It has been a long time... [osCommerce]

[zigojacko]

Has been a very long time since we have had the misfortune of working with osCommerce but last week we took on a new job, a complete overhaul of the technical elements of the SEO for an ecommerce business using osCommerce.

Everything about this ecommerce solution is absolutely horrendous on so many levels, please, if any business even considers using osCommerce for their website, you need to seriously consider where you'll end up.

Awful awful awful. And we will be recommending this business looks to upgrade their ecommerce solution at their earliest opportunity.

Just thought I would put that out there.

 

[Websitehandyman]

Has been a very long time since we have had the misfortune of working with osCommerce but last week we took on a new job, a complete overhaul of the technical elements of the SEO for an ecommerce business using osCommerce.

Everything about this ecommerce solution is absolutely horrendous on so many levels, please, if any business even considers using osCommerce for their website, you need to seriously consider where you'll end up.

Awful awful awful. And we will be recommending this business looks to upgrade their ecommerce solution at their earliest opportunity.

Just thought I would put that out there.

And were will you end up exactly ?

I've run an OS site for about 12 years and never had any issues. Although I am currently moving over to a more modern cart now. I will miss the ease of use that comes with OS (although now my site is using creloaded a side-shoot). And not just for the admin either, I had a customer say how easy the site was to use only last week. It's going to be hard to tare myself away.

In fact I suggest you take a look at creloaded if your customer doesn't want to change. They have just re-established their ownership and are now back in the hands of people who care.

 

[zigojacko]

And were will you end up exactly ?

I've run an OS site for about 12 years and never had any issues. Although I am currently moving over to a more modern cart now. I will miss the ease of use that comes with OS (although now my site is using creloaded a side-shoot). And not just for the admin either, I had a customer say how easy the site was to use only last week. It's going to be hard to tare myself away.

In fact I suggest you take a look at creloaded if your customer doesn't want to change. They have just re-established their ownership and are now back in the hands of people who care.

You'll end up light years behind other ecommerce websites (potentially competitors) in the websites default natural state in terms of being found online.

The code is awful, the optimisation is awful, the structure is awful, the rewriting is awful... You name it, it is awful. Whilst you say you have never had any issues, you are probably unaware just how much osCommerce is holding your site back or have invested a considerable amount of time/money considerably hacking the core to improve how it performs out of its box.

IMO, there is no "ease of use" with ocCommerce. The admin functionality is poor, not user friendly and coded as equally as badly as the front end. Limitations on configurations/flexibility is endless too.

Regardless of any usage of any third party forks of osCommerce, the fact remains that the same dated, hardly changed, hardly progressed, hardly maintained/developed osCommerce core will still be used, albeit extended so the majority of the problems will remain.

 

[antropy]

I'd have to agree that there are much better alternatives now. I'm not surprised it all feels extremely comfortable and easy to use after 12 years though! Out of interest, what cart are you moving over to?

 

[Deleted member 27344]

a complete overhaul of the technical elements of the SEO for an ecommerce business using osCommerce.

My thoughts are with you at this difficult time.

 

[Websitehandyman]

I'd have to agree that there are much better alternatives now. I'm not surprised it all feels extremely comfortable and easy to use after 12 years though! Out of interest, what cart are you moving over to?

Well 12 years is a long time many redesigns and different versions of OSC used and I wouldn't disagree with most the comments about OSC but the are 100,000s of shop owners who owe a debt of gratitude to the developers who created it. I'm not up to date on the current version but it cost me nothing and it's done the job of hosting well over 4,000 products. Never had anyone complain about the site or be unable to use it.

My aim has always been to get the product in front of someone and convert them to customer taking the money as soon as possible and as easy as possible.

I've been well aware of the issues and the reaction the OSC cart gets from some people. I've tested many carts over many years but I'm still happy with the current one from a business point of view. But you can only hold on to code for so long when development ends.

I'm sure more modern carts appeal to developers more but then I've always found what suits a developer doesn't always suit a shop owner having to deal with day to day product turnaround.

My new site is CS-CART PRO which is far more advanced but the learning curve is also advanced too.

 

[edmondscommerce]

We've worked with osCommerce for a long time, it was at one point *the* open source shopping cart and it would be fair to say that the modern crop of open source carts owe a lot from the beginnings that oscommerce made.

That isn't to say it is a good product but in all honesty I have no problems working with it simply because we know it so well.

As said though, for a new site build it is definitely the wrong choice, even the forks like CRELoaded (now LoadedCommerce I believe) are not really great as a choice for a new site build.

We still have a number of clients running sites that are at their core osCommerce but are now so heavily modified and extended that it would be fair to say they are practically bespoke platforms. For these kinds of people, ugprading to a modern cart would be a hugely expensive undertaking as all of that functionality would need to be rebuilt, perhaps years and years of custom development.

Now if you want to moan about a horrible shopping cart platform, try the PHP version of ecommerce-templates...
http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=97959

 

[cartaddon]

i also used oscommerce before coz it was the most popular and it is free to use. however as time goes by, they're pretty slow with software updates and a lot of shopping carts emerge with stunning functionality. we switch it to Interspire Shopping Cart and its been a great ride until now.

 

[HarveyBentley]

Oscommerce is horrible. Magento is where the real developers meets it's maker. It's lightyears ahead of any ecommerce software. It's so powerful, some say it's hard to learn - but so is learning HTML if you haven't touched it before.