Quote Originally Posted by lib99
Your initiative is certainly a great one and no easy task in the slightest. With Visual Basic there are endless GUI possibilities. I do have a few comments you might consider.

1. The Admin is scheduled in the development roadmap for overhaul.
2. Windows software doesn't necessarily play well for Mac or Linux OS users. I know there are many designers and end-users that primarily use those operating systems.
3. Security could be an issue because you would be using such an admin software from your desktop to remotely admin a hosted site. May also introduce connectivity issues (proxies and the like).
4. As features are added to Zen Cart, the software would require updates and recompilation.

No doubt many would love to see an improved back-end Admin, but it might be more useful and flexible to consider something cross platform and secure over the open internet. I'm not suggesting that you don't proceed, and I'd be willing to help you with testing. However, it'd be nice to have something the whole ZC community could use. There have been a lot of discussions of using AJAX in the mix.
Thanks very much for letting me know about this, now I can plan the software in a much more easily-upgradable fashion.

With the admin being scheduled for an upgrade in the next overhaul it would give the ZC community a chance to user either. The admin would give me something to aim for with this program.

It may be possible to port the Visual Basic code to Linux, and I would look at any possible ways of opening the scope the project can cover.

In regard to security I have been investigating using the MySQL Connecter/Net control which "enables developers to easily create .NET applications that require secure, high-performance data connectivity with MySQL". http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/...ector-net.html

If the software needed to be updated for each release it would not cause too much trouble. As things stand each store needs to be upgraded, so a software patch could be released also. Primarily the program would be used to manipulate data entries, so the program could simply be a case of populating a form of "configuration-table" defines and so would work regardless of programming-side updates.

Thanks for your advice and for your offer of helping test the project, ill keep this post updated with the status as I move along!