YouStore Template

[Amethyst_fairy]

So I know most don't like the premimum templates especially from themeforest but I am really liking the look of the YouStore Template looks modern is in html 5. Was wondering if anybody has had any experience with this or any of the new premium templates of codecanyon or the themeforest etc.
Thanks
Sandria

[lankeeyankee]

I'm using yourstore on my site rebuild. It's mostly pretty good, the template manager is the most advanced I have seen with tons of options for customizing and even granular controls for different category mega menu options.

The downside is they changed a lot of the default zen cart element classes and IDs making integration with certain modules difficult (although not impossible, just a lot of work changing either stylesheets and/or element classes/IDs). Such modules are ones that have their own stylesheets, the biggest or most problematic ones are the one page checkout modules. I used Fast and Easy Checkout and it took a little work to get it matching the rest of the site and looking correct in mobile views.

Another downside is the bloat. There are a lot of bells and whistles, which is nice to have options to choose from. The problem is that a lot of files are loaded even if you have certain options turned off, mainly javascript files. So I had to go through and manually edit which files would load to help keep page load time down. Also, this bloat is in the stylesheets. It would be very helpful if they would incorporate into their template manager a system that would build the stylesheet on the fly based on the configured options. Because, again, everything is loaded in the stylesheet whether it's used or not and the main sheet comes in at 400KB when minified. There are several other styelsheets that are needed and all together are close to 800KB which to me seems really large.

I have it pretty stripped down in terms of slideshows and other features and even with only a few test categories and products, using ImageHandler4, the site comes in at about 1.4MB. Various speed type sites say that it is pretty small compared to like 80% of sites, but I'm not sure if I believe that. Although I have downloaded pages from a number of other sites and they are all actually larger so maybe I'm wrong. But, this is after I have stripped out the unnecessary javascript files. And it is not totally how I'm going to have the site set up yet as I will probably put in a banner slideshow on the homepage as well as a few other options, so the page size will increase.

I am on a fairly ripping dedicated server and have tuned it pretty well, so the page parse time is generally around 0.15 seconds with typically 350 to 390 DB queries with the site in it's current state. So it's not too bad but I guess since my current site is pretty basic and totals around 200 to 400KB it is a bit of an adjustment for me mentally to accept a more modern site is going to be larger. And I have never discussed it with anyone that builds sites so I don't know if I'm just being silly. Speed was always a big priority to me, second only to usability/"don't make me think" site design and layout.

The positives of the template are many, it looks really good and fresh, and has all of the benefits of HTML5. As mentioned, there are a ton of configurable options, it's really impressive. And the authors are extremely responsive to support emails, very helpful, and prompt about fixing any issues. They typically release an update every few weeks to a month, which is great but can also be a bit of a drag to always keep updating files. But, their changelog is well documented and generally it does not take very long to do an update, like 5 or 10 minutes. They are open to suggestions for improvement, too. So, top marks to the developers. They also have very good online documentation to help with all of the configuration settings.

I would recommend keeping a detailed changelog of your own, listing any file that you do an edit to. So when you do an upgrade you can just refer to your list to see if there is any merging required or if you can just drag and drop the new files in.

Would I recommend this template? Definitely, with a caveat. You may have noticed that their demo site is a tad slow? At least it was for me every time I checked it out before buying. They told me it was a server speed issue. So, my caveat is that I don't think this would be very good on a shared server. Possibly a VPN with could specs could keep lag down. A dedicated server is the way to go if it can be budgeted. Mine is about $2000 a year since I paid some up front one-time fees and also pay yearly which drops the cost significantly, it was $312.50 a month.

[Amethyst_fairy]

Thanks that answers my questions abd were my concerns. I have a pretty moded site and use one page check out, have used numinix blog module to integrate my wp blog, use ceon uri, ans and ep4 w/ceon so was my fear would spend $54 and it would break my site. Am on a shared server so unfortunately is a no go for me. Maybe they will get ot speeded up in future even if you could turn off what you don't use from loading and slowing down site.
Thanks
Sandria