Issues faced by Custom Developers

[wutever0]

Hello everyone,

 

I'd like to post some of the difficulties faced by us custom developers (developers approached by a merchant to create their prestashop site) in an effort to brainstorm and see what other people's experiences have been like.

 

This is my second Prestashop site and one main thing I have been facing constantly has been the difficulty in customizing the existing themes.

 

My main experience has been that the themes are good "as-is" only. Any attempt to change the layout or move a module from one position to another causes the whole thing to break down. For example moving a navigation bar from being right-floated to center for example took way more time that would reasonably require. Or to move the cart icon from the top of the screen to sit next to the navigational menu items also required so much effort that I am considering to revert back.

 

This is because the CSS is almost made to sit only where it currently is and work nicely only with the originally neighboring elements and even the responsiveness is made that way. So every time I need to change a position I would have a lot of work to make it work nicely in its new position, with its new neighbors and all this taking into consideration how it acts with different screens. Most of the time it's not worth all this effort AT ALL!

 

I wonder what people's thoughts are on this topic.