cs-cart the next best thing?

CS-Cart discussion for ISC orphans
(ie: space for Interspire (ex?) customers to discuss CS-Cart in context of previous experience)
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kurt
Posts: 147
Joined: Fri Jul 02, 2010 5:09 am

cs-cart the next best thing?

Post by kurt »

I've been looking at alternatives to ISC due to lack of attention interspire is giving it. CS-Cart looks like the next best alternative. The admin interface seems just as nice. I haven't compared all features yet but it looks good on the surface.

I've also looked at magento. I can't figure out why it's so popular. It doesn't even use dimensions when calculating shipping costs which is a feature I need. ISC does this poorly but it's better than nothing. The magento admin gui doesn't look that great either. The magentogo interface is a bit nicer though.

Interspire still has the best templates of the 3. That's a huge selling point for me as I didn't need to change the design much at all and it looks great.
Martin
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Re: cs-cart the next best thing?

Post by Martin »

Honestly don't know but as there's now the "Community edition" as a sort of freemium offering it's probably going to be worth taking the plunge and seeing if you can make it work.

For myself, I'm looking at my product offerings and breaking a couple of key brands out to their own sites, including stores so I'm going to give CS-Cart a go and see how it compares. It'll be a very long term thing and I'm aware already that a few key requirements may not be in CS-Cart (eg: Royalmail shipping module) but I can probably fudge that for a small product offering anyway.


I reckon the tipping point for a lot of folks is going to be about 2 months from now when ISC 7 will either have appeared or not. I'm keeping my core store on ISC with a view to the next 18+ months but if CS-cart works out on the smaller project(s), it may get ditched sooner... Lots to think about, that's for sure.
Tony Barnes
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Re: cs-cart the next best thing?

Post by Tony Barnes »

I remember a couple of years back when I tried a Magento install. Oh, how promising it was, all free, tonnes of advanced options, great, let me at it, I thought...

What a stemaing hunk of turd. I've never used something so un-user friendly in my life. Only recently using Drupal have I had to get my head around curious hardships when it comes to UI, but even Drupal is a cake-walk compared to Magento.

Honestly, hats off to anyone who has the patience / ability to create a decent site with Magento, I for one could not. I set a product import going, about 2-300 products IIRC, 3 hours later it was still clugging along. Imported the same data into an ISC site, took about 5 minutes.
Snooper
Posts: 264
Joined: Sat Jun 26, 2010 9:22 pm

Re: cs-cart the next best thing?

Post by Snooper »

I have finally set up a Multi Vendor copy of CS-Cart.

Interesting user friendly 'walk through' setup, and good 'feed back' while site installs. You can, as I did, have installed example data so you can view the cart in context with stock. Unlike ISC, CS-Cart puts much effort into doing this, but clearly wants you to experience what the site might look and feel like when in use. And it does this well.

A good selection of slightly Joomla come Wordpress like cart 'skins', but otherwise uses the familiar three part page (left right column and center) sandwiched between header and footer sections. So I assume potentially simple to hack around and personalise. But otherwise many of the elements we know with ISC are present. With one or or two I am sure seen copied in ISC Ver.6.!!

My initial concern was the apparent lack of image size per product and the zoom, for the want of better wording, was limiting, very old school. No example of thumbnail or roll over (zoom) ability. This lack of presentational function was obvious whilst trying to view product for detail. I have yet to see if this can be resolved from within admin. But given I am using a trial site, I assume this limitation is what you get in this regard.

I am not over keen on the tab sizes used in the cart for the horizontal bar menu. This combined with the text used, just looks over sized and tacky in proportion to the body text. I would like to think both are changeable at CSS code level.

You can select to sell through your local currency, and offer currency choice in drop menu form. This on my test site, was selected, and immediately updated prices on page. But something was not quite right at the results posted.

The logon page for admin. Initially I rather liked the effort somebody put into this page. Then I typed.. I might have need for glasses in old age, but the size of text used on logon was just wrong.!!

The actual front page 'inside' after logon is the 'Dashboard'. You see $ signs (in your face) as the currency core so no surprise there. I use GPB so would rather see £. So I selected for GPB and noted pages where product was being sold running through admin, reflected this. The $ on main page however, had not changed. A niggle and clumsy scripting. If this can be changed to match what my currency of choice, I can not as yet see where.

I might go through the menu and sub-menu options admin has, when I have time. CS-Cart is into menus. There are many and most are deep. So it is clear much of the cart is configured through this system. and looks extensive. My first impresion however, is if this is the way we can change site language/text, then it is long winded when comparied to ISC's basic single text column approch. Maybe I'm just lazy.!?

The design or page layout changing system is over complex and potentially a disaster to any novice user of CMS. If you select to 'Enable' customisation and manage to do something, BUT forget to 'Disable'. Then this 'hole' might be discovered and exploited! Interesting process though, but proof of effectiveness is in the using.

Whilst in admin; I went over the Currencies setup and setting section and where something about my experience of using customer side caught my attention.

Oh dear!

Yes, you can set up currencies and label them. In fact have as many currencies as you wish. BUT.. I can not as yet figure out just exactly how this is to work, so this is my take on what I think I am seeing.

If I set, as I would my currency GBP as the 'Primary'; I can then allow customers to select from, GBP, EUR and USD as natural options. However, it seems I have to then manually set the exchange value of EUR and likewise the USD against the current market value of GBP. This is not (as I see it) an automated function, so implies this would require a manual updating daily.!?

In effect, if you don't update this input, your site is either losing or making money, but is always out of sync with market prices. Customers will spot this failing in an instant. CS-Cart I suggest may offer variable currency, but realistically if what I think I am seeing, it is a high maintenance option in its current format, I can do with out.

What I saw customer side then, was the value of the Dollar against the Pound and Euro at the time of the code being stored online in CS-Carts home site. So obviously, totally out of date.!!

Finally, there is the subject of tax (VAT). The cart offers the option to charge tax according to Shipping address or Billing address; NOT as I see it, by the product. Okay, choice of words in admin is semantic, but the choice of words is saying much but hints of problems ahead. The prices I saw in shop then are linked to one of either as set in admin, and I am unsure if include VAT or not at point of sale, this before the cost of actual shipping itself. I suspect this is common practice to the USA. In Europe however, tax and shipping is variable. I can not see an easy way to implement this point with CS-Cart.

With two of the basic requirements not appearing to fit UK European users, CS-Cart will, it seems, require considerable hacking to mod anything close to what I have with ISC. I do not have the time or the will power to even consider this.
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babyREFLUX
Posts: 337
Joined: Thu Jun 18, 2009 9:38 am

Re: cs-cart the next best thing?

Post by babyREFLUX »

We had a detailed look at CS-Cart and especially the ability to set up multiple stores with a single back-end (not multi-vendor).

Although initially promising lots of 'holes' started to appear in the coding and ultimately felt like it was hobbyist software.

Since then we have commissioned a store to be developed using Magento by an accredited developer. Magento has changed beyond recognition in the last 24 months and if you can get a developer who can tame the beast it is the most advanced piece of eCommerce software on the market.

JP.
kurt
Posts: 147
Joined: Fri Jul 02, 2010 5:09 am

Re: cs-cart the next best thing?

Post by kurt »

babyREFLUX wrote:We had a detailed look at CS-Cart and especially the ability to set up multiple stores with a single back-end (not multi-vendor).

Although initially promising lots of 'holes' started to appear in the coding and ultimately felt like it was hobbyist software.

Since then we have commissioned a store to be developed using Magento by an accredited developer. Magento has changed beyond recognition in the last 24 months and if you can get a developer who can tame the beast it is the most advanced piece of eCommerce software on the market.

JP.
CS-Cart 3 is out, I wonder if it fixes some of the "holes" you were finding. 2nd, what is so advanced with Magento? I noticed it doesn't even use package size when acquiring shipping quotes.

Also, I noticed Magento Community edition is missing some key features like "Roles, Logging & Site Access Permission", "Reward Points System & Store Credits", "Gift Registry and Gifting Options". To jump up from that you have to dish out over 14k per year, ouch.

I think the only way I would go with Magento is if I were to use MagentoGo edition but I'm not sure if that's better than bigcommerce. Although, I would hate having "powered by bc" on my mobile template then again MagentoGo doesn't even have a mobile template.

CS-Cart Twigmo mobile template looks great. I think I'm going to stick with ISC for a bit longer and see what lemonstand comes out with.
grantg
Posts: 112
Joined: Thu Oct 08, 2009 11:01 am

Re: cs-cart the next best thing?

Post by grantg »

Just thought I'd update this.

With regards to the points Snooper made, they are largely irrelevent.

Things like multiple currencies not auto-updating. ISC never had this functionality until a 3rd party coded the addon, now the software has a built-in function for auto-updating currency rates. CS-Cart is the same.

Have a look at v3 CS-Cart Ultimate. Absolute dream if you run 2 or more stores for one company, regardless if their stores share products or not - this is unmissable.
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