Thoughts on Zen Cart

[nateveronica]

Hi I work as a web designer / developer and for the past month I've been implementing Zen Cart. During this time I spent about two weeks messing around looking into how Zen Cart works, investigating the template system; all mostly by looking at the code. With the last two weeks designing this site www.stayoung.com.au/index.php (still in it's testing phase)

I went through this process pretty quickly and by about the end of the second week I had well and truly understood the template -> module -> function integration.

Initially I thought the whole system was pretty confusing. There was a lot going on both behind the scenes (template files, various functions and classes), and mostly I thought (and still do) feel the administration panel is overloaded, and uses ambiguous language. For example 'define pages editor', 'ez pages', and the hundreds of options available in the configuration menu.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing. In fact from the perspective of someone that doesn't really know much about programming/html/css, Zen Cart is great. You can have an online store up and running quite simply. From the point of view of a designer, the control elements built into the templates (ids, classes, the endless tables with id and class identifiers on almost every level) adds unnecessary time to the development process, albeit a path which I'm terribly grateful for.

As for the way add-on modules are incorporated into the application; I feel that sometimes they can do more harm then good. With trial and error I sometimes got a module (downloaded from Zen Cart) to work, other times I was left fixing some SQL, or searching the forum to find a fix. Luckily I backup the database, and files before doing this.

Despite my little issues with Zen Cart I think it's a great product. There is a wide user base, who has asked almost every question imaginable. If you know a little PHP and can read the code, its fairly easy to get the system to do pretty much anything, or develop your own functionality.

If I could make a couple of overall suggestions it would be this:

• Reconsider the way in which CSS is used to control layout elements elements, and the way the administration panel integrates with this. Use the cascading ability of CSS.
• Consider the language used in the administration panel.
• Less is more. Migrate the layout controls from the administration configuration menu into human readable CSS, and captions.

Considerations for the Zen Cart site:

• Don't have a page saying 'coming soon.' If you don't have it yet, don't provide a link
• Tighten the language you use. Is it help(?), the information centre, FAQs, or tutorials? Very confusing.
• Provide a comprehensive list of things Zen Cart can do, and present it in a nice way (table with a little green tick or something)
• Provide a link to the Zen Wiki. Making this accessible may allow more contributions to be made. It feels a little stale in there now.
• Add a link to the forum from the Zen Cart site. Forcing people to go through the tutorials makes people upset, confused, and quickly shapes their (negative) opinions of Zen Cart
• Organise the tutorials/faqs

Thanks for giving us Zen Cart. It is a great package. It has a future in a market where there are few open source solutions.

about me: I'm a freelance web designer / developer, and have a degree in Communications and Public Relations.

[kobra]

# Reconsider the way in which CSS is used to control layout elements elements, and the way the administration panel integrates with this. Use the cascading ability of CSS.
# Consider the language used in the administration panel.

For the CSS...Have you read the readme in the css folder??

Look at the road map and you will see that the admin is legacy code and on board for an overhaul....Dev's just believe that hte customer side is more important or higher priority.

[clydejones]

Use the cascading ability of CSS

Zen Cart's CSS based 1.3+ versions are a far cry from the table laden previous versions; so to be fair, it is on the right track.

But in a general sense, yes, the templates could be improved and cleaned up with the use of less ID and CLASSES (that don't appear in the stylesheet) and using the cascading ability.

One can take more advantage of the cascading ability with the new per-page stylesheet ability available in version 1.3.6.

Judging by the number of questions about CSS in the forum, most people using Zen Cart aren't all that familiar with the way CSS works in the first place. They look at the code see a lot of ID and CLASSES then go to the stylesheet and can't find a declaration and ?have to? add it the stylesheet.

The templates can be changed by for instance:

<div class="centerColumn" id="indexDefault">
<h1 id="indexDefaultHeading"><?php echo HEADING_TITLE; ?></h1>

This can be cleaned up by making the following changes in the stylesheet

#indexDefault h1 { put in your styling}

Now the above code becomes:

<div class="centerColumn" id="indexDefault">
<h1><?php echo HEADING_TITLE; ?></h1>

I'm sure the Dev's will have this on the radar, but given the current road map, its just a matter of when.

[Ryk]

Provide a comprehensive list of things Zen Cart can do, and present it in a nice way

You mean as well as the big image on the home page labelled "Explore the features of Zen Cart™"?

Provide a link to the Zen Wiki.

As well as the one labelled "WIKI Documentation" on the home page of this forum? Just below the Security section. Or do you mean on the main site home page? What you must remember is that ZC is aimed primarily at the NON-designer and NON-programmer and the problem with sending people at that level direct to the WIKI is that they will get information overload pdq.

Add a link to the forum from the Zen Cart site. Forcing people to go through the tutorials makes people upset, confused, and quickly shapes their (negative) opinions of Zen Cart

This was done deliberately to avoid thousands (literally) of repeat questions, specifically "How do I remove the SALES TEXT GOES HERE", and it worked a treat. Making people aware of the FAQs is a smart move...and let's face it, as soon as you are on that page, there is then a link to the forums.

Again, bearing in mind the target market, forcing them to at least see that faq/tutorials are available reduces the workload on the dev team in dealing with simple questions. If I had my way, newbies would be forced to undergo "using the Search facility" training prior to being allowed to download!

Organise the tutorials/faqs

Part of the plan and has been since pre the forced forum switch. If we're lucky, they may even become searchable!