What is Eos Online Merchant

[David M. Graham]

Mark!

Nice to hear from you.  No, its not stalled.   We've lacked time to create visibility lately due to an influx of new clients, but development has continued and we are going beta soon and going live on select sites.

David

[CypherUK]

Hi David! - Long time no speak. Has the EOS development stalled or is something on the horizon?

Regards
Mark

[David M. Graham]

Not at this time.  I have no objection to this, just have not had time.

[inetbiz]

That being said, I would be more than happy to help out here in the forums [or anywhere else], time permitted of course.  

David, has SupremeC been given access levels in mantis?

[zip1]

Okay... migration would not be a huge issue to me as I could have written a migration script. I guess what I am not happy about, and its not a deal killer for me, is having to either modify my current template or design a new one. Template design is Not my strongest skill for sure. 

There is a version of all creloaded template that ship with creloaded. They just are not included in the distro, and they won't be. The will be a separate downloads from the EOS site.

Although not every thing is in place yet, by the time we get to beta it should be.

If your old cre template was based on the cre Helios template:

1. Copy your template to template/other/Helios/
2. Copy the EOS version to the server and rename it to it is unique
3. Add your new EOS template to the template system (from now on it uses your new template name, which is the directory name it resides in)
4. Edit the template configuration changing the appropriate info. (there will be a check sheet for this, along with specific help instructions)  you can change the default images names to yours.
5. Use the style sheet compare tool to move you old color to the new style sheet.
6. Use the packager to create an updated install_template.php file

There is no a feature set that does this automatically or planned yet. But, as more people lets use know they want an easier migration path, it will be done as a separate feature or includes in the admin.


By allowing a direct drop in of template from other systems, it then mixes HTML and XHTML. Although, some modern browser handle this in a compatibility mode. It slows the viewing of the site down. It also hurts your ranking to use mixed HTML and XHTML code on a site.  So it better in the long run to migrate the template to EOS template system.

[David M. Graham]

Okay... migration would not be a huge issue to me as I could have written a migration script. I guess what I am not happy about, and its not a deal killer for me, is having to either modify my current template or design a new one. Template design is Not my strongest skill for sure. 

That being said, I would be more than happy to help out here in the forums [or anywhere else], time permitted of course.   

I can't say I am happy about this need from a strategic standpoint either.  There are however,  a number of good reasons for this.  I think the clear sign for me was when I started seeing Zen Cart code distributed in commercial templates along with the out of date CRE Loaded code.......

 

[David M. Graham]

Hi!
I heard about this over on the CRE Loaded forums, and while I'm not committed to moving, I am definatly keeping my eye out for options.

I have a few questions and I hope this is the right place to ask them.

It is as good a place as any

For someone like me, who is a shop owner, somewhat tech savvy though really not on the programming end (I'm a help desk person, I can see code and fumble my way through it, but really I'm better at translating between geek speak and end user. LOL!!!!), would this be a difficult transition?

Not as the project matures.   Our coding staff wrote the first ever upgrader for CRE Loaded, back when Sal Iozzia thought it couldn't be done by script.  EOS will have upgraders for CRE Loaded and osCommerce.  It may not be without its difficulties - MySQL version differences, etc - but definitely doable.

Would popping my graphics into a new template (I am currently using a modified Helius) be too difficult?

I do not expect so.  One issue we have been working on is renaming template components to increase clarity of usage.  This should help you, though at this stage, comments from users such as yourself would be MOST helpful to us.

And would downloads work the same? Right now I'm running 6.2.13 with FDMS on two stores. I do have one custom mod, and that is to get sales reports by manufacturer. And I do a lot of coupon work so that should work right  .

EOS  does not include support for the old Download Controller at all.  It has been completely removed in favor of an FDMS derivative which includes features originally slated for CRE Loaded's FDMS 2.0 release.  I believe the most significant change currently is that it parses and manages subdirectories.

The coupon system, shopping cart and checkout processes are currently being analyzed for refactoring.  Among the expected changes would be the complete separation of the gift voucher and gift certificate systems, a return to centralized taxation management and movement of the free shipping and free charging systems up into their respective management classes from the current module basis.

These are not small changes in terms of functionality and performance.  I expect significant testing and feedback from the field to be necessary for optimization. Once more, input offered now has the best potential for payoff during implementation. 

The point has been made to me that location of EOS resources and opportunities for participation are not yet clear.  I'll be working on that in the near future and hope to see more community participation in the design and coding phases than was the case with either CRE Loaded or osCommerce.   The answers to these questions should rest at least partially in community hands.

Thanks so much!
Mary/Jupiter Gardens
www.jupitergardens.com
www.pinkpetalbooks.com/bookstore

[SkipWater]

Just dropped in to add my support to Eos. With the way thing are we need a new light in all this darkness.

Work on converters from other catalogs are scheduled for .6 release that is after the release gets bumped to .06. As far as an easy converter it will be easy to run, but most likely they won't be easy to code since some of the database tables have had major changes to them.

When cre went wild I wrote a converter for zen-cart that handles cre 6.2. It is a stand alone script so there is no need for Eos to be up and running to load the data. http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&cPath=40_41&products_id=1101

It will need some work to but I think the cre side is done.

[jupitergardens]

Hi!
I heard about this over on the CRE Loaded forums, and while I'm not committed to moving, I am definately keeping my eye out for options.

I have a few questions and I hope this is the right place to ask them.

For someone like me, who is a shop owner, somewhat tech savvy though really not on the programming end (I'm a help desk person, I can see code and fumble my way through it, but really I'm better at translating between geek speak and end user. LOL!!!!), would this be a difficult transition?

Would popping my graphics into a new template (I am currently using a modified Helius) be too difficult?

And would downloads work the same? Right now I'm running 6.2.13 with FDMS on two stores. I do have one custom mod, and that is to get sales reports by manufacturer. And I do a lot of coupon work so that should work right  .

Thanks so much!
Mary/Jupiter Gardens
www.jupitergardens.com
www.pinkpetalbooks.com/bookstore

[SupremeC]

Okay... migration would not be a huge issue to me as I could have written a migration script. I guess what I am not happy about, and its not a deal killer for me, is having to either modify my current template or design a new one. Template design is Not my strongest skill for sure. 

That being said, I would be more than happy to help out here in the forums [or anywhere else], time permitted of course.   

Michael,

That assumption would not be entirely correct.

I've found a number of issues in CRE Loaded use in the field which make maintainability more difficult.  We are restructuring to address those.  In particular, the template system is different (CRE Loaded templates should not work), the price break data structure is different (separate pricing table), the sessions structure is somewhat different (Tom has pulled a bunch of stuff from the sessions back into class members and global variables), the product image management is different (separate table).

The list goes on.  Now, the functionality is maintained and/or improved - but we are not binding ourselves to strict compatibility with CRE Loaded.

We intend to build converters of course, and the migration process should be fairly straightforward.  It will not be plug and play.

The bugs and bull***t have to go.  This is why we plan to refactor code rather than apply minor tweaking corrections.

We've started this with coupons and the checkout process, and I would be VERY happy to have some community participation on this site.

David

[zip1]

Work on converters from other catalogs are scheduled for .6 release that is after the release gets bumped to .06. As far as an easy converter it will be easy to run, but most likely they won't be easy to code since some of the database tables have had major changes to them.

You should also remember that OSC and CRE loaded work from a code base that was written for php 3. So backward compatibility is not something we are striving for. Although some code will look the same, most needs to be changed for use with php 5.

I fully expect it will take at least a month for .06 to be released, or maybe sooner since we don't do a major release by a specific date. Rather they are released when a milestone is met. Of the three remaining major task for 0.5 2 are almost completed and the third should not take long to do.

[OKCRandy]

I cant wait until this comes out.  After Creloaded came out with the 6.3 and the dumb subscription price I already started looking for another cart.

I am also looking for a more feasible solution. This one sounds great from what little I have read on it so far.

I am tired of the greed of CRE and there raping the ones that have invested in there version of osc. What seemed like a good solution for my store is now just a brickwall getting help with bugs. and charging for some features that are only let downs when you spend the money on something that does not work the way it is advertised lame reports and plug ins that are lacking in flexibility and automation. FDMS was a real let down for me.

EDIT: Is there a way at this time to import the clients from CRE b2b pro? Curious so I can get client input.

Cheers
Randy Bouse
PurOKC-Creations.net

[David M. Graham]

Michael,

That assumption would not be entirely correct.

I've found a number of issues in CRE Loaded use in the field which make maintainability more difficult.  We are restructuring to address those.  In particular, the template system is different (CRE Loaded templates should not work), the price break data structure is different (separate pricing table), the sessions structure is somewhat different (Tom has pulled a bunch of stuff from the sessions back into class members and global variables), the product image management is different (separate table).

The list goes on.  Now, the functionality is maintained and/or improved - but we are not binding ourselves to strict compatibility with CRE Loaded.

We intend to build converters of course, and the migration process should be fairly straightforward.  It will not be plug and play.

The bugs and bull***t have to go.  This is why we plan to refactor code rather than apply minor tweaking corrections.

We've started this with coupons and the checkout process, and I would be VERY happy to have some community participation on this site.

David

[SupremeC]

Hey David ~

I assume that, because Eos is based off CRE, there will be not much to do in the way of migration from CRE Pro?

With all that has happened and continues to change at CRE, a lot of the people in my networking circle [other hosts, designers, etc] have either dropped CRE like a bad habit or are planning to. Would be nice to have some of the same functionality as CRE minus all the bugs and bulls***.

[David M. Graham]

While I don't expect to take as long as osCommerce for this release, Tom and I do plan to take some time and get it right.

Along the way we are building a set of php Code Sniffs to help assure quality.

David