The Opencart Multistore feature is a great addition for retailers requiring multiple stores, managed via a single administration area. Setting up multistore in Opencart is quite easy and can be accomplished in a few minutes.
However, after visiting the new store you’ll immediately see that existing products, categories, customers, page layouts etc. have not transferred over. Ouch! The new store is completely empty.
Continue reading Opencart 1.5.x Multistore – Associating Existing Data
Opencart have implemented product filters as of 1.5.5. In my opinion, category level product filters are a much needed feature and something Opencart has been lacking for a while. However, in true Opencart style, to date their documentation/announcement is completely lacking, simply citing “Product Filters” as a new feature – even their demo store still uses Opencart 1.5.4, meaning you won’t even be able to see the amazing new Opencart product filters in action!
Opencart theme development, in it’s current state is flawed in my opinion. Opencart is a great platform for any type of ecommerce store, having a plethora of features for users and a low entry point for developers. As a result, Opencart has plenty of themes available for download, just take a look on Themeforest. Occassionally, to test out various things out I’ll install such themes locally. More often than not the theme will break the store completely, or render parts of the site completely broken.
9 times out of 10 the issue will be down to the theme developer not sticking to basic Opencart theming guides – they’re very basic to say the least. The main point to note is that Opencart, like other ecommerce platforms, uses a fallback technique on the “default” theme. So, for example, if Opencart doesn’t find a template for a category listing page, it will fallback to the template from the default theme. If the latter is not adhered to, and it isn’t – look at some of the so called “premium” themes out there, it makes upgrading very, very painful. There are theme developers out there that are copying over a files for the sake of it, when no changes are made. If your theme literally only has changed the color/layout of the footer, apart from the default stylesheet folder, image folder and header template you only need the footer.tpl in your theme folder.