 12:02 am

hasantar wrote:I'd like to add the perspective of a store owner running Shoppica to this thread.

The reason we use Shoppica is because of the quality of the design and usability of the theme. In fact, I looked at the themes first and then decided the cart software. Shoppica ticks off most of the features and design elements we need out of the box. Also note that I not new to ecommerce.

Opencart default theme works in a very 'primitive' way. Imagine wanting to add 5-8 different products to cart on the same page and having scroll down again and again. In my opinion carts should be sticky in the first place anyway.

No way to set category specific banners? This is a big one. How am I suppose to cross promote? Use the primitive featured/latest mods which show the same 4-8 products across the whole site?

I get some mod developers giving me negativity because we use Shoppica. Well hey, just mention it is only guaranteed to work with the default theme and offer customisation for an hourly fee.. no dramas. Nobody would want to run a store off the default theme or a fancier version of it.

As a store owner, I want less fuss but more buzz. Shoppica2 gives me that out of the box.

Just my 2 cents.
I agree that the basic opencart theme does have it's shortcomings, but most of what you have talked about here has nothing to do with the theme itself. Category specific banners etc has nothing to do with the theme, this is just an added module that is included with the theme.

The problems occur mainly with the template files which have in all honesty been botched by their crazy naming system for elements. There should be no reason for this as pretty much all of shoppica theme could be styled with simple CSS, leaving the core code in place.

As a developer it is impossible to code an extension with every conceivable theme in mind, but for the most part all the extensions I've written have plugged in and worked out of the box. The majority of my support calls come from Shoppica users.

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Post by dynamictemplate » Fri Dec 14, 2012 7:30 pm

kellysko875 wrote:
Qphoria wrote: It is also important to follow the basic Theme developing guidelines
Does this exist anywhere now?
try Documentation http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route ... umentation

and screencast http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route ... screencast

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Post by Qphoria » Fri Dec 14, 2012 8:55 pm

dynamictemplate wrote:
kellysko875 wrote:
Qphoria wrote: It is also important to follow the basic Theme developing guidelines
Does this exist anywhere now?
try Documentation http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route ... umentation

and screencast http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route ... screencast
Unfortunately it looks like it was removed completely. I'll have to search the web archive for a copy

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Post by JNeuhoff » Sat Dec 15, 2012 4:52 am

Klimskady wrote:I have Shoppica 2 and use the export tool so its something else.
I am not quite sure, just today I had another customer with this:
The export import tool is great.

But mine doesn't work after I install the shoppica 2 theme.
As I previously said, I won't support non-standard web themes which don't follow basic OpenCart guidelines. There is no reason for shoppica to mess up templates in the admin backend IMHO.

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Post by themeburn » Sat Dec 15, 2012 8:29 pm

the term "Lipstick on a Pig" comes to mind
Thanks for the compliment Qphoria ;)

We were optimists at the beginning of this topic, that we may help each other and reduce the theme vs plugin developer conflict. We have explained, why we have changed the original code so drastically and what should be improved. We even are available for a total remake of the default theme, if Daniel is OK. Maybe use some third party html/css framework like Bootstrap (although it is a bit too much). However, for the moment we are just reading "Shoppica sucks", "We won't support Shoppica anymore", "Stick to the default theme" etc. etc.

What happened with the suggestions that we might propose? :)

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Post by themeburn » Sat Dec 15, 2012 8:36 pm

As I previously said, I won't support non-standard web themes which don't follow basic OpenCart guidelines. There is no reason for shoppica to mess up templates in the admin backend IMHO.
Comrade JNeuhoff,

Please, before you say something, be sure you know, what you are talking about :)

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Post by JNeuhoff » Sat Dec 15, 2012 10:20 pm

themeburn wrote:
As I previously said, I won't support non-standard web themes which don't follow basic OpenCart guidelines. There is no reason for shoppica to mess up templates in the admin backend IMHO.
Comrade JNeuhoff,

Please, before you say something, be sure you know, what you are talking about :)
OK, here is the deal: You fix the shoppica2 so it would at least work with the most commonly used OpenCart addons, such as the Export/Import tool, and I'll be more than happy to let my customers know about it. Moaning about the excessive usage of tables for forms, or an alleged overuse of DIVs, won't help, but sticking closer to OpenCart's original naming of CSS classes and ids probably goes a long way in resolving at least some of the shoppica issues with 3rd party addons. And BTW.: even tables in forms can be styled nicely, too!

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Post by rph » Sun Dec 16, 2012 4:21 am

themeburn wrote:However, for the moment we are just reading "Shoppica sucks", "We won't support Shoppica anymore", "Stick to the default theme" etc. etc.
I'm not looking to pile up on you here, but so many developers being unwilling to support Shoppica should be a bit of a wake-up call. Look at it from our perspective: one theme is generating dozen and dozens of hours of support work. In extreme cases it requires mods to be outright rewritten.

There's always going to be a certain amount of compatibility issues with custom themes. That's a given. But renaming all the classes and rewriting the PHP in alt syntax was an unneeded change that's only going to create problems. As a developer I approach mods with the philosophy of "What are the fewest number of changes I need to make to accomplish my goal?" while Shoppica seems to go in with the idea of rewriting everything.

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Post by Avvici » Sun Dec 16, 2012 4:28 am

I personally think this entire thread is fruitless, and hope it closes soon.

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Post by Shark » Wed Dec 26, 2012 6:08 am

Ampeter wrote:The default opencart theme really needs an overhaul to make it easier to work with. I think this article really nails the current problems and gives a couple of good suggestions to improve the situation.

I specially like the proposal to create a globally accepted "boilerplate" theme.
I so agree with this...

Let me give some examples:
for instance the category module catalog\view\theme\default\template\module\category.tpl puts a ' - ' in front of every sub-category. Of course if you don't want that, you can mess around with css (overflow: hidden and text-indent) but why isn't this kind of thing css based in the first place. Also the module starts with <div class="box"> (as some other do too). This means that I can't have different styled titles if these are in the same column. <div class="box category"> would be so much easier.

The search box has javascript code: 'onkeydown="this.style.color = '#000000';"' now if I want another color I have to unbind this first and re-assign. Why not a class-toggle?

It seems a bit of a pity that the front-end isn't that well thought through for otherwise a great (free) product. It would be beneficial for SEO also.

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Post by NoJoke » Fri Jan 18, 2013 12:48 pm

I do agree with the whole topic of this post, theme developers need to figure out a way to fix the issues with compatibility with certain modules. I am 100% certain that you do not need to change the whole original code and render a module useless for a person to use. I have modified my site the way I like it and I never ever have any problems with installing any module that works with the opencart version that I have.

It would be nice for a theme to just be a theme, not a complete re-write of the whole opencart system. We we all think of themes we think of some different css styling of the items that are already installed on the cart. I'm just wondering if they want all of these fancy changing of the whole design of opencart, why can't the just make them as modules for the theme?

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Post by zuhenry » Mon Feb 18, 2013 12:20 pm

Hello,

Sure we could write the themes and being as simple as in csszengarden.com but then nobody would buy our themes, they just would download the CSS files.
What is the solution, to rename classes and mix the CSS so that they actually have to buy the theme.

Right?

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Post by Qphoria » Mon Feb 18, 2013 12:42 pm

zuhenry wrote:Hello,

Sure we could write the themes and being as simple as in csszengarden.com but then nobody would buy our themes, they just would download the CSS files.
What is the solution, to rename classes and mix the CSS so that they actually have to buy the theme.

Right?

zh
Eh.. if someone has the know how to reverse engineer your theme they can do it no matter what you have.. But jacking it up for that reason seems ridiculous

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Post by rph » Mon Feb 18, 2013 12:57 pm

It's a valid concern for a pure CSS driven design. It's not much work to rip images and stylesheets. That doesn't really justify the craziness we have now, though. Even in designs predominantly achieved through stylesheets you're going to have tpl changes and that would be tedious enough to reverse engineer that it's doubtful many would ever try.

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Post by Qphoria » Mon Feb 18, 2013 2:00 pm

rph wrote:It's a valid concern for a pure CSS driven design. It's not much work to rip images and stylesheets. That doesn't really justify the craziness we have now, though. Even in designs predominantly achieved through stylesheets you're going to have tpl changes and that would be tedious enough to reverse engineer that it's doubtful many would ever try.
The concern is valid.. but I don't think making it all jacked up for that sake is the answer. But it is a valid point about making it more like csszengarden will make it too easy to jack the few files.

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Post by WilliamBD » Mon Feb 18, 2013 11:55 pm

From being quite new to OC this thread scares me for this reason:

The trouble it looks like I will have to go through to create my own theme for OC given what people have said. I would have expected it to be as easy as changing the CSS (With added class hooks so everything can look different). Whilst yes this does open up OC to be like 'CSS Zen Garden' isn't this what we want?! Looks roll back the clock here in regard to 'Word Press' and 'Joomla' and 'Drupal' - Which won? Ofc it was WP...why? Because it became so much easier to use.

Another prospective is that with just changing the css you could essential give OC a boost like never before. If you are changing code them you are changing more than just the 'look and feel' of the site - which puts you in to the module creation park not the theme development park. Sad but true.

I admit for being free OC is quite nice, with magento no longer free (in any serious workable capacity) OC has the market cornered for now....but the window to monopolise in is closing fast. I only recently made a decision to learn OC - I know word press and I also know wordpress has some fast growing viable ecommerce solutions which are getting better.

*Disclaimer: I hope I have been as clear as possible and helpful. If you are unsure of anything please ask I will be happy to help - I do frequently watch the posts I have posted in previously.

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