Making Zen and a CMS share a login system - possible? impossible? crazy?

[spidersilk]

I'm working on a site which needs to combine a shopping cart with an online community. ZenCart seems to be the all around best pick for the shopping cart part of the site, and for the online community (forums, blogs, articles, events calendar, possibly other features to be added later), I'd normally go with something like Joomla or Drupal.

The key is, how to get these to play nicely together.

I know this question has been raised in the forums before -- I did do a search before posting, but it didn't look like anyone had really gotten any solid answers. So maybe it's silly to think I'll get any, but hope springs eternal in the human heart and all that.

Ideally, it would be nice if the two were actually fully integrated, seamlessly. I'd considered using the Joomla/VirtueMart combo for that, but VirtueMart isn't as full-featured as ZenCart, and doesn't handle Canadian sales taxes at all well, either (both the client and I are in Canada). So if there was a way to integrate ZenCart fully into Joomla or Drupal, or really any good CMS for that matter, that would be great.

But realistically, I know that both those CMS's and ZC are big, complex programs and trying to nest one inside the other would probably be a recipe for disaster. So probably the best I will be able to accomplish -- if I'm lucky -- is finding a way to at least integrate the user login systems so that people don't have to log in twice for the two different parts of the site.

I've searched through the available modules/components/etc. for both of those and found nothing -- there are bridge modules available for osCommerce, since it's been around longer, but not for ZC. And I really don't want to use osCommerce if I can avoid it because it doesn't seem to be under very active development -- it's been at version 2.2 for how many years now? -- and it's a total pain to customize the look of because it doesn't use templates (they seem to be promising them for milestone 3, but who knows how long that will take?).

So: I guess the question this comes down to is: has anyone found a way to integrate the user management systems for ZenCart and either Drupal or Joomla or really any decent CMS, so that people can use one login across the entire site? I'm OK with having the two parts of the site be somewhat separate and having to customize the look and feel individually, but I really, really, really want one united login system.

I'm not afraid of hacking code, and I've built several PHP sites from scratch, but I don't have that much of a programming background, and I'm not sure exactly where to start. Ideally I'd love to build a bridge module between ZC and a CMS that I could then make available for others, but that might be a little ambitious when I've never written any kind of a CMS module before. I just need some pointers as to where I could start in trying to somehow make this happen.

Or maybe it's just something that's likely to be pretty much impossible due to the differences in the ways they handle users, and I should just suck it up and use either the Joomla/VM combo or one of the osCommerce bridge modules, warts and all, instead of attempting something like this?


Lynna

[Merlinpa1969]

have you thought about using ezpages and doing ALL together in 1 program

[kobra]

I did do a search before posting, but it didn't look like anyone had really gotten any solid answers.

I do not know what yu consider a "solid" answer?? This does involve a bit of custom coding and everyone seems to want this a little different so I suspect that while it has been done it is not an acceptable module to either Zen Cart or Joomla and why you do not see it. It is also involved enough that it is difficuilt to post a solution here on a forum owing to the many files touched.

The Zen Cart Issue is the way they use sessions for security and tracking. If you might want to attempt the shared login, you might find what you need if you look at the way Zen Cart and phpbb are integrated natively and hijack some of this for your conversion and use.

Yes OSC is on the Mambo path IMO.

VM, while nice is essentially one developer deep.

I had thought I has seen a "Bridge" for one of the CMS's but it might have been vapor??

So this is an answer, but not with code or a point to a module and you may not feel it is solid in your eyes.

[spidersilk]

have you thought about using ezpages and doing ALL together in 1 program

I looked at EZpages, since virtually every other thread on the topic of integrating ZenCart with any sort of CMS seemed to get responses of "Why not just use EZpages?" but unless I'm missing something, it doesn't offer any of the functions you'd expect from a CMS.

It just allows you to create a few little basic HTML pages, right? That's great if all you want to do is add an "About us" page or something, but it doesn't really address any of the features an online community needs -- there's no forums, no calendar, nothing interactive at all, really. And those are the bare minimum features this site would need -- they'll probably want to add more in the future. So it's really essential that I set them up with a solution that's highly expandable, so that they can plug in more features as they get new ideas. Something like Joomla or Drupal, where there's literally hundreds of contributed modules available, would fit the bill, but I don't really see how EZpages compares to that.

It's just kind of depressing that my choices for a site like this appear to be either a good online store with a lousy little pseudo-CMS that doesn't offer any of the functionality they want, or a good CMS with a lousy online store. Or two completely different systems that require separate logins, which is pretty much guaranteed to drive away customers in droves.

[IntelCos]

This has been shot around many times, correction though (Joomla and OSC) is available, though OSC is NOT Zen Cart. This may be the solution your looking for. Mambo is sort of, well, no comment.

I've seen this version and know of many using it as well.

We also use Joomla, having a mod to bridge the two or share the user logins would be a welcomed addon, but not sure that will ever make light...

[spidersilk]

I do not know what yu consider a "solid" answer?? This does involve a bit of custom coding and everyone seems to want this a little different so I suspect that while it has been done it is not an acceptable module to either Zen Cart or Joomla and why you do not see it. It is also involved enough that it is difficuilt to post a solution here on a forum owing to the many files touched.

The Zen Cart Issue is the way they use sessions for security and tracking. If you might want to attempt the shared login, you might find what you need if you look at the way Zen Cart and phpbb are integrated natively and hijack some of this for your conversion and use.

Yes OSC is on the Mambo path IMO.

VM, while nice is essentially one developer deep.

I had thought I has seen a "Bridge" for one of the CMS's but it might have been vapor??

So this is an answer, but not with code or a point to a module and you may not feel it is solid in your eyes.

Well, by "solid" I pretty much meant something that gives me a direction to try and work in, and not just "Use EZpages! (despite the fact that it doesn't do any of the things you want)" or "Why would you want to do that anyway?", which is what most of the previous threads amounted to.

I suppose with the security concerns it would pretty much have to be a case of making the CMS use ZenCart's login system rather than the other way around. I'm just starting to get the feeling that since there are probably untold numbers of much more experienced programmers than me out there who've thought about this, the fact that none of them appear to have done it yet doesn't exactly bode well for my chances.

Thank you for mentioning the phpBB integration -- I didn't know about that and will try to take a look and see if it looks like something I can understand and/or work with.

In the meantime I might try setting up a test site with Joomla and VM just to try it out... Most of the negative stuff I've heard about VM has been second hand, so I should probably at least try it before dismissing it as an option.

[Merlinpa1969]

have you had a look at zen-cart.com

[kobra]

have you had a look at zen-cart.com

Actually not a shining example with one login for the cart, one for the wiki and another for vBulletin

[IntelCos]

Thats my point as well, as much as we try to make them look as much the same, the dual logins make for waste so to speak.

Don't take me wrong, but user management witin joomla using community builder has far more possible configurations and management of users.

As mentioned, their is a full integration of Joomla with %# , one logon and full template with two files.

Now, the power of ZC is unmatched, add the power of joomla and that would make a very powerful and flexible system.

That is why the integration of OSC and Joomla happened, VM is not, nor does it have the power of these two together, yet the OSC integration is based on 2.2, thus far from that of the powerhouse under ZC.

So, one makes do...

[rsp]

It seems odd to me that one would expect all the users of their bulletin board system to want to give out all the information necessary on a zencart. I've never posted to a board where I'd do that.
I might want to post to a board on a site after I had made a purchase, but I would not want to use my full name to do that.
I would hope that zencart owners take precautions with the data they collect from their buyers. I would be sorely peeved if my full name was magically registered onto a forum and was visible via the memberlist.