Adding Product Options, Is there a bulk updater for this?? ugh Options

[Brina Bujkovsky]

Across the board, all quotations I have requested are now around $400 versus $200. To be honest with you, I think it is a personal thing and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that I am getting an extra $200 surcharge added to my quotes. Every quote I receive regardless of the complexity is now $400 and they always site that the reasoning is because I have other customizations. So, if I continue with more customizations (which are really just useful features that the software should have any way) next year, my quotes will be $600.

It is ridiculous that you can't make bulk changes to Product Types without exporting and importing into new Product Types. From a search engine perspective, I would either have broken product links in the index or have to add 301 redirects to the new products. Also, my Product Types are quite complex with lots of options and I cannot create a duplicate of them when I have to make a new Product Type with a small tweak. That's just limiting.

It used to be affordable to make changes that made my life easier and now it isn't. I am still using 1.9.1 because it is $400 for me to upgrade to the newest version. I can't even have many customizations made until I upgrade to 2.1 which I can't afford to do.

Buying Avactis was one of the biggest mistakes I have made to date when running my boutique. I purchased it about 4 years ago when other carts had too many limitations in the way product options were handled. In retrospect, I should have stuck with oscommerce and simply modified the options rather that getting this antiquated and buggy cart and having to pay every time I found a bug or piece of unusable functionality.

[DonH]

Rather than being a personal thing, it looks more like the quotes are estimates of the amount of time that it will take to do the work. When you cusomize the system files, any new customization has to ensure that the many customizations do not conflict and then program around those conflicts. I, too, have paid for customizations. But, I have studied the customizations that were done and kept the diff files. I take the responsibility to install upgrades on a local server, installed previous customizations from the diff files, and carefully tested. Then I can upload the entire upgraded and customized cart and database to my production server. Done that way, my only cost is the cost of the upgrade. There are no installation charges because I do the installation.

It gets frustrating that technology changes at an increasing rapid pace, but we aren't going to change that. With any cart, or software, you either buy something that is stock or you pay for custom programming. The disadvantage of custom programming is that as time goes on, it becomes difficult (expensive) to maintain and upgrade. There isn't a piece of software that I own where I don't wish it would or could do something that it doesn't. When that "wish list" gets too long and painful, I look for a replacement. But, over the years and many replacements later, I've learned that nothing does everything that I want. There is always something limiting me in some way. If nothing else, my needs and wants change as does my skill set and time constraints. I constantly have to weigh those wants and needs with the cost to achieve those.

When you made the decision four years ago, it was a good decision. But, four years is an eternity in technology. "Coulda, shoulda, woulda", is a no win exercise. All of us make mistakes. There isn't a person in business that wouldn't like a "do over". But, we have to deal with today, right now. You have to make the best decision for today and tomorrow, whatever that is.