Re: X-Cart 5.3 roadmap
 

Thanks for keeping me sane :)

Re: X-Cart 5.3 roadmap
 

On the good side here are the things I do like:
1. Support is top notch. They do respond and they get things done
2. XC5 is current and feels new
3. I do like the new features and the mod partners. It comes at a price of more bugs, but at least you see it moving forward.
4. When things do work....they work well and I can tell already that there is much less tech support from my customers, because the cart is more user friendly....
5. Feature-wise it crushes XC4

To stay with the Roadmap theme of this post....I just wish there was a way to mitigate the updates and bugs during these frequent updates.

Let's hope that this new script conversion process works.

Re: X-Cart 5.3 roadmap
 

Agreed, core changes should not have this impact. Since 5.0, properly built modules should be version-agnostic, inherently future-proof, and able to run regardless of core changes. The store owner shouldn't care what version of 5 they are using, where each update is a no-brainer, if not automatic, since it further solidifies the core, and all installed modules benefit. If this is not possible or is very difficult then something is fundamentally wrong with v5.

Re: X-Cart 5.3 roadmap
 

Simple and straightforward certainly works for us!

Our live store runs perfectly on X-Cart 5.2.6 and we will NOT change this until X-Cart 5.2.11 i.e. the final release of the X-Cart 5.2.* series.

Why? For the reasons that cflsystems has highlighted above... we don't need too! Do you? Really?

The switch from our old 4.1.9 store was NOT easy... but we think that X-Cart 5 series is ultimately better for future business (in our case anyway).

There were many, annoying bugs with some of the earlier X-Cart 5.1.* and 5.2.* series versions. Too many really to be fair but... with patience they were all resolved or work arounds were structured and implemented. We had items written as Custom Modifications at an early stage, which now appear in the latest version (5.2.10) by default. In theory, when we run the 5.2.11 final upgrade we *should* be able to simply switch off those modules (and delete them) as that functionality should now be within the core process itself. This will make things easier and more streamlined.... Famous last words :D/

The plan we will work on is to replicate the live store, upgrade that dev store to X-Cart 5.2.11 and then test EVERYTHING ourselves first of all. This way, no live trading is affected and all changes can be carried out in a structured, noted and methodical way. Once this is signed off, then we'll change the live store as per the dev store. Maybe we are lucky, as our store is quite simple, but sometimes less is more and there are lots of things that visitors may not actually want or need that come with X-Cart.

Have you asked your own customers? We have (they all HATE banners for instance...) and we found that if you remove these things, or simply switch them off (via admin or code), then suddenly the whole process becomes a lot easier too.

X-Cart 5.3.* sounds quite exciting and we are sure, that we will switch over to it in due course... but in terms of the return of investment being a primary objective, again, if something works perfectly and it isn't broke... do you really, really need to fix it there and then? What about patience 8O ?

We are perfectly happy with our X-Cart relationship, so long may it continue... slowly :mrgreen:

Re: X-Cart 5.3 roadmap
 

For my store, there were a LARGE number of bugs that were fixed in the upgrade between 5.2.6 and 5.2.10. I could not operated using 5.2.6 like I am with 5.2.10, I definitely would recommend going to 5.2.10 with the caveat that you make a copy of your store to another directory and do it there first, and that you make a backup of the database and especially the files. I did have a major crash from 5.2.6 to 5.2.7.

Tons of orders now in our 5.2.10 store, a few modules are screwed still but overall working quite well.

Re: X-Cart 5.3 roadmap
 

About 70 modules installed here. Of those, probably 4 or 5 are vendor modules, 3 are custom modules made for us by X-Cart. Out of all of those…

1) One vendor module not working properly ( Video and Content Testimonial - conflicts with Popup Anywhere module).

2) One X-Cart module not working properly ( Subscriptions)

That's it! It did take a few months to get to this point I admit. Some of these are "hot fixes" that will be addressed in 5.2.11 for everyone. The last few upgrades did not break anything.

Weak points:

a) No Product Configurator module

b) There is not a good, working testimonial module (seems like a no brainer but for whatever reason, no simple, bug-free, working testimonial module for XC5 is available).

c) No "previous/next" button to scroll through orders as you look at them. You look at one order, then must navigate back to the orders list and click each order individually. I've been getting 20-30 orders a day, it adds up to a lot of clicking.

Extremely weak: The inability to edit multiple products. Not so bad once you got everything in place but if you have 100's or 1000's of products to edit, you can't assign attributes, etc,etc, to them in bulk, each product must be done one by one.

At the moment I'm pretty happy with it. If you asked me 2 months ago, I hated it.

Re: X-Cart 5.3 roadmap
 

This is what literally terrifies me about X-cart 5

We have a roadmap presented with the following statement,


Yet in response to a forum question about collecting email addresses from customers for newsletters,


5.3 is forecast for mid 2016.

So by the middle of next year it is forecast that XC5 users will have the ability to collect newsletter subscribers info as a core part of the package.

This is for a piece of software that is an eCommerce solution where email is the primary form of contact with a customer.

It's terrifying.

Re: X-Cart 5.3 roadmap
 

The bottom line is that IMHO, X-Cart 5 is about a year away from being really mature. I have mixed emotions on wishing I had waited, but it's over now and I"m in.

Everyone should thank Kev and I for being the biggest guinea pigs and solving all of the bug issues :)

Re: X-Cart 5.3 roadmap
 

There is a lot of truth in that statement, a lot!

If I could give ONE piece of advice to anyone considering *migrating* from XC4 to XC5 it would be this - outside of products and categories, DON'T or you will live to regret it! Do not migrate reviews, and especially do not migrate loyalty points, user accounts, past order history, etc. It's 4 months now and we STILL have issues related to the migration. I actually don't even think it's safe to migrate products - start the thing from scratch and you will be WAY ahead in the long run. I would say over half of the issues we have had are in one way or another a result of the migration.

For example: The other day I had 671 product reviews "vanish" during one fix or another (I can't keep track) and there has been no way to get these re-imported from a backup without integrity errors even though the table structures are identical. Some of the reviews in the table are from customers or products we no longer carry, this is causing all kinds of problems and when you have 671 reviews it's not easy to figure out which one's are causing the problem. X-Cart put one of their top people on the job and while they made a sincere effort, to make a long story short I am now manually re-adding these product reviews.

Likewise, if you have customers with multiple accounts or use the same email address more than once (and quite a few do that), this will cause big headaches.

Save yourself from multitudes of support tickets and frustrations by starting from scratch. After you get your development version of the cart ready, Send out a bulk email to all old users and ask them to re-sign up again. Manually re-add any bonus points they may have accumulated (if you use that module). Don't make the mistake I made by trying to migrate!

Currently using 5.2.10 and orders are flowing in. I'm constantly putting out fires (currently dealing with items not being pulled from inventory) but it does work well overall as far as pulling in sales.

Re: X-Cart 5.3 roadmap
 

You take my phrase out of the context.

In X-Cart 5 there is the awesome integration with MailChimp. It looks and works perfectly for most of the merchants. It is much better than the newsletter function that was built into XC4. They not just send your e-mails, but also give suggestions on improving your e-mails and handle situations when their server is added to a black list due to customers complaining on your e-mails (clicking the SPAM button).

And for those who use other company to distribute their e-mail newsletters there will be (later) a function to collect and export e-mails. Or you can use the Mailchimp integration module (it is free) as an example to create a custom integration with any e-mail services provider that you want.

Anyway, I believe that e-mail newsletters should be sent through a company that is an expert in this. I don't recommend to do this through your e-mail server due to possible issues with your server getting black listed (so none of your order e-mails and other notifications will ever get into customer inboxes).