pkhunter Posted May 12, 2012 Share Posted May 12, 2012 Hi. I love the "Features" section of this site, but the demo is so ugly and geeky looking -- especially the admin backend interface -- that it almost scares me away. We currently use Wordpress for our shop, but we have outgrown stuff like Jigoshop and need something a bit more "serious". The beauty of Wordpress is that it's a very elegant and simple interface and has the additional advantage of having fantastic user integration across a blog/magazine, a shop and a community (using BBPress). Jigoshop has almost all the features listed here, but because it's married to WP, so we started looking at other solutions. Magento is too complex, WP is to "simple". So PrestaShop is kinda middleground and interesting. My questions: How easy is to customize the website frontend. Is it based on simple templates and template tags that we can use/reuse? (We will be looking to do a heavily customized "responsive design" site, instead of jazz like "mobile dispatcher" mentioned in the changelog of the next version!) Equally importantly, how easy is it to customize the admin backend. It's butt-ugly by default! The entering of images and product content is terrible! But I hope there are more elegant templates for it, or at least a mechanism to do so, as we have developers talented in html5 and css3 etc. But we won't spend time customizing something that's not supportive of customization -- much better ways to spend our time Is it possible to import products en-masse via an Excel file or some script? Is it possible to specify an external CDN link for static assets such as images etc? Does PrestaShop either include, or integrate with, a forum/community software such as Vanilla or BBPress or IPB? Many other questions, but those are the important ones. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhnstcks Posted May 12, 2012 Share Posted May 12, 2012 1. Very easy, template drivien, its the same principle as wordpress,using css, div and classes. 2. That might be a bit more difficult, I seem to remember someone doing an admin template, you'll need to search the forum for that. There are 3 admin templates pre loaded into Prestashop, which you can change on the admin>employees>edit employee screen, but generally the layout is exactly the same its just the colours are different. 3. Yes, there is a csv import tool with Prestashop admin>tools>import. There is also an xml import module on the server, although its not free. 4. Yes. admin>tools>webservice. 5. Haven't seen anything on those specific forums, but there is a wordpress intergration module. Have a look through the addon store, there is probably some forum intergration modules on there. http://addons.prestashop.com/en/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dh42 Posted May 12, 2012 Share Posted May 12, 2012 1. If you know how do do a responsive design it is fairly simple to integrate into prestashop. It uses a templating system which is simmilar to the wordpress engine, but is more powerful since it is smarty. 2. It is not the best looking thing, but it presents all of the information in a manor that is needed. With WP you have a total of what 20-30 pages in the back end, prestashop has a couple hundred. It is like any new program, you are not used to it, when you use it for a while it will grow on you. 3. Yes 4. Yes 5.No, it is pretty much just a shopping cart solution. The besides having legal notice pages, everything else on the cms side is lacking. Which can be a moot point just depending on how you develop. www.tekkiesbk.com uses both wordpress and prestashop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pkhunter Posted May 12, 2012 Author Share Posted May 12, 2012 (edited) Smarty? Really? That's a bit 1990s. You have lost me right there. Thanks for all the responses. I downloaded and tried really hard to like this stuff. I suppose it works for other people. Just FYI, Wordpress manages our 20,000 visitor traffic per day without so much as a hiccup. We have about 1500 products in our shop thus far. This level is not huge, but it's not peanuts either. I'll look elsewhere. I've bookmarked Prestashop in case it grows up in the future, although its core right now doesn't look promising to me (for my taste, I mean, I bet it works fine for other people). Cheers. Edited May 12, 2012 by pkhunter (see edit history) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dh42 Posted May 12, 2012 Share Posted May 12, 2012 No problem, but being someone that has used Wordpress I can tell you what you are missing. Report generation Stock control Fully customisable shop A secure shop Most of the time AIM CC ability I actually help develop code with one of the most popular WP shopping cart plugins, so I would be curious to which plugin you are using. Also you might want to stay away from x-cart, eclime, pinnacle cart, commercev3, and xoops. They use smarty too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pkhunter Posted May 12, 2012 Author Share Posted May 12, 2012 Not sure which app you used. I have all of that, and much more. INcluding integration with social login, integration with almost every payment gateway that matters (including those in Asia...which even Magento charges through the nose for), automatic updates in my Excel file with pivot tables because the data comes from an online place. My entire shop is behind SSL and the WP is hardened (as are my Nginx etc). What else? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dh42 Posted May 12, 2012 Share Posted May 12, 2012 What package do you use? I would love to look into it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pkhunter Posted May 13, 2012 Author Share Posted May 13, 2012 I already mentioned in my first post...thanks and good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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