Client opencart-catalog-migration — Large Store Migration to OpenCart 3/4 or Horoshop
Role Solo Engineer / ETL Architect
Period 2026
Stack
OpenCart 3/4 Horoshop PrestaShop PHP 8.2+ Go ETL MySQL Redis Nginx WebP Checkbox PRRO Monobank API Nova Poshta API

opencart-catalog-migration — Large Store Migration to OpenCart 3/4 or Horoshop

Overview

A migration of a live, high-traffic online store from an outdated engine — OpenCart 1.5 / 2.x, PrestaShop 1.6, VirtueMart or a home-grown CMS — to a modern stack: OpenCart 3.0.x / 4.x on PHP 8.2+ or the Horoshop SaaS platform. It is built for catalogs of 10,000+ SKU and keeps everything the store has accumulated: products, variants, order history and customers. The goal is a faster site and the end of the technology debt, with no loss of data or search rankings.

Hard parts and how they are handled

Hard part How it is handled
A relational catalog: dozens of attributes, options (size, colour, pack size), manufacturers, multi-level categories The ETL keeps every relation intact; attributes and options are normalized and variant structures mapped to the target data model, so nothing falls out of sync
Customers and order history Password hashes carried over with salt and authentication compatibility, address books and the full transaction history kept for loyalty programs
Dirty content Outdated HTML tags, inline styles, broken images and unsafe scripts stripped from product descriptions by automated rules and parsers
Speed at scale MySQL queries and search indexes tuned, Redis or Memcached caching, Nginx FastCGI cache, all catalog images converted to WebP
Search rankings Old SEO URLs (SEO PRO / alias) mapped to the new structure and turned into Nginx or Apache 301 rules

How it goes

Source CMS (OpenCart 1.5 / PrestaShop)
        │  SQL dump / ETL
        ▼
Extractor (Go and Node.js scripts)
  ├─ attribute and option normalization
  ├─ product-description cleanup
  ├─ category hierarchy mapping
  └─ 301 map for the old URLs
        │  import and validation
        ▼
Target: OpenCart 3/4 (PHP 8.2) or Horoshop
  ├─ one-page checkout
  ├─ AJAX attribute filter
  └─ Checkbox fiscalization + Monobank + Nova Poshta
  1. Extract and transform. Direct MySQL reads of the product, product_description, product_option, product_attribute, category, customer and order tables, reshaped for the target model.
  2. Database and hosting. PHP 8.1 / 8.2 with tuned OPcache, Nginx FastCGI cache and Redis for filter results, batch WebP conversion with the preview sizes the theme needs.
  3. Features. A fast AJAX filter without a page reload, online payments (Monobank, LiqPay), automatic fiscal receipts (Checkbox PRRO / VchasnoKasa) and Nova Poshta with an interactive branch and parcel-locker map.
  4. SEO. The old URL structure is mapped to the new one and the redirect rules are generated, so old links keep working.

Related: fastshop (a fast OpenCart storefront on 30,000 products), fiscalgate, feedsync.

Stack

OpenCart 3 / 4 · Horoshop · PrestaShop · PHP 8.2+ · Go (ETL) · MySQL 8 · Redis · Nginx + PHP-FPM · Monobank API · LiqPay · Checkbox PRRO · Nova Poshta API · Screaming Frog