As of this month, July 2019, The Ian Scott Group will no longer be supporting JSHOP – an e-commerce platform that has existed since about 2002.

In its day, when it was first released and then subsequent upgrades, JSHOP was a powerful and flexible platform for website owners wishing to sell products and services online. It had many awesome features and while not “free” like other platforms such as OSCommerce, it was actually a much more robust application for online sales. A couple of years after it was first released, we created several e-commerce websites for a variety of clients that loved the features of JSHOP. JSHOP was not the only e-commerce platform that we developed on but it was an option for those who wanted something different than OSCommerce or who wanted to migrate from older PERL based and non-database driven e-stores.

While JSHOP was an excellent platform, there, of course, have been many competitors in the e-commerce field and some grew to be more popular while also offering more flexible options for responsive design. In addition to JSHOP, The Ian Scott Group has developed on e-commerce platforms that include WooCommerce and other WordPress e-commerce solutions, OSCommerce, Prestashop, and more.

We don’t know why the developers of JSHOP stopped releasing updates, however, they did cease around 2012. Indeed, for those who continue to possess licenses for the software, it is still available for download, but there have been no updates or releases in some years. When development ceases on an application, concerns arise including possible newfound security vulnerabilities and usability on updated versions of web server software including apache, PHP, and whatever SQL a website is running.

Since 2012, we have continued to support the clients that have been running their websites on the JSHOP platform while also advising them that they seriously need to consider migrating to something more modern. However, as of July 2019, our last client that has been using this platform is now migrating to the WordPress/WooCommerce e-commerce solution. In a way, it’s an end of an era for us and JSHOP, but with the fact that it is impossible to be an expert on everything and remember all the “ins and outs” of all applications, we’ve decided to no longer support JSHOP for any clients going forward. Any new clients who need assistance with their JSHOP installation will be advised that they seriously need to consider migrating to something else, for many different reasons.

We’d also like to take this opportunity to thank the developers of JSHOP who did some great work and for its time, created one of the best e-commerce platforms available. They were forward thinking back in 2002, provided excellent support for their product, and we know that quite a few e-commerce websites earned some good money and JSHOP was a vehicle for probably millions of dollars worth of internet transactions.