Sounds pretty cheap compared to donating $20,000 worth of weekends to your friend for a half baked ecommerce CMS. Maybe the business should exist first and prove total control is necessary before sinking a huge unpredictable labor-cost into it.
That's exaggerating things and distorting the intention. It's for his friend's craft "business", not some client who needs a copy and paste effort ready by 9am tomorrow.
Half baked CMS you say... are you predicting the outcome of an effort under your development? Some people should stick to plug and play solutions because it's their only real option.
A friend of mine set up a Woo-commerce site for her boss who ran a shoe shop. The site went up quickly, using templates and "out of the box" things from Woo. Worst store ever. Horrible UX, slow... so slow, click... wait... click... wait. They didn't sell much at all on that site. It was crap. I would not expect better from any plug and play solution, but then again my standards are high for e-commerce stores.
> are you predicting the outcome of an effort under your development?
That's an ad hominem and still leaves my point of how huge the amount of underestimated work there is. The problem is the volume of work first, the quality of work (by both OP's self-admitted juniorness and by lack of time for a full-time project) second.
Also, your standards are high for ecommerce but you don't think a lot of effort is required to do as-good or better than a specific one you didn't like?
> It's for his friend's craft "business", not some client who needs a copy and paste effort ready by 9am tomorrow.
His friend probably doesn't want to wait a week everytime he thinks of a new basic requirement built into the vast majority of ready to go ecommerce CMSs.
"basic requirement" huh, like exporting customer orders to a format ready to import into accounting software, aka "advanced report writing". Sorry, only available in the $299 per month shopify plan.
Look, if you like Shopify... go for it. Me, I would avoid that thing like the plague. I value flexible parameters and increased possibilities over a stifled e-store that pops out the vending machine slot if you remember to feed it $30 a month.
Shopify is not for developers, and not for anyone who knows a developer or willing to pay for something better than a microwave dinner experience. That's not just my opinion, it's also how it actually is.
Sounds pretty cheap compared to donating $20,000 worth of weekends to your friend for a half baked ecommerce CMS. Maybe the business should exist first and prove total control is necessary before sinking a huge unpredictable labor-cost into it.