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Good Sites that offer MODS w/ installation


Scorpio741

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Good Morning Everyone!

Hope you are have a great holiday weekend. Even tho we are at the last day..

 

Being a fairly newbie to CubeCart and this forum. Can you people recommend some sites that have a good selection of MODS I can add on to my CubeCArt. I am using CC5. And since the tech side scares me of adding my own MOD's it would be helpful if he site offered installation of the MODS as well.

 

I thank you for your time in advance.

Eddy

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This is my opinion only.

 

Unfortunately, the current best source of mod publishers is to google for "CubeCart mods" and "CubeCart skins".

 

During the days of CubeCart 3/4, there were many more publishers of mods and skins than there are now. Since the introduction of CC5 (having a completely new coding paradigm) and the discontinuation of CC3/4, I have seen a number of mod publishers disappear.

 

There is still the www.cubecartforums.org website, but the rules of that forum has the consequence that a "commercial member" who chooses not to renew that status will have all of that members' mods hidden from view, as well as the threads that discussed their mods, and links to the (perhaps still-existing) mod stores are removed from other forum members' conversations.

 

The forum at cubecart.com used to be very strict about discussing CubbeCart -- only the core code and only minor edits to tweak CubeCart's behavior. But a number of months ago, the forum rules were relaxed considerably so that mention and discussion of third-party mods and radical edits that give CubeCart new functionality are permitted.

 

I see very few mod publishers who do not also offer an installation service.

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Hi Eddy

Welcome to CubeCart ! The first piece of advice I would give you is only installed true plugins never "mods" that change core code. There are a couple of reasons for this :

1) You can always do each and every upgrade yourself - with mods that change one or more core files, these changes have to be done each and every time you upgrade. There are some users that decide to change core code but each upgrade becomes more and more difficult.

2) The 3rd party developers that have committed to write true plugins (where no core files are changed), in our view, are committed to CubeCart. V5 introduced the concept of hooks to enable bespoke changes to be written this way - it is more complicated to write plugins than it is hacking core code, and quite often a hook isn't available where a developer needs (although Al has often said he will immediately add any hook required by any developer, and I can vouch that he has always done this)

In terms of who to recommend : unfortunately there aren't too many. We have written quite a few payment gateways and plugins for V5 although many of these are not yet publicly available on our website. There are maybe two or three others who we would buy skins / plugins from that we would trust for our customers

Ian

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gentlemen.. I thank you once again for your quick and swift bunny like speed replies. So both of you seem to agree.. not many to choose from out there in the world currently.   Ian (Havenswift).. you have a site that sells MODS? What is the URL?

 

So, let's say I google something and find a site that had MODS for CC5. Are there any certain questions that I would want to ask to make sure nothing gets screwed up in the coding? (core files) just to make sure I am being safe. I do realize.. and I have used CC3 way back.. that most do offer installation. Not sure why I asked/added that in there.. I think it was Estelle's MODS at the time. Again I thank you both for you help and aany added info you can provide here to these inquiries.

 

Eddy

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Hi Eddy

Our site is https://www.havenswift-hosting.co.uk but many of the plugins we have written for V5 are not yet visible on the site although these will start getting added very shortly.

In terms of what to ask - I would recommend that you ask if they are true plugins - if so then installation is generally as easy as uploading a single directory to your site and enabling it ! V3 and V4 didnt have that option so almost all mods required core file changes and therefore installation by somebody happy to work with code.

Thanks

Ian

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I would like to know if any one mod - even if a plugin - will disturb or be disturbed by other mods - even if they are plugins.

 

We can agree that a mod publisher is not obligated to keep a diary of which mods conflict with any other mod. But from support tickets, anecdotal stories, and forum discussions, I would be sorely disappointed in a mod publisher if such a diary were not maintained and full disclosure not made to a pre-sales query containing a list of currently installed mods (and hand-coded edits to core code if one can explain it sufficiently).

 

So, irrespective of my hopes on the quality and truthiness of the response, I would go ahead and ask anyway - no harm in doing so - "Does mod XYZ work with mod ABC?"

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As has already been stated, the 3rd party forum isn't a complete list of reputable developers, but once you have a few possibles in mind it's a good idea to check that forum to see if people have had Customer Service problems with any of your possible coders. There is a feedback section, and also look through the recent comments on any mods you are interested in. There are several developers whose CS has deteriorated severely just in the last 6 months or so.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I should also mention, although I got whacked on talking about this by the old forum rules:

couple of things to watch out for:

1) plugins which include rogue code to include things like links to their clients' websites, or similar nononsense. A captcha plugin for CC5 I tried had links to the plugin developers SEO provider which were not disclosed.

2) some plugins pull content from their own CDN account via a redirect vs loading code locally on your site; which is major security risk as they can inject code into writable files, and no guarantee they will be in business tomorrow and CDN account shut down.

SO, always check that anything you buy doesn't "phone home" with every use, and also check for internal links to other sites, and check the source code of your store page once anything is installed for odd obfuscated code, or URLs.

I ran into two plugins like this, and have generally sworn them off. The good devs for CC4 mods and plugins seem to have taken a hike or moved onto other projects like WordPress stuff, or donationware.

Only my opinion, but as a PCI-DSS certified secure merchant, and former CEO of web hosting company (1996-2005), I am a bit paranoid about "bad actors" as they say with anything "in the code" that shouldn't be there.

Just cautionary tale, not a statement on the industry. I'm using a third party skin, for example.

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Thank you SO much for your detailed reply. I have heard form a couple of others about some things you have mentioned. Downside for me is (and reason I was asking who is reputable enough to look into. Hoping others have used before) is that I am not tech savvy enough to go in and look at the coding job that was done after it is installed. So I very my appreciated your opinions. 

 

One reason I have been asking these questions is that (and I am a home business) I have my home router hacked. Found I had approx. 17 other computers outside the U.S. attached to my system. Paid my IT guy more than I wanted to at the time and do a D.O.D. wipe out of everything. Sweep 4 computers. Totally redid my security here. So I certainly don't want or need the risk of the "outside" coming in and info going to other severs. Just looking for MODS to do their job.

 

Not even sure exactly what I am looking for and want. I know I saw on another MOD site a few things to make my life easier. SO I Am more or less wondering (if I find someone I can trust) what I would want to have installed.

 

Thanks again for your input and reply.

Eddy

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I have not tried any of their stuff, but the folks at Havensoft, seem active here, and "involved" with the community, so I'd likely touch base with them if there is a *specific* thing you need that the cart does not already do. Some things can be edited in the files by hand as needed, like adding text to templates for customer explanations about what to do when/where. I did this, but it's only in English, but 99% of our audience is US based, so I don't need to worry about international stuff or language files for that.

For instance there was a great CC4 mod/plugin thing which changed the coupons (prior to CC5, there wasn't a built in coupon feature) so that a single user could not use a code more than once, which I loved. Would love to have that feature in CC5 (meaning vs "total number of uses" we also had "maximum number of uses PER account" and somebody had to be logged in to use a coupon).

Likely best to think about what you NEED, vs just trolling plugins and going "hey, that's cool!" .. although sometimes it helps you figure out something you could use, you didn't know you needed, it's often best to limit hacks/plugins unless you really need them for future compatibility with updates to CC.

:-)

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