Can I ask the question nobody wants to hear asked?

How much longer can ZC last before we hit a wall where regular joes will not be able to fix the problems to keep it running? Do we have a couple of years of life left? I don't know if you guys/gals have noticed but DrByte hasn't been here since August of last year. It appears most work on bugs/newer version has stopped other than those who have built mods themselves. The only ZC insider who actually shows up regularly is Ajeh. I think we saw Wilt for a second there with the upgrade to version "d" but he didn't even get the version out like they normally do.... I really don't want this project to die, but getting very concerned. :shocking::shocking::shocking:

Ajeh, can you calm my fears with some visionary statement.... can you take control of ZC and get it back on its feet?

Taking a look at texaslonestartamalesDOTcom, one might be inclined to agree that Zen Cart is lacking. That is one sharp site. I'll wait while you take a look.....

This store is built with shopify and is one of the better ones I've seen. Visually. But just like car shopping years ago, I like to look under the hood.

Let's take the home page. I like to look at sites with an incognito Chrome window. That way the 200 or so extensions don't get in the way of the evaluation.

Lighthouse check for desktop: The score is 38, 90, 83, 92 and in order, they represent Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO. Right away you can see that they are trying to respond to the current "things". Accessibility and SEO. But at what cost? Time to Interactive clocks in at 9.4 Seconds! :shocking:

Maybe they wanted it to really kick in mobile. Let's see. Lighthouse mobile comes up with..... Ladies and gentlemen, your first lotto number from the lighthouse is..... ?

Yep, it's a question mark with a statement that took too long to wake up and Lighthoused baled. BUT, Accessibility and SEO are 90 and 92 respectively. Yay!

Well, let's look a little deeper. When it comes to CSS, the site has 212 errors and 1,106 warnings. Even with CSS being one of the most forgiving parts of a website creation, there's going to be problems.

An HTML check shows just seventeen mentions on the page BUT, the last says:

Fatal Error: Cannot recover after last error. Any further errors will be ignored.

A simple look at WebAIM's WAVE shows 45 errors, 56 Contrast Errors, and 95 alerts. You can't run axe DevTools incognito but, run in regular chrome, it shows 18 critical, 20 serious, and 32 moderate violations of ADA/WCAG. Oh, and, 102 other items "need review." Not a glowing resume if you ask me. I bet they don't offer a Display Log Files mod. It would be a good reason to charge more though. Every other day, you could say, "You're running out of disk space....Want to add more?"

You seem to think that ZC will not keep running or that the brain pool will dry up. I felt somewhat the same way when ceon (conor) passed. Actually, if the dates in the membership list are correct, I've been here almost the longest. I'm in the top five of "oldtimers" at least. So, I feel I can speak of what was, what is, and what will be.

I've see more exciting things in the last two years than all the others here with ZC. Prior to this, the PCI certification was the highlight and something never before accomplished by any e-commerce platform that i know of. We could probably still have it today if we had the money.

What we do have is dedicated folks that step up to fill the gaps. GitHub is far more active than before. And producing more.

I'm just not so sure that folks who don't ever "check their oil" are going to realize the size of engine under our hood.

There's a site called Top10 that, for some reason, could only come up with six platforms that they consider the best.

Being involved with ADA/WCAG for many years, I decided to do a survey of those six platforms. In several, I was able to find sites using the product. In some cases, I had to rely on the home page of the company. If anybody should get it right......

I invite you to view a PDF of the test results between those six and 1.5.8's recent drop. jeandretDOTcom/download/zenCartStats.pdf just might make you feel better. It might even surprise you a bunch.

Ever since the branch off from OSC, ZC maintenance has been like changing a tire, at speed, on the freeway. Changing PHP versions have been the shredded tire in the middle of the road in that process. Just when you think you missed one....

IMHO, we're getting closer to all tires rotated, balanced, and operational. With a new acrylic wrap, the massive engine underneath will keep ZC rolling for quite some time.

LMK

I sure hope you are right dbltoe.... I am holding on as long as I can.

Don't hang on, jump back into github and take part again. We haven't had your assistance in a while.

I just got a job 3 weeks ago to supplement the income.... working 9-10 hours a day and then go home to work on what few orders I get .... cook or clean, spend a few minutes with kids, rest for a few minutes then to bed. Never felt very comfortable with php .... I don't understand all the different directories and functions and how it all interacts. Thanks for what you do!

dbltoe:

Taking a look at texaslonestartamalesDOTcom, one might be inclined to agree that Zen Cart is lacking. That is one sharp site. I'll wait while you take a look.....

This store is built with shopify and is one of the better ones I've seen. Visually. But just like car shopping years ago, I like to look under the hood.

Let's take the home page. I like to look at sites with an incognito Chrome window. That way the 200 or so extensions don't get in the way of the evaluation.

Lighthouse check for desktop: The score is 38, 90, 83, 92 and in order, they represent Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO. Right away you can see that they are trying to respond to the current "things". Accessibility and SEO. But at what cost? Time to Interactive clocks in at 9.4 Seconds! :shocking:

Maybe they wanted it to really kick in mobile. Let's see. Lighthouse mobile comes up with..... Ladies and gentlemen, your first lotto number from the lighthouse is..... ?

Yep, it's a question mark with a statement that took too long to wake up and Lighthoused baled. BUT, Accessibility and SEO are 90 and 92 respectively. Yay!

Well, let's look a little deeper. When it comes to CSS, the site has 212 errors and 1,106 warnings. Even with CSS being one of the most forgiving parts of a website creation, there's going to be problems.

An HTML check shows just seventeen mentions on the page BUT, the last says:

Fatal Error: Cannot recover after last error. Any further errors will be ignored.

A simple look at WebAIM's WAVE shows 45 errors, 56 Contrast Errors, and 95 alerts. You can't run axe DevTools incognito but, run in regular chrome, it shows 18 critical, 20 serious, and 32 moderate violations of ADA/WCAG. Oh, and, 102 other items "need review." Not a glowing resume if you ask me. I bet they don't offer a Display Log Files mod. It would be a good reason to charge more though. Every other day, you could say, "You're running out of disk space....Want to add more?"

You seem to think that ZC will not keep running or that the brain pool will dry up. I felt somewhat the same way when ceon (conor) passed. Actually, if the dates in the membership list are correct, I've been here almost the longest. I'm in the top five of "oldtimers" at least. So, I feel I can speak of what was, what is, and what will be.

I've see more exciting things in the last two years than all the others here with ZC. Prior to this, the PCI certification was the highlight and something never before accomplished by any e-commerce platform that i know of. We could probably still have it today if we had the money.

What we do have is dedicated folks that step up to fill the gaps. GitHub is far more active than before. And producing more.

I'm just not so sure that folks who don't ever "check their oil" are going to realize the size of engine under our hood.

There's a site called Top10 that, for some reason, could only come up with six platforms that they consider the best.

Being involved with ADA/WCAG for many years, I decided to do a survey of those six platforms. In several, I was able to find sites using the product. In some cases, I had to rely on the home page of the company. If anybody should get it right......

I invite you to view a PDF of the test results between those six and 1.5.8's recent drop. jeandretDOTcom/download/zenCartStats.pdf just might make you feel better. It might even surprise you a bunch.

Ever since the branch off from OSC, ZC maintenance has been like changing a tire, at speed, on the freeway. Changing PHP versions have been the shredded tire in the middle of the road in that process. Just when you think you missed one....

IMHO, we're getting closer to all tires rotated, balanced, and operational. With a new acrylic wrap, the massive engine underneath will keep ZC rolling for quite some time.

LMK

There are of course plenty of other shopping cart systems out there other than Zen Cart. Some good, and some bad, and some extremely bloated with plenty of errors. When I look at those Stats, it gives me confidence that Zen Cart is still by far one of the better systems to use for Ecommerce. Some people like to think otherwise when they see systems such as WooCommerce, Spotify or Magento. These systems aren't optimised as well as Zen Cart in my view. They are or do get bloated. Unlike Zen Cart which has always had very well optimised code that keeps it nice and lightweight. When problems occur with Zen Cart it is easy to get bogged down with it all. But swapping to another system isn't an option and usually there is pretty good support. I will be sticking with Zen Cart as I can see good things coming in the future.

I do not have a problem with Zen Cart that is not the issue. My biggest mistake was moving to another system.... I lost all my "PR" and what they promised they didn't deliver. You don't have to have a "modern" looking website to sell.

First time back in almost 10 years (or perhaps it's longer) to see what has changed, not much I believe. I quit this software because I came to the realization that unless zen-cart went commercial by allowing devs to make some sort of recurring income it was doomed to failure and suitable only for idealists and hobbyists (mod developers and people who don't mind tinkering and being knee deep in pain to build a site that still looks like it belongs in 2006). Well, that's my opinion.