ZenCart - or “you can’t get there from here”
I’m not a slouch when it comes to using software new to me, in fact I’m damn good at shortening learning curves and I am NOT allergic to beta (or even alpha!) software. In the last couple of days though, I ran into something that truthfully I’ve not often experienced on the ‘net: deliberate “obfuscation” of something critical to a program’s usefulness in the real world.
Here’s the situation. A friend who’s a great design/development person was having some trouble with ZenCart. She asked me to read a page of documentation, then follow the docs to provide and upload multiple images for an item - so that folks wanting to purchase the item would be able to see larger/other views. Eager to help her out, as she’s done so much for me, I plunged right into the docs.
I followed the instructions EXACTLY. TWICE. Only to have occur what she’d already experienced: no way, if you follow the instructions, can you ever get the second and third images to display for the item. Obviously, the instructions as written either left out a CRITICAL step, or were JUST PLAIN WRONG.
She had no joy and no love on the “support forum”. The attitude there (as I’ve noted for myself in the past when contemplating using ZenCart) is that if you have to ask you’re basically too stupid to be using the program….
BAD attitude. HORRIBLE advertisement. Won’t be using ZenCart EVER.
Now here’s a news flash: for a REALLY GOOD CART with a REALLY GREAT COMMUNITY, try CubeCart….
That was AFTER having to hack core in 15 or so places to get lbs changed to kb, that was AFTER having to struggle with getting royal mail set up, that was AFTER pfutzing around with currency to get pounds sterling to display properly, that was AFTER having to hunt down the file AND the formula to make dates format in the UK way, that was AFTER having to install the damned wanky program five times just to get it semi-sort-of working ONCE. We’re talking DAYS wasted on this nasty bit of software that is a tabled mess to template. And only ONE unhelpful response to three posts on the forum.
So I finally give up and install CubeCart- and in the installation config screen it asks what date format you want and tells you how, it asks you what weight format you want in a dropdown menu, it asks what currency you want as the default, it asks what shipping module you wish to install- and twenty minutes later the cart is working. Now I get to play with xhtml/css to template CubeCart, which means I can do any damn thing I want instead of what some backend idiot decides he or she is going to force on me.
Toto, I think we’re not in ZenLand anymore . . .
[...] Sixth — if you do happen to find instructions in the FAQ, say, for instance, to do something like use multiple images for one product . . . make sure you’ve got the valium handy. Just to be sure I was NOT slappin’ it, I had my friend, Vicki give it a try- which gave her just slightly less angina than it gave me. Shawn, the php whiz, also gave the instructions a looksee. This is how our IM conversation went: Shawn (11/17/2005 9:18:27 PM): Now you do not need to use subdirectories. All images can be loaded to /images /images/large /images/medium kickasswebdesign (11/17/2005 9:18:32 PM): yup Shawn (11/17/2005 9:18:37 PM): wait a friggin minute kickasswebdesign (11/17/2005 9:18:46 PM): and only ONE image shows. Shawn (11/17/2005 9:18:57 PM): you DONT need subdir, but load them into subdirs…… kickasswebdesign (11/17/2005 9:19:15 PM): yeah, the directions are really clear as mud, huh? Shawn (11/17/2005 9:19:16 PM): YES I read the faqs… kickasswebdesign (11/17/2005 9:19:34 PM): so I’m not f*cking nuts, huh? Shawn (11/17/2005 9:19:38 PM): said dont put it in a subdir, just use the following subdirs…. kickasswebdesign (11/17/2005 9:20:00 PM): now you know why I’ve been banging my head against a wall for six hours. [...]