X-Cart Next beta testing continues
 

Hi!

Finally we are glad to announce the beta release of our next generation e-commerce solution called X-Cart Next: http://next.x-cart.com

You can see the X-Cart Next online demo:
- storefront: http://next.x-cart.com/demo
- store back-end: http://next.x-cart.com/demo/admin.php

What makes our new platform outstanding?

1. The clean user interface with multiple AJAX enhancements and cool new features like drag'n'drop shopping, one-page checkout, shipping cost calculator and the ability to log in with a Facebook/Google account makes the shopping process on your website very comfortable for your customers.

2. The upgrade process is really easy: when there are new versions of the core or modules you just click "Install upgrades" button and X-Cart Next downloads and installs the updates from our servers for you

3. You can modify everything in the shop: the site design, the built-in logic and even the features added by other modules. The new advanced modular architecture built on top of PHP 5.3 objects and Doctrine 2.0 ORM framework allows you to do it without "hacking" core files.

4. Custom modules can be reused on multiple shops without adaptation. Moreover, you can sold them through the same system that we use to deliver upgrades and our modules to X-Cart Next users"


We have created a forum section dedicated to X-Cart Next, feel free to ask your questions here:
http://forum.x-cart.com/forumdisplay.php?f=52

Please also check the X-Cart Next FAQ at http://next.x-cart.com/faqs.html

Re: X-Cart Next is officially released
 

Congratulation. A milestone for your company.

Re: X-Cart Next is officially released
 

Congrats guys! Big milestone indeed. Best of luck with it ;)

Re: X-Cart Next is officially released
 

The long wait is over :) Congrats.

Re: X-Cart Next is officially released
 

Congratulations.

A suggestion - if possible, you could keep a list specifically geared toward the audience of current X-cart users that would help us to understand the X-Cart Next features relative to what we already know with the current X-Cart. It would help us understand when we could use X-Cart Next for new projects as well as convert existing ones. For example - when planning a project, I understand this list is available: http://www.x-cart.com/xcart_features.html. Could you keep a list something like this in the X-Cart next forum, with a column for X-Cart Next indicating that the functionality is already supported or the functionality is planned, or is not applicable or not planned. A roadmap would be nice - but just getting a feel for when the features we are used to will be available makes planning possible. It would also help 3rd party developers know where their opportunities are.

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Re: X-Cart Next is officially released
 

Very necessary. Is there any plans for an RMA module for this?

Re: X-Cart Next is officially released
 

great, purchase x-cart about a month ago, and set it up and spend close to a grand with all the added features (really PISSED that I purchased a lifetime upgrades. and now you discontinue this and call it something else)

what a joke

Re: X-Cart Next is officially released
 

Don't be pissed. It will take some time before XC next is ready for prime time and has all the features and mods you already have... So your money are not a waste right now, you can continue with what you have for at least another year or two if not longer

Re: X-Cart Next is officially released
 

Look over this Forum, it is based on XC4, lots of solutions most of them for free. You have lots of trusted 3rd party developers for XC4 with affordable costs. As Steve said it will take 1 - 3 years to get XCN to the level of XC4 when talking about features. Also switching to XCN you have to forget Smarty, which for me is like a great buddy. So, think deeper and continue using your software without being pissed.

Re: X-Cart Next is officially released
 

Thanks guys for the reassurance,

Re: X-Cart Next is officially released
 

Vyacheslav ,

So does this replace Litecommerce? I am starting to get confused with all these stores: Ecwid, Litecommerce, Next, etc. I was hoping to setup a new store with Litecommerce but there always seems to be upgrade issues. Ecwid is great but needs hosted on something like Wordpress, etc.

Re: X-Cart Next is officially released
 

Jonathan, this does indeed replace litecommerce. It is just a name change. Xcart 5 was going to be litecommerce. Now they have merged XC5/litecommerce and renamed it all XcartNext. So now we have three platforms available from QT: Ecwid, Xcart, and XcartNext. Hopefully that clears up the confusion.

Re: X-Cart Next is officially released
 

I was experimenting with Litecommerce and created a store. I wonder what happens to that now if it is being replaced with a paid version.

Re: X-Cart Next is officially released
 

Not sure that is the case. Both LC and XC Next will exists and yes it is unnecessary confusion

Re: X-Cart Next is officially released
 

We don't have plans on closing LiteCommerce 3 yet.

You may consider LiteCommerce 3 as a "lite" Open Source version of X-Cart Next. It has less features out for the box and comes with a very limited support from our team (the low-priority BugTracker only).

If you are not an enthusiast programmer, it's recommeded to go with one of the three solutions: X-Cart Next, X-Cart Gold/Pro and Ecwid.

There is no script that could upgrade a LiteCommerce 3 shop to X-Cart Next. However, it should be possible to do it as follows:
1. Upgrade your LiteCommerce 3 shop to the core v1.1.0 (when it is released)
2. Replace shop files with files from the X-Cart Next distributive
3. Do a few MySQL queries to the database
4. Re-build the classes cache
5. Enable extra modules from X-Cart Next

Right now we are testing the LiteCommerce upgrade function (the 1.0.x -> 1.1.x upgrade). When it's done we will check the above steps and I'll revise the above steps.

Re: X-Cart Next is officially released
 

Hello, X-Carters!

We had a long discussion of your comments to the X-Cart Next release announcement, and we decided to switch back to beta testing of X-Cart Next. Steve (aka cflsystem) and other people are right, we have been working on this platform for a very long time, and a couple of extra months of beta testing won't hurt anyone.

It's not because X-Cart Next software is buggy: the current core has been tested for over a year under LiteCommerce3 brand. A much more important point for us is to make sure that the Next platform is the solution that will help our customers to create more successful e-commerce websites. That is why our primary objective here is to gain your feedback, and only then to derive revenue from the new product. We would like you to take the meaning of this beta testing campaign as that X-Cart Next is now ready to be tested in real life, but we are open to any suggestions and ideas that can help us to make it better.

So please feel free to download X-Cart Next beta to see how it works, and give us your feedback at http://bt.x-cart.com/. We welcome any comments and suggestions.

As for X-Cart Gold/Pro (version 4), we definitely do not plan on closing this platform in the near future. We know it has a lot of fans and 3d party developers, so we just cannot let them down. Moreover, we are going to continue working on this platform and make it better from release to release. You can see that for yourself based on the three previous releases. More features, more integrations, more stable (as best as we can make it at this point :)) in future versions. Vyacheslav already wrote that we will continue to release new versions and upgrades of X-Cart v4 at least for one year after the last license has been sold.
While XC4 rules (as totaltec said), we will support this platform and improve it.

Re: X-Cart Next is officially released
 

Thanks for making this decision, its a very good idea. I am still testing/learning the new platform myself. Lets really push this thing to it's limits!

Re: X-Cart Next is officially released
 

Thank you for reconsidering and putting it back to beta.

Re: X-Cart Next is officially released
 

So Litecommerce will be terminated then?

A little unfortunate for those that have supported this project don't you think?

Re: X-Cart Next is officially released
 

LiteCommerce is an open source project - it cannot be terminated while there are users contributing into the project.

Also, we don't have plans on stopping committing improvements into LiteCommerce.