Thought the widget-based OSC4 Theme structure to be very user-friendly, now I am definitely changing my mind...

[mendoh]

I thought the OSC4 Themes based on widgets to be very user-friendly. In actual facts and after fiddling more than a couple of days with simple widgets modifications (i.e.: adding, removing and customizing the existing widgets), I have to change my mind. 
After adding a few new info pages and customizing a few widgets (all modifications have been brought to the WATCH theme), this is what I am sadly getting right now: 

1. the original new products, sales feature products and featured products have all DISAPPEARED from home page and there is apparently no way to have them back, despite they are still present on the admin side;
2. the pop-up preview layout I get from admin after bringing my changes is different (better) than the actual live front end layout: widgets that previously took no more than a couple of small units now extend to half the size of the whole page and a few category pictures get piled up one atop the other, thus completely destroying the homepage design (did not happen before);
3. all the info pages I added have DISAPPEARED and there is apparently no way to have them back, despite they are still present on the admin side. All I am left with is their page link on the hompeage footer widget but...guess what!? Clicking on it delivers absolutely nothing!
4. the original theme page links (i.e.: New products, Sales Feature and Featured Products) behave exactly as the pages I have added, that is: ALL DISAPPEARED;
5. the original "Contact Us" page has gone as well!
6. clicking on any of the original "For her", "For him", "For hall" product categories, as well as on any of the original "New products", "Feature Products" and "All products" tabs/links shows ABSOLUTELY NOTHING;
7. the BACKUP feature on admin DOES NOT HELP AT ALL. Despite having at least 4 backups, I could not restore the original theme layout and let us not even mention the for-ever spinning balls that stay onscreen even when some sort of "back-up" has already been restored 😞
8. the only pages and related links that still appear to work are "login" and "account".

The OSC4 manuals/help wiki do not help at all. 

Mailed a post about how to reset/reimport the original themes, so that I could at least start again from scratch: absolutely no reply so far. 

Tried to copy the original theme folders to server and overwrite the existing ones: absolutely no difference.

I made only very small changes to the original WATCH theme/widgets and frankly speaking I could never imagine a similar "earthquake" to be able to happen literally out of the blue, while making those changes and leaving me with absolutely no plausible cause for that. 

At this moment, very sad to say, I am looking at a full reinstall to clear away the above and undesirable mess, but that is not even worth to be called a "solution": just imagine such a mess happening on a running site with hundreds of products and you are left with ABOSUTELY NO CLUE for the originating cause. 

Is there ANYBODY who just KNOWS EXACTLY what is going on with that? 

This whole new OSC4 engine appears to have great potentials to me, hovever, its remarkable inner complexity is definitely turning out to be a double-edged (or even triple-edged!) weapon so far... (OUCH!)

[osCommerce-Official]

@Sergey Dunaevand @Ivan Holbi could you please comment 

[Ivan Holbi]

14 hours ago, mendoh said:

I thought the OSC4 Themes based on widgets to be very user-friendly. In actual facts and after fiddling more than a couple of days with simple widgets modifications (i.e.: adding, removing and customizing the existing widgets), I have to change my mind. 
After adding a few new info pages and customizing a few widgets (all modifications have been brought to the WATCH theme), this is what I am sadly getting right now: 

1. the original new products, sales feature products and featured products have all DISAPPEARED from home page and there is apparently no way to have them back, despite they are still present on the admin side;
2. the pop-up preview layout I get from admin after bringing my changes is different (better) than the actual live front end layout: widgets that previously took no more than a couple of small units now extend to half the size of the whole page and a few category pictures get piled up one atop the other, thus completely destroying the homepage design (did not happen before);
3. all the info pages I added have DISAPPEARED and there is apparently no way to have them back, despite they are still present on the admin side. All I am left with is their page link on the hompeage footer widget but...guess what!? Clicking on it delivers absolutely nothing!
4. the original theme page links (i.e.: New products, Sales Feature and Featured Products) behave exactly as the pages I have added, that is: ALL DISAPPEARED;
5. the original "Contact Us" page has gone as well!
6. clicking on any of the original "For her", "For him", "For hall" product categories, as well as on any of the original "New products", "Feature Products" and "All products" tabs/links shows ABSOLUTELY NOTHING;
7. the BACKUP feature on admin DOES NOT HELP AT ALL. Despite having at least 4 backups, I could not restore the original theme layout and let us not even mention the for-ever spinning balls that stay onscreen even when some sort of "back-up" has already been restored 😞
8. the only pages and related links that still appear to work are "login" and "account".

The OSC4 manuals/help wiki do not help at all. 

Mailed a post about how to reset/reimport the original themes, so that I could at least start again from scratch: absolutely no reply so far. 

Tried to copy the original theme folders to server and overwrite the existing ones: absolutely no difference.

I made only very small changes to the original WATCH theme/widgets and frankly speaking I could never imagine a similar "earthquake" to be able to happen literally out of the blue, while making those changes and leaving me with absolutely no plausible cause for that. 

At this moment, very sad to say, I am looking at a full reinstall to clear away the above and undesirable mess, but that is not even worth to be called a "solution": just imagine such a mess happening on a running site with hundreds of products and you are left with ABOSUTELY NO CLUE for the originating cause. 

Is there ANYBODY who just KNOWS EXACTLY what is going on with that? 

This whole new OSC4 engine appears to have great potentials to me, hovever, its remarkable inner complexity is definitely turning out to be a double-edged (or even triple-edged!) weapon so far... (OUCH!)

Hi Mendoh,

Could you please PM me with the login details to the admin area of your website for us to check the issues you outlined further?

Best regards,

Ivan

[mendoh]

On 2/21/2023 at 10:31 AM, Ivan Holbi said:

Could you please PM me with the login details to the admin area of your website for us to check the issues you outlined further?

Hello Ivan,

sent you a message with the requested info just a few minutes ago. 

Thank you

Mendoh

[Ivan Holbi]

On 2/20/2023 at 8:45 PM, mendoh said:

I thought the OSC4 Themes based on widgets to be very user-friendly. In actual facts and after fiddling more than a couple of days with simple widgets modifications (i.e.: adding, removing and customizing the existing widgets), I have to change my mind. 
After adding a few new info pages and customizing a few widgets (all modifications have been brought to the WATCH theme), this is what I am sadly getting right now: 

1. the original new products, sales feature products and featured products have all DISAPPEARED from home page and there is apparently no way to have them back, despite they are still present on the admin side;
2. the pop-up preview layout I get from admin after bringing my changes is different (better) than the actual live front end layout: widgets that previously took no more than a couple of small units now extend to half the size of the whole page and a few category pictures get piled up one atop the other, thus completely destroying the homepage design (did not happen before);
3. all the info pages I added have DISAPPEARED and there is apparently no way to have them back, despite they are still present on the admin side. All I am left with is their page link on the hompeage footer widget but...guess what!? Clicking on it delivers absolutely nothing!
4. the original theme page links (i.e.: New products, Sales Feature and Featured Products) behave exactly as the pages I have added, that is: ALL DISAPPEARED;
5. the original "Contact Us" page has gone as well!
6. clicking on any of the original "For her", "For him", "For hall" product categories, as well as on any of the original "New products", "Feature Products" and "All products" tabs/links shows ABSOLUTELY NOTHING;
7. the BACKUP feature on admin DOES NOT HELP AT ALL. Despite having at least 4 backups, I could not restore the original theme layout and let us not even mention the for-ever spinning balls that stay onscreen even when some sort of "back-up" has already been restored 😞
8. the only pages and related links that still appear to work are "login" and "account".

The OSC4 manuals/help wiki do not help at all. 

Mailed a post about how to reset/reimport the original themes, so that I could at least start again from scratch: absolutely no reply so far. 

Tried to copy the original theme folders to server and overwrite the existing ones: absolutely no difference.

I made only very small changes to the original WATCH theme/widgets and frankly speaking I could never imagine a similar "earthquake" to be able to happen literally out of the blue, while making those changes and leaving me with absolutely no plausible cause for that. 

At this moment, very sad to say, I am looking at a full reinstall to clear away the above and undesirable mess, but that is not even worth to be called a "solution": just imagine such a mess happening on a running site with hundreds of products and you are left with ABOSUTELY NO CLUE for the originating cause. 

Is there ANYBODY who just KNOWS EXACTLY what is going on with that? 

This whole new OSC4 engine appears to have great potentials to me, hovever, its remarkable inner complexity is definitely turning out to be a double-edged (or even triple-edged!) weapon so far... (OUCH!)

Hi Mendoh,

Regarding your comments above please see our comments below:

1. You provided us with the limited rights for accessing your admin area so we are not able to check your products in the editing mode and your sales products/promotions that is why we cannot check this issue further.

2. We would recommend to save the theme and check how it will look on the front end. We would not recommend to use the preview functionality for this purpose.

3. We can see there are many info pages without any text.

 https://yourwebsite/onlineshop/admin/information_manager/edit?info_id=39&back=information_manager#main

But some pages are with the text.

https://yourwebsite/onlineshop/terms-conditions

What had you done before the info pages disappeared?

4. What had you done before all disappeared?

5. We can see your contact page.

https://yourwebsite/onlineshop/contact

6. It is because there are no widgets in the product listing page in the theme. Please see the screenshot below.

7. As I mentioned to you in PM the best way to reimport a theme is to click on Add Theme button and create the blank theme. Then please go to Backups of the newly created theme and reimport the required theme from there. Also it is better not to customize the existing (default) themes but make the copy of the required default theme and then customize it as required.

Best regards,

Ivan

 

 

[mendoh]

12 hours ago, Ivan Holbi said:

Also it is better not to customize the existing (default) themes but make the copy of the required default theme and then customize it as required.

Hello Ivan,

thanks for your detailed reply. 

Unfortunately for me, your suggestion above actually came to my mind a tad bit too late. Live and learn. 

Regarding :

12 hours ago, Ivan Holbi said:

1. You provided us with the limited rights for accessing your admin area so we are not able to check your products in the editing mode and your sales products/promotions that is why we cannot check this issue further.

I swear I did not even add ONE SINGLE product: I was not given the time to, since the issue came up when I was still trying to adjust the watch theme. The products in the shop I am testing were all and only the original ones available for the watch theme. I will broaden your admin rights, however, the only products there are just the original ones that came with the watch theme...

 

12 hours ago, Ivan Holbi said:

2. We would recommend to save the theme and check how it will look on the front end. We would not recommend to use the preview functionality for this purpose.

Actually, I did both things and up until the issue broke out, they both were working just fine. Also, I would not know what is the use in having a feature that...does not work (i.e.: preview in pop-up)?

 

12 hours ago, Ivan Holbi said:

3. We can see there are many info pages without any text.

 https://yourwebsite/onlineshop/admin/information_manager/edit?info_id=39&back=information_manager#main

But some pages are with the text.

Most info pages have been intentionally left without text, however, even those that have text, do not open up when clicked upon...

12 hours ago, Ivan Holbi said:

4. What had you done before all disappeared?

Absolutely nothing fancy.

By using the provided widgets and their customization options, I was only trying to change the original watch theme layout to a more customized one that would have suited the needs of my client...for example: adding currency and language widgets, adding one or more footer box(es), adding client's logo, etc.

12 hours ago, Ivan Holbi said:

5. We can see your contact page.

https://yourwebsite/onlineshop/contact

The contact page is actually the only one which is still visible after clicking on it, as I previously reported.

12 hours ago, Ivan Holbi said:

6. It is because there are no widgets in the product listing page in the theme. Please see the screenshot below.

I am just repeating myself, I swear I did NOT touch any of the products that were there when I initially started editing the shop after the first install. As a matter of fact, I still see them all here:

But the do not appear at all on the theme (home) page(s).

Before posting to the forum, I even tried to add product widgets to the theme.

This (a vertical blue line):

is all I get after adding the featured products widget to the FEATURED PRODUCTS tab...

 

 

[Ivan Holbi]

12 hours ago, mendoh said:

Hello Ivan,

thanks for your detailed reply. 

Unfortunately for me, your suggestion above actually came to my mind a tad bit too late. Live and learn. 

Regarding :

I swear I did not even add ONE SINGLE product: I was not given the time to, since the issue came up when I was still trying to adjust the watch theme. The products in the shop I am testing were all and only the original ones available for the watch theme. I will broaden your admin rights, however, the only products there are just the original ones that came with the watch theme...

 

Actually, I did both things and up until the issue broke out, they both were working just fine. Also, I would not know what is the use in having a feature that...does not work (i.e.: preview in pop-up)?

 

Most info pages have been intentionally left without text, however, even those that have text, do not open up when clicked upon...

Absolutely nothing fancy.

By using the provided widgets and their customization options, I was only trying to change the original watch theme layout to a more customized one that would have suited the needs of my client...for example: adding currency and language widgets, adding one or more footer box(es), adding client's logo, etc.

The contact page is actually the only one which is still visible after clicking on it, as I previously reported.

I am just repeating myself, I swear I did NOT touch any of the products that were there when I initially started editing the shop after the first install. As a matter of fact, I still see them all here:

But the do not appear at all on the theme (home) page(s).

Before posting to the forum, I even tried to add product widgets to the theme.

This (a vertical blue line):

is all I get after adding the featured products widget to the FEATURED PRODUCTS tab...

 

 

Hi Mendoh,

We checked and as far as we can see all your issues are connected with the broken theme after you tried to customize it so we would recommend to import the new default themes as I explained before and work on them from the scratch. We also still cannot check the issues further since our admin rights are limited.

We would also recommend to try to do one thing at a time while customizing your theme. If it does not work please provide us with the corresponding step-by-step description and screenshots if necessary for us to be able to check the issue further.

Best regards,

Ivan  

[mendoh]

11 hours ago, Ivan Holbi said:

we would recommend to import the new default themes as I explained before and work on them from the scratch

Ivan, hi. 

I tried to do what you suggested (i.e.: AddTheme ---> gives a blank new theme -> click on backups of the new blank theme just added -> import the watch.zip file you sent me) and this:

 

is what I get.

The very same results I get even if I create a brand new theme from scratch: the only difference with the above is that you will not find any auto-saved backup listed when importing the watch.zip theme.  

Unfortunately, nothing seems to work so far, as long as restoring the original themes and their contents is concerned.

I have broadened your rights for your to be able to have a better check of the situation.

Thanks again

Mendoh

 

 

 

 

 

[Ivan Holbi]

On 2/25/2023 at 3:43 AM, mendoh said:

Ivan, hi. 

I tried to do what you suggested (i.e.: AddTheme ---> gives a blank new theme -> click on backups of the new blank theme just added -> import the watch.zip file you sent me) and this:

 

is what I get.

The very same results I get even if I create a brand new theme from scratch: the only difference with the above is that you will not find any auto-saved backup listed when importing the watch.zip theme.  

Unfortunately, nothing seems to work so far, as long as restoring the original themes and their contents is concerned.

I have broadened your rights for your to be able to have a better check of the situation.

Thanks again

Mendoh

 

 

 

 

 

Hi Mendoh,

We tried it from our end and it worked as it should. As far as we can see there may be the limit for sending files from your provider so we would recommend to check it. Also what browser are you using?

Best regards,

Ivan

[mendoh]

42 minutes ago, Ivan Holbi said:

We tried it from our end and it worked as it should. As far as we can see there may be the limit for sending files from your provider so we would recommend to check it. Also what browser are you using?

 

Hello Ivan,

thanks for your reply.

The browser I am using is Google Chrome and I have some updates for you: when I accessed the site again after my previous posts and theme restoration attempts, I could find the whole them had been restored. 

So if you did not touch anything, I guess I can say it actually restored itself after the procedure you suggested. 

As a matter of fact, I have noticed the same slowliness to happen when bringing configuration changes that must reflect on the front end side of the website (e.g.: configuration of customer details/fields): is this normal?

Also, I would have one question about theme names: I have noticed that, no matter if I deleted a theme and it is not present among the available themes any more, the system will not allow me to give the same name of the previously deleted theme to a newly created one. Why is it so? For instance: the watch theme gets deleted and disappears. Then, if I wanted to recreate/restore/reimport the same watch theme and give it the same name it had before deletion, I would not be allowed to: I can only name the restored watch theme as watch2 or watch3, not the original watch name any more. Why?

Thank you

Mendoh

[Ivan Holbi]

1 hour ago, mendoh said:

Hello Ivan,

thanks for your reply.

The browser I am using is Google Chrome and I have some updates for you: when I accessed the site again after my previous posts and theme restoration attempts, I could find the whole them had been restored. 

So if you did not touch anything, I guess I can say it actually restored itself after the procedure you suggested. 

As a matter of fact, I have noticed the same slowliness to happen when bringing configuration changes that must reflect on the front end side of the website (e.g.: configuration of customer details/fields): is this normal?

Also, I would have one question about theme names: I have noticed that, no matter if I deleted a theme and it is not present among the available themes any more, the system will not allow me to give the same name of the previously deleted theme to a newly created one. Why is it so? For instance: the watch theme gets deleted and disappears. Then, if I wanted to recreate/restore/reimport the same watch theme and give it the same name it had before deletion, I would not be allowed to: I can only name the restored watch theme as watch2 or watch3, not the original watch name any more. Why?

Thank you

Mendoh

Hi Mendoh,

If the theme is deleted it is possible to create the theme with the same name. The issue is that you did not delete the theme but renamed it. If you direct your mouse to the button Customize for the theme Spectradome Online Shop you will be able to see its address:

https://yourwebsite/onlineshop/admin/design/choose-view?theme_name=watch

Please also see the screenshot below. 

Best regards,

Ivan

[mendoh]

33 minutes ago, Ivan Holbi said:

The issue is that you did not delete the theme but renamed it.

Ivan, got it. 

Thanks!