Fed up.

[leehack]

Anyways, I'm not yet at the stage of order testing, but just wanted to counter some of the negativity towards V8.
I'm finding building the site a rewarding experience, and the amount of flexibilty, if you can afford the time to learn how to use the software to its fullest, is great.
The pre-built templates are pretty cack.
The stylesheets as provided are completely bloated, due to trying to be everything to everyone.
Much of the new functionaility 'seems' not to have been fully tested before launch.
...and the launch of V8 itself was a PR joke, which I think management would have to admit.
But somewhere deep inside it all, I think there is a decent bit of kit.

I think this paragraph sums it up perfectly, it's an attempt to counter some of the negativity. It has 2 positives and 4 negatives at the very best, it could be argued that the 2 positives could be classed as negativity also as time and being unable to unearth the great beast are hardly positive.

Brownie points scored = -3

[RuralWeb]

Having started my journey

Got your RAC Membership with you

[george]

Oh dear oh dear Comicman, doing so well until...

I'm a programmer, rather than a designer, and am happy ploughing through manuals, and source code, to see how things tick.

Its not for everyone - but I like it

...

[fleetwood]

Brownie points scored = -3

No brownie points to score here - I'm neither affliated with Actinic, nor sell its products, nor any add-ons, nor host any sites..

Just recounting my experiences so far as an end user.

Lee - the list of neagtives was made to agree that the software is far from perfect - I think we all know that - but its not the badly developed software that one could get the impression of by reading many of the comments made.

I do think though that there is a real attempt by the Actinic team, to grow the software to meet the demands of its users, and V8 is the first step in dusting down a cobwebby piece of software.
Many of its problems lie within it trying to be too easy and flexible (and no, it does not suceed in this, but I recognise what they are trying to do).

Instead of relying on users having decent programming or design skills, it attemps to allow anyone to achieve the ideal look and functionality by changing an endless stream of variables.
Its a bit like expecting MS Word to write you a book, via menus and toolbars, just because its a word processor.

I think sometimes people expect a little bit too much (as some of the active forum members are now rebelling against when people expect free design services from them, rather than some friendly pointers in the right direction

[Simon Williams]

I think sometimes people expect a little bit too much (as some of the active forum members are now rebelling against when people expect free design services from them, rather than some friendly pointers in the right direction

I don't expect more or less than any other piece of software that I've paid a hundreds of pounds for.

I want an end product, not one that seems to be in development. I've paid full wack for a package that will assist me in the design process on behalf of my client who are paying me for that service. If I can't deliver that to them via Actinic, then there is little point in having it.

I do not want to give Actinic time to sort out, or have to worry about a product that may not deliver my promised to my clients.

I am absolutely bricking myself about the time I hand over projects to my clients, and subsequently have to spend 50% of my time supporting problems they encounter. I do not have the time, although I have build in time to my projects for this.

We may be looking at Actinic from different point of view though.

As designers, and website consultants (Lee and Malcolm, just to mention a couple), we expect more from software that will eventually represent our company. If I were working on my own store, it would be less of a problem, but having to support multiple sites could in the log run, reduce my ability to produce more sites.

[fleetwood]

Hi Simon

Just to make it clear - I was not attempting to put down your complaint - just recount my own experience.

I have been using the software for 4 1/2 years, since V5, and purchased the upgrade to V8 some 5 months ago, but have not touched it until now.
During this time, I have read a lot of posts bemoaning how much of a cock up V8 is.
I may well end up biting my tongue in a few weeks time, and agreeing with the complainers, when I attempt to take the V8 site live, but after a week of getting stuck into V8, to the level of template modding, I just wanted to say that I'm finding it does primarily what it claims to do, and is far better IMHO than previous versions.

The softwares biggest problem is that it has become bloated, as the initial code and database have had bits bolted on to try and accomodate the miriad of function upgrades that users are clamouring for (me included).

I have always found that Actinic works well straight out of the box, and believe that it provides the opportunity for anyone to set up shop, quickly and relatively easily (with even limited computing skills, you can be up and running in a day or so).

What it dosen't do is provide unique, fantastic looking shops, out of the box, and I think this is where some people expect too much.

If a user wants to develop/design a style, beyond the basic templates included, it takes time to understand the workings of the software, beyond choosing themes and colour schemes.

It is not easy, but I believe the mechansims are there to create decent and interesting designs and functionality.
It also keeps the designers - despite the complaints - in the money!

If it was that easy, you'd all be out of a job

It is possible that the integration with DW dosen't work as it should - I can't comment on that side as I don't work with DW - preferring to get stuck into the code itself.

I'll report back when I'm closer to going live (and no doubt be asking for the inevitable 'review my site please'), and hope I don't have to join in with the complaints at that stage. Time will tell.

[gabrielcrowe]

We've had a lot of bother upgrading to V8. A lot of time consuming and therefore expensive bother. But ultimately, after the torture of learning how it all combobulates, doing something in there is actually quite clever. Lots of fiddly scripty goodness.

And, I like scripty goodness.

Even though Actinic V8 is actually a rework of the software, I wonder just how much code has been 'kludged' on to the original. I'd like nothing more than to go through their source. I'd spend positively every second of every day, in awe of this thing that I fill my 'pooter time with.

I think its high time someone purchased actinic and open sourced it. How much is Actinic worth?

[leehack]

Its a never ending discussion in all honesty and there are no firm answers. What we can say for definite is that the software we have now is bordering on being a great package for the money. When it was released, it was a mess and it has taken many members of this forum to bring it up to scratch.

Anyone just starting on it now will find it hard to understand the frustration that some of us harbour from 6-9 months ago, some of us have been through the mill and lost hair and coutless hours of our own time.

Most of us really like Actinic and that is why we spend so much time on this forum. Ultimately my feelings are that V9 will be a great package, they are developing V8 fast and by V9, i think it will be a stunning package and they will have learnt a lot.

Its very important for us to tell them what they are doing wrong and not gloss over issues - this is the only way they can learn and improve. Patting them on the back will not get us a great package, addressing the issues will and we can all benefit from that.

The press they have received since its release will be disappointing, this can be evidenced by one of the "big wigs" coming onto the forum and addressing issues. That alone tells me that they have a good infrastructure back there as it must have taken a lot of balls to come on here and say some of the things he has.

The greatest positive they can take from this is that most of us are still here AND more importantly, for ecommerce sites we still use and recommend their software. What we need is our faith and time repaid and ensure that they listen, learn immensely from some catastrophic mistakes and together we can build a great package.

V8 scores 7.75/10 for me at the moment, with 8.05 out shortly i expect that to become 8/10 and ultimately i hope they get to 9.5/10 - we shall see.

[Froogle]

I have to say that I agree with the original poster's comments.

Actinic is not cheap, there are many other eCommerce packages out there costing considerably less. I am sure I raised this point in a previous post (a long time ago) and was told that if you added up the cost it would take for someone to design and build a custom site then actinic is good value for money. I think the original poster has just dismissed this comment as actinic clearly isn't a complete (finished) working package.

Thankfully I've not upgraded to V8, I was called by Actinic to ask if I wanted to upgrade. After investing money in V6 catalog, V7 catalog, V7 business edition and then V7 developer I wasn't prepared to throw any extra money at actinic.

The comment about this forum certainly made me laugh. I've never called upon actinic's support. We've always found any answers we needed on here. There are people who spend all day on here answering any question you've got. I have to say it is very rare to see anyone from actinic answer a post and I think it is appalling that when someone called support they were directed to this forum.

Actinic is full of bugs and problems which are never fixed. Instead a work-around is given which doesn't really fix the problem. There is also the "wish list" section which people waste their time posting in. One very important feature which is always brushed aside is stock control. I find it very strange that a piece of software in its 8th revision doesn't have proper stock control. I was told by one of the admin at actinic that the software has "stock monitoring" not stock control. What use is this to a company? With the price of actinic surely it is not targeted towards small bedroom/garage companies, I would have thought many larger companies would be using their software. Surely these customers need stock control? I know I do, I have over 400 lines to manage. I know that actinic is not server based so stock control would be difficult but I am sure something can be done? After all if we're able to edit the perl scripts (with no knowledge of perl) to allow an external rss feed to feed us stock levels and allow customers to buy or not a product depending on if the item is in stock from the feed then I am sure actinic could do something for stock control?

I could go on about all the other features/bugs which I think should be included in actinic's software but I wont. Thankfully we've managed to work round these and custom make something which works. With the amount of custom work we've done we would have been better making a site from scratch.

A sample of how we've worked around Actinic's problems.

Stock control:
Using Jan's software we'll download an order every 15 minutes. Our back end software will read the database for the items purchased and then upload a feed to the website. When a customer adds the product to their shopping cart it will check the feed and if out of stock a message will say "we've checked our stock and this item is out of stock, our website will be updated to reflect this shortly"

Cost Price of an item:
To work out true profit, it would be good to have a cost price option in actinic. We've used a custom property and our backend software can workout the profit per order, week, month etc.

Unique coupon code:
When a customer enters their unique coupon it looks it up in a text file and if the code is there is passes the Actinic code back to the site in a starred out field so the customer never sees the code. Once the code has been uses once the text file is updated so it can't be used again.

Upsell:
We've created an upsell on our site "you may also be interested in" Unlike actinic's components etc, this allows pictures etc.

Extra images:
To display more than one image relating to the product we created a custom property that the site reads from and displays the extra images.

Order processing:
We've created our own backend order processing. We barcode scan the items as they're dispatched. Instead of using Actinic's basic dispatch email system we can use our own that displays what's been dispatched, a shipping note, their tracking details and more importantly related items that they may be interested in based on what they've bought.

The order processing can tell us if the customer has raised a support ticket on our support service so we can take extra care packing the orders. It can alert us to fraudulent addresses. It can inform us if this is the first time a customer has ordered, to name a few.

Search:
Actinic's search is poor. Using our order processing software we can quickly and easily search the database for all the information we need relating to a customer. This has cut down the length of time it takes to resolve a problem with the customer as we can find their details quickly and easily.

[jont]

There is also the "wish list" section which people waste their time posting in.

Quite a few of the wish list requests have made it into the later patch releases since v8 public and especially since v8 alpha .. obviously not all are possible or feasible and everyone has their own list of priorities they want to see included. The amount of feedback they appear to take on board is quite impressive IMHO compared to many other developers.

[Darren B]

I think this paragraph sums it up perfectly, it's an attempt to counter some of the negativity. It has 2 positives and 4 negatives at the very best, it could be argued that the 2 positives could be classed as negativity also as time and being unable to unearth the great beast are hardly positive.

But 4 negatives must make 2 positives

[leehack]

I was never good at maths Darren, huh?

[RuralWeb]

Actinic is not cheap, there are many other eCommerce packages out there costing considerably less

Ok - time to come clean and admit that late last year I was so p****d off with V8 that I spent some considerable time looking at the major competitors to Actinic with a view to ditching them.

Most of them are FREE and can do all of what V8 does and in some cases more (But I expect V8 can do it but Im not that good yet) what I concluded was that on balance V8 was better - my hope at the time was that it was not and I could move on.

So I have battled on and yes its not perfect but Im still hanging in - others may not stay that long?

Is it expensive I think not really when you compare it with a custom site which can cost in the region of £30,000+ - yes I know you can all do it for less but the price is real and is what some people are paying for sites.

[Darren B]

I was never good at maths Darren, huh?

When i was at school i always got told, 2 negatives make a positive so 4 negatives must be 2 positives

I think

[MASTERforge]

My experience of actinic is like buying a nice shiny new car. You go away driving it being really impressed then later realise that the manufacturer has decided its upon you to do the safety and parts testing.

Wheel falls off? Fill in a support ticket.
Engine explodes? Read the forum
Dodgy handbrake? Buy actinic cover.

We are basically bug testing the product and paying for it. I felt so bad about this situation that I started a complaints thread a few months back.

The developers on here who spend a huge amount of time helping us for no reward should be paid by actinic to run and support the forum. They are much more help than the support telephone line.

I hope that the newer versions are a better product or a competitor enters the market to give us more choice.