How is this expected to grow if there are so many unanswered posts?

[The Smoking Gun]

I do not understand how this is supposedly the fatsest growing os ecommerce solution when so many posts and pleas for help go unanswered???

But yest rather simple and mundane posts about a fully functioning install with access gets 12 or so responses within less than an hour, while others like myself who CANNOT GET INT OT THEIR back office, have to sit and watch how many people look at the post and offer NOTHING IN RESPONSE WHILE I GET 1 TRY AT A NEW PASSWORD EVERY THREE HOURS!!!


If you expect people to get on board with this you can;'t just pick and choose easy answers and ignore the rest, that is called padding your numbers or misrepresenting your growth while you ARE growing it is because you are helping easy answers get going who already ARE going and just want something they SHOULD BE ABLE TO FIGURE OUT THEMSELVES, and alienating those who cannot use their scripts at all, because it might take some time to resolve.

Why would those who know this well enough to support it, not evenly go over the support requests and try an supply each and every issue with SOME response, especially when it is urget.

If my store were operating and then had an unrecoverable error by my own ability, and this is how my request was ignored, i would not have any reason to either want to continue relying on such unstable scripts, that after one day, already has be locked out of the back office, when this is the best you can do to assist.

I DO understand open source, ALLOT of things i use are open source, NOT because it is free, but because i believe in supporting the concept.

But this does not mean i am going to stick with poor scripting with no support regardless of how little it costs.

Free garbage is STILL garbage!

If someone knows how to respond to my post in the forum Configuring & using PrestaShop, it would be appreciated, but if this is going to go any more hours as some others i see from yesterday with not one response, then i will be sure to remove this from ALL accounts cPanels, and feature lists, because I will not expose my clients to such poorly managed support forums, or scripts!

End of story, neither I nor will ANY of my clients use this again, and i will pass my experiences along to other hosting admins in our huge group to ensure they do not offer their hosting clients the same disservice!

Thanks for wasting an entire day of my time!
OR prove me wrong and assist with resolving the issue, and I will be your biggest promoter, but i am not at all content with the experiences so far, that you can't even tell me how the system generated password will not even work!

[rocky]

I spend hours every day answering questions on the PrestaShop forums. Of course, it takes longer to answer difficult questions than the easier ones. There is a limit to how many questions I can answer. Would you prefer to have a few difficult questions answered and lots of easier ones unanswered? I'm sure if I did that, I'd have someone complaining about there being so many easy questions unanswered on the forums.

I've posted a response to your other post. It's probably a server issue, but you didn't provide any information about your server configuration. How do you expect someone to help?

[The Smoking Gun]

I do understand your point, however when there is "community support" as is often the case with OS scripts, it usually means just that, and i was not expecting that i was waiting on one person (or even a select few) to do ALL the support requests, however a bit of discretion with respects to urgency might improve some aspects, then it isn't splitting hairs between difficult or easay responses when it is someone who "can find an answer in the docs but is too lazy, or hasn't taken the time to read and understand how they work" syndrome, that is obviously in many cases the requests that are dominating your time.

Then again if you are an author, then this whole set up is likely slowing down Prestashops's progress for all the time you have to spend answering questions. I may be somewhat guilty of this too, as i did not even notice if there was an FAQ knowledge base or not, but when one cannot log in, I would consider that more urgent than, How do i have new and used pricing for the same item....you see? NOT that his is any less valid a question, but it just does not require an immediate response, there were a number of other pleas for help similar to mine, in some cases days old, and tens and tens of views but no responses and THIS, not just my own wait, is what prompted my statements, albeit a little harsher than needed, but frustration will do that.

Unfortunately, due to a back log created spring 09, from which I am finally getting close to catching up, it has caused my PHP MySQL studies to be put off, and on a back burner, or I'd try to help out some.I am hoping for this to change some time soon, after my next six weeks of physical therapy. Once I get to that point I hope to resume my studies, and maybe then be able to feild some of the simpler questions, to take some of the burden from those who are in dire straits with their store, especially if it is already operating and had to be put off line, leaving those for people such as yourself.

You also mentioned how can I expect help is I do not supply server environment specifics, but I HAD mentioned checking all of my php and MySQL configurations, and that all server setting were correct and valid, as I stated I offer hosting services, and admin my severs, to an extent, but also have a "next level" support to fall back on for those "mysterious" behaviors that sometimes generate from scripts with holes or aberrant code generation, especially so when language translations come in to that equation.

Anyway I won't take more of your time, I managed to resolve the issue on my own after some five or so hours plugging away and reviewing what is coming in to play, and the issue was a result of the base url being "off" due to the install being on a subdomain, as i mentioned this is being set up for a client site, and i am setting it up with a few of her items and color/logo fonts as an example to show her what it could result in, and if she decides she likes it, I will then install it on her actual TLD and set it to go live once I tweak it out to the desired levels of operation combined with testing it with her PayPal business account.

Thank you!
Daniel AKA - TSG

Afterthought: Is it possible to get this forum ware to display ALL aspects of the English version IN English? It is very difficult discerning which controls perform which function, especially when it is based in the French language rather than the more commonly known Spanish and Italian which are VERY similar, and easier to translate as well as understand in it's native tongue, whatever exposure to French most American's have is limited at best unless they are a northern border state and even then it is clearly a different off shoot of the language that varies considerably, making it all the more confusing. It wouldn't be as bad if Google translators could be just "turned on" however since MOST of the text on the page IS English, it seems to have difficulty in translating just the controls without noticing the % of English is so high it often doesn't even trigger the translator or will return a "This page is already in English" and leaving you on your own. I only mention this, as many people having such difficulty will just go elsewhere and never complain, and FYI here in the USA, demographics show 80% of people with any dissatisfaction, will just go elsewhere, and never say a word about it, leaving only 20% to complain, and of those an additional 12% will leave after complaining, leaving you with only 8% of people having difficulty from language barriers to strive to resolve it rather than say nothing and just find another program.

These are legitimate numbers. I have worked for three different fortune 500 retail companies that offered extensive retail training, and this was a part of what I had learned, with respects to customer service sales and support, in order to avoid losing those 80% because you never knew an issue actually had such an impact, so if you are getting 20 new users a month (I know this is a low example but it is on purpose) then you have been missing 80 others for each period you got those twenty new ones. Just something to consider. After all I am likely to have had 30 or so more years experience with marketing and merchandising products than you have.

[rocky]

Good news that you found the problem. I don't understand about the language problem though. For me, everything on the forum is in English. Which controls aren't in English? Try clicking the USA flag in the top-right corner to make sure that you are using the English translation.

[21846657]

Well, PrestaShop grows as more and more people join. That is, it *needs* to grow. And the things of support usually come after your using (Yes, you're involved). These are simply two facts.

When problem occurs, we need help or support if it is beyond our competences. Then if a little budget is allowed, we may look at commercial support from official or a credit third party (i.e. moderator of forum); otherwise, most likely we dive into community and expect a free community support.

Personally I've been around several OS forums/communities and really enjoy. Of course there are plenty of my posts got no answers. But never mind. I believe in searching and learning. When a problem (that never comes before) comes up, I use either the search function of that forum or Google with my keywords. So when it comes up again, I can solve it right away. I have payed much of my time to learn the curve and I think it worths; if you don't want that, just pay cash.

Oh, regarding the language problem, I have no problems at all. I use Google chrome (with built-in Google Translator).

Cheers,

[mathmatix]

im having similar problems with this in IE only... ive checked my base url, ive set cookie expire time down to 3600 to make it work on firefox/googlechrome, ive tried some other shit i read up... nothing successful... i really dont want to alienate anyone who uses IE and i dont want to have to put a link to firefox/google chrome on the login page but i will if i have to!

[noesac]

I think support here has been excellent, personally.

I agree it isn't as fast as say, Wordpress*, but then again it's only a tiny fraction of the size of Wordpress so you would expect the community to be smaller.


*I know WP isn't an online store system but you get my point:)

[Patric]

In addition, I would say that a lot of questions stay unanswered because :
* they have already been answered a lot of times, so people have to make a real good search before posting,
* a lot of people provide really few information about their configuration, problem, etc.,
* some questions are really very specific and often require an important work (development, integration, etc.).

So people should begin by helping themselves, before asking for help.
This is the reason why I highly suggest to read and apply these little recommendations :
http://www.prestashop.com/forums/viewreply/221224/