Upgrading from pre version 1

[handcoded]

Hello all

 

I mainly work with Zen Cart and to be honest it is getting a bit old now in my opinion and I want to play with something fresh. Magento still being in beta I thought I'd look for alternatives and stumbled across Prestashop.

I've not instaled the software yet but am excited by the already included features and those on the to do list and it looks like this would suit my needs and those of 95% of my customers.

 

I'd like to know how easy it is to upgrade as with Zen Cart if anything is custom or you have a few modules installed it is usually easier to start from scratch. If I start to populate a pre version 1 shop will I have to start again when version 1 is released. Basically is version 1 going to be very different and cause incompatibilities.

 

One feature I'd like to see included which I did not see listed is the ability to have layered navigation so that products can be filtered by size, price, colour etc from the categories menu.

 

The software looks fab considering the install is just 2mb and I can't wait to get it installed.

This smf theme looks pretty nice too. Was it a custom job or could I use it on my own site ?

 

Sorry to post an essay on my first post and any help would be very much appreciated.

[James]

Hey there welcome to the prestashop community.

 

Your circumstances are almost exactly the same as mine a couple of weeks ago.

You will then be glad to hear that they are working on a mass import module for other cart software (they are doing it for osCommerce, and I hope Zen Cart also, so theoretically you wont have to do a product population  However as of version 0.9.X there is an upgrade optionwhen installing, so presumably it will be possible to upgrade easy enough.

 

A quick mention on the Magento score, I was playing with this also before stumbling up on prestashop, and for me the speed at which Magento runs at is just not acceptable. You will be pleased to know prestashop is fast!

 

As with anything pre release (prestashop) there is some holes in the feature list(for example support for nochex payment is an absolute must for me along with a simular set up to the EZpages in Zen), however what they have implemented is implemented very well, and unlike Zen Cart the source code is very clean and well commented. I am so impressed that as of yesterday I stopped developing with any other e commerce solution, and have now decided to concentrate on prestashop exclusivley.

[handcoded]

Snap!

 

Yep it seems we have both been there, done that and go the T-shirt.

Just tried to install it on Dreamhost and noticed the upgrade option. Looks like it just downloads and extracts the new files over the top of the existing store but I could be wrong. Wouldn't be the frst time.

 

I can't get past the fopen requirement though and haven't got the time right now to hunt through the files and try and make it use curl instead. Hopefully someone will hear my cry but until then I'll just keep an eye on this occasionally.

 

I tried magento quickly and I like the approach but time will tell if Magento really is E-Commerce for the enterprise. An import utility that allows field mapping would certainly help to get Prestashop noticed.

 

Thanks

[Peter Wilson]

Hi handcoded! Welcome to the PrestaShop Forum

 

Our Bulk Lister feature, to be included in PrestaShop v1.0, will include field-mapping capabilities.

 

As for your fopen problem, you might want to try simply deleting the fopen requirement in the install code ...

[handcoded]

I'll look into removing the code for the fopen because I would like to find an E-Commerce app that is fairly feature packed and easy to use and this may well be it.

 

Thanks for the welcome and your advice  ;D