Digital Art Zone

Duct tape…is like the Force…there’s a Light side and a Dark side and it holds the Universe together.

...yeah, but duct tape helped to bring the Apollo 13 crew home.  If it can do that in RL, in it’s virtual form it can keep a measly website running.

Don’t underestimate the power of Duct Tape, it is what binds and holds the universe together.

Total Posts:  455

Joined 2006-06-13

Kyoto Kid - 30 December 2012 09:15 PM

...the more I read this kind of stuff, the more I feel that even though it may have been a rickety house of cards, the old site still worked a lot better overall. 

It’s been what, almost seven and a half months, and a lot of things still don’t work or will not because “Magento can’t do that”

Funny that old “broken down” open source PHP software could.

Be careful Kyoto

Whenever I have said the same thing, I get half a dozen people telling me the old site was held together with duct tape.

EVERYTHING about the old site was better.

And it only took maybe 10 years to get all that code done so it had all those bells and whistles because the old software couldn’t do it either. And all coded by someone who is no longer with the company. Even if it takes 5 years to get the sort by added back to our histories that will still be faster than they were originally added to the store. That is something I actually remember being “cool and new”. In comparison to how long some things took to happen with the old software 7 months is a blink of the eye.

Khory - 30 December 2012 10:51 PM

And it only took maybe 10 years to get all that code done so it had all those bells and whistles because the old software couldn’t do it either. And all coded by someone who is no longer with the company. Even if it takes 5 years to get the sort by added back to our histories that will still be faster than they were originally added to the store. That is something I actually remember being “cool and new”. In comparison to how long some things took to happen with the old software 7 months is a blink of the eye.

...so why tank what was working and make everyone deal with all this rubbish all over again with software that clearly cannot support many of the functions the old PHP site did no matter what the development wizards do?

Rendo upgraded with nary a hiccup. So did the Dumpshock (Shadodwrun RPG) forums as well as my local newspaper site.  Heck my company upgraded and we didn’t lose one day of sales.

...this whole Magento experience has been nothing but a lose - lose situation.

Daz needs to admit they made an error and move on to something that does work.

AFAIC, the ONLY thing better with this new set up is that if you go back a page in the store, you actually reach the previous page instead of the first one.

And sometimes there are even product names on the thumbnails.

Other than that?

Sigh.

The state of the site - and the shop, let me remind you, without end of sale timestamps on pages - after several months is just very much unprofessional state of things. None of the business places I’m visiting in internet on regular basic or worked for would tolerate such horrendous and pitiful state of their primary business outlet and the presence in the internet. How people supposed to take that company seriously if after half of the year even the most basic functionality isn’t fixed back?

...Kattey, I’ve been saying this since the new site went live, over on Rendo when the forums here were still down, and here after they finally went live.  I was warned not to pursue this matter further, I was told this was not ground to tread on, I even had posts deleted.

The company I work for wouldn’t tolerate this kind of rubbish for more than a day not much less seven, going on eight, months.  When this is the main source of revenue, and it doesn’t perform even adequately, your customers lose and you lose.  Maybe somebody thinks that offering the flagship app for free will attract enough new blood that losing the old guard customer base wouldn’t matter.  However as new customers also run into the same issues, they will begin to question things as well (I’ve already seen it). 

It’s kind of like here’s our new store but some of the lights don’t work, there’s no heat, the roof leaks, our cash registers go down every time the power flickers or someone sneezes, that department is still under construction, and our sales staff knows nothing about the products we sell…

...but we’re open for business so c’mon in.

@Ptrope, I have to agree, it seems the decision to go with Magento was not a very well thought out one. Again I have witnessed first hand, how such poor yet adamant decision making could sink a company.  From others I have talked with in the IT profession, Magento was a very poor choice for upgrading this website.

When the majority of your long time customer base loses confidence in your company because of a questionable decision that has such a major impact, it should send up a red flag that maybe, just maybe this was not a good move.

The really sad thing is I am worried this decision (in spite of assurances) could come back to seriously hurt the company.  Were it not for Daz I wouldn’t be into 3D CG and for that matter into art as I had to give up drawing and painting due to severe arthritis. They offered me a way to become involved to get back into art while on a very limited budget.  I hold no ill will towards Daz3D and care about their future which is why I have been so vocal about this issue.

tsarist - 30 December 2012 09:57 PM

Kyoto Kid - 30 December 2012 08:15 PM

...the more I read this kind of stuff, the more I feel that even though it may have been a rickety house of cards, the old site still worked a lot better overall. 

It’s been what, almost seven and a half months, and a lot of things still don’t work or will not because “Magento can’t do that”

Funny that old “broken down” open source PHP software could.

Be careful Kyoto

Whenever I have said the same thing, I get half a dozen people telling me the old site was held together with duct tape.

EVERYTHING about the old site was better.

Agreed.  Glad my topic caught fire a bit.  I know so many others out there in DAZ Land are experiencing similar issues.  The old site might have been held together with tar and bubblegum but at least it was mature and worked for the most part.  When this new site started up I was happy at first thinking the forum topic links would no longer take me to a page telling me the topic does not exist.  And yet, from time to time I get that here.  I SEEM to be subscribed to topics but I don’t get notifications for them.  Logon’s here are a joke and yet DAZ doesn’t seem to have anyone behind the scenes to clear up all this mess that’s just going to continue to pile up.  This is THEIR business that suffers.  All I’m trying to say is “IT’S NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME” and hasn’t been since day one and now at 8 months or more it’s still a mess.  Not at all understanding what they are doing in the background but it’s not smart at all.  It’s no wonder so many merchants maintain accounts at other stores and many of them are selling mostly through those portals rather than deal with this mess.  So so pathetic and sad.  I love DAZ, the community and all that but sheesh…. :-(

Kyoto Kid - 31 December 2012 12:26 AM

... edit ...

  I hold no ill will towards Daz3D and care about their future which is why I have been so vocal about this issue.

I think that’s the bottom line for most of us who’ve spoken up in the forums. We all appreciate them and indeed, the loyalty of the customers here is awesome. Quite frankly I don’t know of ‘any’ other store that could ride out so many issues and still have doors to open.
We’ve mentioned issues because these things do indeed matter and we were hoping they’d be fixed. Obviously somethings are out of anybody’s control as 3rd and 4th parties get involved .... however we all have our limits.

The clock spins around to the 31st ... so I’ll bid everybody all the best the New Year. Cheers!

By the way, another little treasure I’ve noticed happening ... and more than once ... is that products on our full order history list, some of those have gone awol too. Sometimes it’s multiple purchases [you know, to get more than one license] getting packed down to ‘one’. Sometimes the very old .... sometimes it’s inexplicable. Like the base of the product goes awol, but the dependent item is still resettable.

If/when the store remembers what we’ve ordered, it’s to be only the products ordered through the new store. Well, some of those orders have also gone poof, and I have never purchased anything through Paypal so these disappearances had absolutely nothing to do with the recent incidents via Paypal. Just more mysteries.

404 error when I click on my wishlist! :(

However as new customers also run into the same issues, they will begin to question things as well (I’ve already seen it).

The thing is though, new customers have significantly less loyalty and patience than people who have been around here for years.

the store is up now, but why the fast grab items are only marked as 30% instead of 70 ??

Well, I THOUGHT the site was fixed… it was ... just long enough to take my money and not allow me to download any of the new stuff.

I’m sure nobody has considered the fact that the old store was a security nightmare?  No, that doesn’t matter…that cobbled together PHP mess couldn’t possibly be riskier than flashing a badge in the bad part of any city.

And then, how about maybe, possibly the reason some of the ‘missing’ features is because there was an active decision NOT to have them…like there was supposed to be a software solution that provided that functionality…but it hasn’t happened yet?  This one is more of a black mark than anything else.

Have any that are complaining about Magento actually gone to their site and looked at it?  Read any of documentation?  Magento is a good, solid, well liked store front package.  It is very actively maintained and has a host of features, both on the customer side and ‘office’ side of things.  It’s not like it’s some experimental thing thrown together in somebody’s basement (oh, wait…that’s why the change was made in the first place).

Why not complain about something that can make a difference…like the decision to not have popular features (looking at the Magento docs, they’d be pretty easy to add) when the software that was going to replace them wasn’t available?  Yeah, that was an active policy decision and one, that frankly, sucks…

And tonight’s episode of the store going wonky has nothing to do with the normal, everyday problems some are having…it’s an entirely different class of problem…and maybe even was intentional (for a while I was getting the ‘Down for maintenance’ page…so maybe it was down because they actually were DOING something with it…).  And remember…Cloudflare has servers spread around the globe, so that increases the ‘local’ presence, but it also means that things like downtime aren’t instantly resolved…it takes time for all those locations to sync back up with the ‘live’ pages…the same thing applies when it goes down for maintenance as when it comes back up…it’s not instant.

Yes, it would be great if they would let us know things like planned down time (if that’s what it was…because there’s definitely something about the store that’s different now…it’s ‘snappier’), but there’s no law that says they have to…