Post by MisterRoo » Mon Mar 16, 2020 12:58 am

are there any themes considered safe or stable to use?

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Post by thekrotek » Mon Mar 16, 2020 1:10 am

MisterRoo wrote:
Mon Mar 16, 2020 12:58 am
are there any themes considered safe or stable to use?
Tons of such themes. Just browse and pick any.

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Post by MisterRoo » Mon Mar 16, 2020 1:42 am

Well, you say that...

...but are you confident about any theme from the market place?

I'm looking for a that has been optimised for speed and will work well on mobile, seems like a minefield to me.

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Post by thekrotek » Mon Mar 16, 2020 2:17 am

Any modern theme is optimized and works on mobile. Also this topic is about Journal, not about other themes.

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Post by Mowico » Tue Mar 31, 2020 5:15 pm

I don't mind if Journal got its act together and offered their own ecommerce or blog software, this would be a blessing for OpenCart.

As regards market share: Journal has only 20,000 to 30,000 users, the vast majority of OpenCart users don't use Journal.

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Post by Saahib » Thu Apr 02, 2020 12:00 am

Dear admin and mods,

While you may have been informing people to not to ask for Journal theme related support here, you are actually promoting it with STICKY on every page. As new user, first I tried to ignore it, but seeing again and again, it appeared to be something important and hence not to be missed. I checked out and I can see that its temping theme for new users.

I am not yet familiar with whole community setup yet but make 3 threads for Journal, journal 2 and journal 3 theme, just merge all existing and new threads there. Most of new folks will scan those threads and will find their answer. Why to make Journal guy a threat, rather make them friends.

And please remove this from STICKY.. you are actually giving publicity to them.. believe .. most of the recent sells must be because of your STICK bout JOURNAL.

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Post by JNeuhoff » Thu Apr 02, 2020 1:12 am

I checked out and I can see that its temping theme for new users.
Actually, most Journal3 skins are ugly and bloated. The Journal authors are welcome to do their own software, but it ain't OpenCart anymore because of Journal's poor and non-standard software-engineering practices and technical issues.

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Post by Johnathan » Thu Apr 02, 2020 4:41 am

Saahib wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 12:00 am
Dear admin and mods,

While you may have been informing people to not to ask for Journal theme related support here, you are actually promoting it with STICKY on every page. As new user, first I tried to ignore it, but seeing again and again, it appeared to be something important and hence not to be missed. I checked out and I can see that its temping theme for new users.

I am not yet familiar with whole community setup yet but make 3 threads for Journal, journal 2 and journal 3 theme, just merge all existing and new threads there. Most of new folks will scan those threads and will find their answer. Why to make Journal guy a threat, rather make them friends.

And please remove this from STICKY.. you are actually giving publicity to them.. believe .. most of the recent sells must be because of your STICK bout JOURNAL.

Thanks for pointing this out. I've downgraded it to a Sticky topic instead of a Global announcement, so it should only appear in General Discussion now. I figured it's still probably good to leave at the top, but it won't appear everywhere now. I also changed the title of the original post so that it was clearer what the topic was about.

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Post by Saahib » Thu Apr 02, 2020 5:09 am

Johnathan wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 4:41 am

Thanks for pointing this out. I've downgraded it to a Sticky topic instead of a Global announcement, so it should only appear in General Discussion now. I figured it's still probably good to leave at the top, but it won't appear everywhere now. I also changed the title of the original post so that it was clearer what the topic was about.
Much appreciated.

But I will still stick to the idea of making a single thread and merge all new support request there, speaking from experience of managing some pretty large forums (VB and SMF).
I know it will be little work for you but keeping a STICKY thread on official OPENCART forum suggesting to contact "JOURNAL SUPPORT" is pretty big publicity itself.(although its now its not Global sticky). Do you know, WHT forums charges money for such sticky :-) .

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Post by JNeuhoff » Wed Apr 15, 2020 6:06 am

We are now considering to stop all support for Journal3 for our extensions, and will concentrate on OpenCart software only.

Also, Journal3 is not compliant with OpenCart standards, and it has neither a presence in the OpenCart marketplace, nor do its author ever support users here on the OpenCart forum. Hence, there should be no forum section for Journal3 issues. The OpenCart forum should be for OpenCart software and its extensions, not for Journal3 software!

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Post by kestas » Wed Apr 15, 2020 9:46 pm

JNeuhoff wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 6:06 am
We are now considering to stop all support for Journal3 for our extensions, and will concentrate on OpenCart software only.

Also, Journal3 is not compliant with OpenCart standards, and it has neither a presence in the OpenCart marketplace, nor do its author ever support users here on the OpenCart forum. Hence, there should be no forum section for Journal3 issues. The OpenCart forum should be for OpenCart software and its extensions, not for Journal3 software!
Totally agree!

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Post by head_dunce » Thu Apr 16, 2020 1:53 am

Saahib wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 12:00 am
While you may have been informing people to not to ask for Journal theme related support here, you are actually promoting it with STICKY on every page. As new user, first I tried to ignore it, but seeing again and again, it appeared to be something important and hence not to be missed. I checked out and I can see that its temping theme for new users.
Yup, I found out about Journal from all the talk about it. So glad I did too, I wouldn't suggest using OC without it. It's pretty awesome once you wrap your head around all it can do, which takes a few days to understand. It's very involved and extremely useful, especially for a larger site.

Saahib wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 12:00 am
Why to make Journal guy a threat, rather make them friends.
I think the main threat is that Journal wraps a lot of things into one inexpensive package. So a lot of developers can't justify their single function extension for the same price as Journal. And this forum tends to have a lot of developers looking to make sales off code and not as many store owners who make money off selling products on their store. I have a few in-depth extensions installed that don't follow the "rules" of OC, and without them I would have switched to a different platform. There are plenty of people who are more than willing to help make their code work for your store if it doesn't already out of the box. Everyone in OC land knows what Journal is, and they are use to being asked if their extension will work with Journal. If they don't want to make it work, it hasn't been a problem, there will be someone else with a similar extension that is more than willing to help.

Journal is actually open source too, GPL. It says so in the package when you download it.
This theme or plugin is comprised of two parts.

(1) the PHP code and integrated HTML are licensed under the General Public
License (GPL). You will find a copy of the GPL in the same directory as this
text file.

(2) All other parts, but not limited to the CSS code, images, and design are
licensed according to the terms of your purchased license.
So it would seem the creator of Journal is trying to be friendly. If OC made the functionality of Journal part of the standard package, they'd be at another level. Keep in mind that most people who talk down about Journal have never actually run a store using it.

...and I'm sure my opinions here will trigger some of the geeks. The arguments against Journal are usually about some code thing, not that Journal actually solves a few business problems for store owners that other extensions have not addressed.

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Post by JNeuhoff » Thu Apr 16, 2020 5:32 am

What business problems does Journal solve which other extensions don't address?

Most users fortunately don't know about Journal. Journal has only a small market share, and because of its poor implementation and lack of standard behavior is not worth the trouble to support it. There are better blog extensions and nicer looking themes than Journal. It shouldn't take an end user days to figure how it works. Try creating your own theme skin the Journal way, and you'll know what I am talking about! There is a reason why the Journal authors are not present on Opencart.

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Post by head_dunce » Thu Apr 16, 2020 9:54 am

JNeuhoff wrote:
Thu Apr 16, 2020 5:32 am
What business problems does Journal solve which other extensions don't address?

Most users fortunately don't know about Journal. Journal has only a small market share, and because of its poor implementation and lack of standard behavior is not worth the trouble to support it. There are better blog extensions and nicer looking themes than Journal. It shouldn't take an end user days to figure how it works. Try creating your own theme skin the Journal way, and you'll know what I am talking about! There is a reason why the Journal authors are not present on Opencart.
Journal isn't a theme. It's a way to create themes/layouts/functionality without having to write all the code. You are able to install a demo theme to start from, but once you learn how to edit things, you can quickly change that demo to suit your liking. It takes a long time (years?) to figure out how to code HTML/CSS/JS/etc and make it all work across all browsers and be responsive. In Journal, it can be figured out quickly from people who don't even know how to code. With a "theme" you're stuck to preset layouts unless you know how to code more and have the time to do so. With Journal you can create and change anything quickly without having to stare at all the code that makes it happen. I think that's the biggest misconception, Journal is not a theme.

Not everyone is a geek. I'm a geek, trained in assembly on mainframes and up the line. I have a staff who are not all geeks, but they are very good at what they do. I can have anyone on my staff now create and update geeky things on the web site because the geek end of it is now just a few button clicks. One of the business problems is taking the geek out of running a web site. It's not productive in running a business to tell everyone on your staff to learn how to code or else buzz off. From my experience, coders are usually horrible at customer service, and CSRs are usually horrible at code. To be able to have the CSRs help with the code, via Journal, frees up the coders to do other things instead of important but mundane things like creating photo galleries on categories.

I get why there's this geeky backlash toward Journal. The creators didn't stay within the lines. But I'll argue their thinking outside the lines actually really helped OC grow. They even open sourced the code, so they apparently want to help OC grow too. I find it very odd that it's functionality is not being welcomed as something that should be implemented into the core. It's clearly very popular with the OC customers. If my customers continuously ask me about a product, I'd be foolish not to listen to them and try and figure out how to make a profit from filling the need. It's business.

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Post by kestas » Thu Apr 16, 2020 2:57 pm

head_dunce wrote:
Thu Apr 16, 2020 9:54 am
Journal isn't a theme. It's a way to create themes/layouts/functionality without having to write all the code.......................................
This promotional post should be charged, as Jouranl developers use the opencart free system to make money and do not participate in opencart development by contributing to OC financially, as do all other developers who sell their modules in the OC market. Not to mention that the Journal theme ruined the OC system.

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Post by head_dunce » Thu Apr 16, 2020 9:09 pm

kestas wrote:
Thu Apr 16, 2020 2:57 pm
This promotional post should be charged, as Jouranl developers use the opencart free system to make money and do not participate in opencart development by contributing to OC financially, as do all other developers who sell their modules in the OC market. Not to mention that the Journal theme ruined the OC system.
Well, if that's your take, then why does this web site link to the same place Journal is sold for many themes? Take a look here https://www.opencart.com/index.php?route=cms/showcase

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Post by JNeuhoff » Sun Apr 19, 2020 8:14 pm

Journal isn't a theme.
I know. It's supposed to be framework that allows the user to create their own theme skins (color, images, layouts, general look&feel). And it's also a collection of other extensions, like a blog. And with some extensions like slide shows etc already available in standard OpenCart (re-iventing the wheel syndrome here!).

However, despite that, on the envatomarket (aka themeforst.net) it is misleadingly marketed as Journal - Advanced Opencart Theme . The Envatomarket has been caught out several times in the past of selling un-authorized OpenCart extensions without the author's consent, and often for long periods of time wouldn't remove them. IMHO they are not a trustworthy source to buy from. Notice that Journal3 has no presence at the official OpenCart marketplace!

The creators didn't stay within the lines
You are absolutely right here. It's of a poorest software engineering quality.

It unnecessarily relies on OCmod (XML-based descriptions of core OpenCart files modifications). Worse of all, it even modifies OpenCart system engine core files, a recipe for disaster! None of it was necessary for what they set out to accomplish. OpenCart has been supporting proper event handlers since 3.x releases.

Journal3 also has way too much Javascript, contributing to its bloated and ugly themes.

Journal3 replaces at least 113 (by my last count) standard OpenCart frontend twig files with their own versions, even for what they try to accomplish, this number is totally blown out of proportion. A web theme should only contain modified twig template files (e.g. header.twig, footer.twig, to name a few commonly modified ones) in its own theme folder.

And Journal3 doesn't always abide by the standard OpenCart folders structure. E.g. theme-specific images should be stored in catalog/view/theme/journal3/image/, not in the image/catalog/journal3/. The image/catalog/ is mainly for content images (e.g. product or category images).

It's clearly very popular with the OC customers.
No, it isn't! The vast majority of OpenCart web sites don't use Journal3, they use proper ready-made web themes.

their thinking outside the lines actually really helped OC grow
To the contrary, Journal3 has become a burden to OpenCart. Journal3 may have some interesting ideas, but they should start working with OpenCart to do a proper implementation, or else come up with their own whole ecommerce package rather than piggybacking on OpenCart and breaking things in the process.

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Post by danielb123 » Mon Apr 20, 2020 7:43 pm

Chose careful your words ;) Journal 3 keep opencart relevant ;) people chose opencart because of this theme, why hit it with stones and not push the journal theme devs to make improvements... Ps. yes it have a complicate administration but it worth every minute... there is no other theme to chose maybe another 1-2 themes... and don`t tell me those default repainted themes are a option... don`t forget there is other opensource platforms that people can chose ;). Another problem with opencart is everyone can make extension and more of them are garbage made by kids or something...
OSWorX wrote:
Thu Oct 24, 2019 10:03 pm
In the last weeks we see here more and more posts from users seeking help for the Journal Theme.

Folks, this here is the OpenCart forum and no support forum for this junk.
If you have bought (or stolen) this Theme, ask the support of Journal and do not waste your time here - nobody will help you!

To "round" the discussion a bit, maybe this here should be read also: 2016 & Ongoing - Why are there so many Terrible themes?!

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Post by OSWorX » Mon Apr 20, 2020 8:53 pm

danielb123 wrote:
Mon Apr 20, 2020 7:43 pm
Chose careful your words
Next time a ask you before I write again about that - okay?
I will use those words again when I think they are right.
And how I am thinking and not someone else.

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Post by kestas » Mon Apr 20, 2020 9:18 pm

danielb123 wrote:
Mon Apr 20, 2020 7:43 pm
Chose careful your words ;) Journal 3 keep opencart relevant ;) people chose opencart because of this theme, why hit it with stones and not push the journal theme devs to make improvements... Ps. yes it have a complicate administration but it worth every minute... there is no other theme to chose maybe another 1-2 themes... and don`t tell me those default repainted themes are a option... don`t forget there is other opensource platforms that people can chose ;). Another problem with opencart is everyone can make extension and more of them are garbage made by kids or something...

If you don't understand what you're talking about, you better not say anything ...

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