Scared away from osCommerce but wonder about same issues here?

I'm not new to software at all but just testing the waters with web-based eCommerce. For our first FLOSS eCommerce package I installed osCommerce. It seemed a bit "rigid" so I started looking at community contributions (modules). After a while it was apparent that most mods for osC are old, unmaintained, and there's no telling if any given mod will work with the current version of the core.

So here I packed my bags and came here - and many of the mods and themes here haven't been updated in a year or more either. eek :eek:

Why can't we get a list of mods and templates that are compliant with the current core release v1.3.8? How can we tell without looking at each individual mod whether they will work with 1.3.8 even though they were written over 1.3.7 or maybe 1.3.0? Why doesn't anyone (with any of these FLOSS packages) think to add to the mod index pages a column for "confirmed for v1.3.8"?

I understand that there is always going to be a lag from one point release to another. But I tend to look at the attrition rate of modules as a measure of how stable the software is. Do we really want to get involved with software where we load neat modules now and they can't work with the next release a year later? :lamo:

Here is some info to support what I'm talking about. The Other Modules list of add-ons has 143 items as of today. Of those, only 60 of those were updated this year. 60 add-ons claim v1.3.8 as the ZC version. (The '60' number is pure coincidence since these aren't all the same as those updated this year, but of course the numbers should be close.) 51 add-ons claim v1.3.7 support.

That means there are 51 add-ons in this group, about 1/3 that may or may not work with the current release, and considering this release has been available all year, chances are slim that these modules will get pulled forward. The remaining 42 (again just a sample group) represent about another 1/3 which seem to have been completely forsaken.

So from this very unscientific experiment one might conclude that each 8 months or so we flush :Flush: about 1/3 of the modules that we've added to a ZC installation. Some of these will probably get rolled into the core, but it still means there is almost a complete turnover of modules every 2-3 years. How stable is that? During this period every site owner will go through the same soul searching: :cry: "will my module work with this release?" "what can I get to replace it?" "can someone help to update add-on?"

I guess you guys are pretty happy with ZC, but I think an attrition rate of 1/3 of the software every 8 months or so is a bit brutal. :bangin:

Ahem - so whaddya think? Thanks for your time.

It's not my place to speak for the Zencart team about the issues you raise, but I have a few thoughts:

When I look at the listing for 'Other Modules', there is, in fact, a column that lists the Zencart version the mod works with.

Obviously, the mods are written by people in the Zencart community, and not the Zencart developers, so updating mods for new Zencart versions would be the responsibility of the author. I'm not sure it would make sense to remove a mod from Downloads just because its listing didn't mention if it was compatible with the latest version. Of course the authors should keep their contributions current. Not everything that should get done does, unfortunately.
Also, some of the confusion can, I think, be a result of simple error. There's a mod that shows as being for 1.3.5, even though the author updated the file in March of 2008. My guess is he just forgot to update the version number.

Your numbers (flush 1/3 of the modules every 8 months) assume that, just because a mod isn't certified for the current version, it won't work. Obviously that isn't true. Also, the number of mods which are listed as being for older versions doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the stability of Zencart. It may be that there isn't much interest in a lot of mods, so they're abandoned by their authors. I would argue that they should remain in Downloads in case someone does want to try them, or adapt them to the current version, as long as the version information is avaliable.

When you've worked with Zencart a while, it isn't that hard to look at the files that the mod contains, and decide if it will work with the current version. Installation on a test site and thorough testing works, too.

I don't disagree with a lot of what you've said, but I think that you're describing a 'perfect world' kind of situation which, in my experience isn't approached by any OSS.

Hi and Welcome to the Forum. :smile:

When it comes to Add-on Modules in the Download section, one must remember that someone took the time to create them and then offered them for free; so you get what you paid for. Although the number of free Mods available is a testament to the popularity of script, it is also understood that one installs them with no respect to operational condition. The more popular Mods will usually have threads for Support but that is about the extent one can expect, unless you contact the Mod creator or write code yourself for the Mod.

One thing to always remember is that it is prudent to first test any Module within a test site. This is a proper developing method for a site and gives one the opportunity to review changes before applying to a live site. Most people don't do that though or even worse, don't do regular backups of their database, and end up in a bad situation.

there are also alot of modules that DONT need to be updated, they work just fine. IH2 is a good example....

just because they didnt get a new name dosnt mean that they dont work........

best way is to find one you want and do a quick search

Website Rob:

When it comes to Add-on Modules in the Download section, one must remember that someone took the time to create them and then offered them for free; so you get what you paid for.

... and if you want more, you can pay more. There are all sorts of people who inhabit the Commercial Help Wanted forum, offering services in various aspects of cart maintenance. Or, if you have the skills and time, you can DIY. It's your choice.

Hhhhmmm, interesting point of view, basing your opinion of a piece of software on the contribs.

The Zen Cart project is very different than the other shopping cart in many ways. First and foremost, you can not even run a basic shop with osC unless you add dozens of modifications just have the most rudimentary functionality. Zen Cart can be used right out of the box for a simple shop without having to add anything except a template. (Which btw - you can't just drop into the other cart without adding a mod beforehand)

You will also find that because the code is very stable and extensible that lots of mods don't have to be updated from one release to another as has already been stated.

Anyway, welcome to Zen Cart. Hope you find what you are looking for and we wish you well.

2 things to add.

I've said this before but a 'latest mods' section (or better RSS feed) would be v.helpful.

Also, you'll find this place a thousand times more helpful than osc forums where if you dare to ask a simple noob question you'll be hounded like you've just committed some violent crime.

Captain, I'll reaffirm what others have said here. Many of the contributions DONT need to be updated simply because the development was done so well. All of the contributions I downloaded (about 20 in total) worked regardless of the version posted. They just worked because the out of the box functionality is stable.

I ran several shops on OSC until recently. For open source e-commerce, there really is no comparison to Zen. Really.

Contributions are top notch, and only one of mine required a coding change. It's a real time saver.

Try to remember, though that Open source is a community effort, and as soon as you download OS software, you are part of that community. That includes for testing and improvement. You "pay" for the software with your time and effort, which, hopefully, is very little.

From my unscientific research, the "pay" software has far fewer features.

Thank you all for your very civil and encouraging notes.

I understand the FLOSS model entirely and the fact that we pay for our free (beer) software with some personal initiative to improving and updating the free (libre) code ourselves. In case there is confusion I'm not expecting 100% production quality code from individuals who generously provide contributions for everyone's benefit.

There are at least three kinds of community support that we see for software like this.

1. Offerings that have one extremely dedicated author providing everything - and a demanding community that asks that person to shoulder the burden for all changes. Projects like these tend to die as soon as the author burns out. It's a shame to see the FLOSS model abused like this.
2. Some packages have a lot of contributions by individuals, but once the add-ons are available they aren't maintained very well by the individuals. The number of add-ons is impressive but the fact that they're mostly one-offs means the code is tough to maintain and/or that the community in general is really more about "take" than "give".
3. Some packages have add-ons that are maintained by small groups of people who are motivated to see them improve and progress on into the next release.

I see osC and ZC more in the 2nd category, and CMS packages like Drupal in the 3rd. That's what bothers me. This community is obviously large and very cordial, but aside from the developers of the core package it seems to be more oriented toward individuals getting what they want for their personal sites rather than real collaboration in the spirit of open-source.

To respond to another comment - old add-ons shouldn't be removed for many reasons. I'm sure there are people still using the older releases and having the older code online is helpful. Keeping everything on the site gives people the opportunity to download, enhance, and perhaps re-upload updates. My point there was that for someone who just wants to get a site running as fast as possible, it's difficult to wade through a sea of add-ons that may not apply to the code package that was just downloaded. If people here know that a given add-on won't work with the current release then that add-on should be on a secondary page, and only plug'n'play modules should be available for people who can't code but just want a shopping cart. I believe there are many more of this type ("I can't code the internet, I just want to sell my stuff") than people who both sell widgets and they're familiar with how to navigate LAMP.

Similarly, as far as DIY, of course this is the OSS model and developers like those of us here know how to play the game - I just choose which game I play very carefully. :blush: Many people are going to be coming here because they want to sell widgets and not because they want to participate (now anyway) in some philanthropic project. They want (for example) a way to show more pictures of their widgets - they do not want to have to learn PHP or CSS as part of their business expense (time=money) in order to update some module so that they can display their images. Sure, there will be some people inclined to DIY. What disturbs me is that with all of the people who seem to like ZC that there aren't enough people "doing it themselves" and contributing back to the addon section. Everyone can DIY for their own little purposes, but that doesn't help the project, and we're making a heavy investment in the project when we install it online and invite people to visit our sites. I'd like to see less Do It Yourself in isolation and more Do It For Everyone.

As far as testing - full agreement - we have subdomains setup with test environments for different releases of packages that we use. I try to beat up the software in this environment before giving it the ol' QA stamp of personal approval and rolling it into production. I don't mind testing. What I do mind is that it looks like I'll wind up personally maintaining 1/3 to 2/3 of the modules I download and become dependent on, sometime within a year of going production with them. Customers love when new features are added but they get very upset when features are removed. Sure I can test old modules with new ZC core releases but for my purposes now, I need to sell widgets, not shift my average work week to maintain ZC add-ons.

One of the common comments about ZC is that it's difficult to learn and not well documented. That only increases the burden of DIY testing and code maintenance. But thanks for the note that older mods tend to integrate well with newer releases. The effort to understand the package isn't any less but the pain from module maintenance may not be as bad as I thought either.

Honestly the same comments can be applied to a lot of FLOSS out there including WordPress and various forum packages. The only reason I'm focused on it here is that we're supposed to use ZC as our customer facing store front - it's a very important piece of software, much more so than a blog or forum, so I'm being particularly careful in this decision process.

Thanks again.

One of the common comments about ZC is that it's difficult to learn and not well documented

forgive me for being blunt here, but the people that are saying the above have either NOT actually tried ZC. are paid by Harald or probably should actually have a developer....
My father who is just this side of a three thumbed blind recess monkey was able to setup a ZC...

Thats who I use to test new stuff... IF he can figure it out then anyone can

Right on a lot of counts.

One of the things that cause Zencart to fall behind other programs when it comes to plugins is the fact that it is a specialized program. A lot more people use Joomla or Wordpress because they are suitable for many more uses.

If people here know that a given add-on won't work with the current release then that add-on should be on a secondary page, and only plug'n'play modules should be available for people who can't code but just want a shopping cart.

I'd agree with that. A section for "old mod - may require recoding" might be helpful.

This community is obviously large and very cordial, but aside from the developers of the core package it seems to be more oriented toward individuals getting what they want for their personal sites rather than real collaboration in the spirit of open-source.

That, I think, has more to do with ability than motivation. Much as I'd like to write mods (and I have several ideas for great ones) I just don't have the programming expertise.

On the other hand, there are things I can do, like assist newcomers here in the forums, and I make every effort. Also, (opens can of worms here) there are probably other things I could help out with, but the current devs don't seem to be as open to outside help as other OSS projects. Maintaining the mods area would be an example of something someone other than the 4 devs could help out with.

This community is obviously large and very cordial, but aside from the developers of the core package it seems to be more oriented toward individuals getting what they want for their personal sites rather than real collaboration in the spirit of open-source.

"Necessity is the mother of invention",
I dont see any opensource projects that the community just sits and thinks up new and great ideas....
Someone wants or needs something,
then they either build it. or contract someone to build it....

then they so to themselves " Self, ( and self replies Yes ) I wonder if anyone else could use this" then it becomes a mod....

Maybe this is simpler than it seems. Why not enable something like ZC's review functionality for the downloads sections? That way if I discover that one of the less active mods is working perfectly with 1.3.8 then I can at least make it known. Or if one of the inactive mods needs a few changes, let the first brave soul who tries (and fails) to install it record their experience right where it is most relevant so that folks who need it to work out of the box won't needlessly repeat the experiment and maybe it will help the next person who decides to adopt the mod.

Support threads in the forums are great, but I think opening up a little bit of the listing to the community might do wonders for addressing the OP's points.

That sounds like a good idea, but I think it would have to be carefully set up so the "reviews" don't end up being another support thread. Duplication in this case would be bad. A severe limit on length might help.

Maybe arranging a standard link to the latest post in a support thread (which link could be maintainable only by the mod author) would work. If a mod is relatively inactive, a post that "This works with v1.x.y" would stay visible.

Actually, I just discovered that there is a section of the Wiki for add-ons. Trouble is, the add-on pages don't link to the wiki! What about a prominent link on each add-on page, with a heading of something like "Read community documentation and contribute your comments about this add-on at the Zen Cart wiki."

Let the tools and the community work for itself, they're both already in place.

Thank you for the continuing positive discussion. I've installed ZC. No, it's not so simple that a monkey can do it, but in one evening I was able to create a highly personalized site even with the default theme, add categories and some products. The installation experience was pleasant and rewarding, though manually intensive.

Just as a quick example of why this wasn't a slam-dunk:

• Given some available time, one thing I'd do is write a script to reset all of the file permissions so that this doesn't need to be done manually on a new install. That's a silly distraction.
• Another thing I'd do is to create forms that allow the customization of all language specs, rather than having to go make manual changes to PHP files.

For me those things were easy, after I found notes here in the forum and in the tutorial (wonderful resource there!). But for someone without experience with file permissions or PHP coding, I cans see that these simple items could have killed the deal.

On the other side of that coin, anyone installing OSS packages like this to a website needs some basic level of competence. If they don't know enough to create a database, change permissions, or edit some text files, then they should probably be leaving this effort to someone with a clue. My desire to create helpful tools is balanced by the knowledge that there is only so much that can/should be done in certain areas.

I need to get out of the fire and back into the pan, but when I can find time I will write up some comments of the noob experience. This can be used to help other noobs or to point out areas for potential improvement by any of "us" who can find time.

I liked the idea of using ZC itself to allow review and download of various modules. As with any product comments I think the text should be moderated, not by biased developers but by a group of people who can ensure that the content remains accurate, informative, and free from site-specific issues that are better handled in the forum.

I haven't been around long enough to see any heavy-handedness on the part of the site managers but I'll keep an eye open for this.

In all fairness, the only other package I'm looking at now is Magento, but that has it's own little world of pros and cons and I intend to give ZC a fair shake before looking elsewhere.

Let the fun begin! :clap:

This is a very interesting topic. Zen-cart does work and it is very stable. It is the only shopping cart that I have ever used, after doing research on a lot of other carts (oscommerce, sunshop, cube cart, etc.). But, in my experience it is not easy for "everyone" to install, customize and get up and running. Even getting all of the text and box colors changed from the default install can be challenging and time consuming. I think that the ease of use depends on your own level of computer/programming skills and experience.

For many people, with little to no computer/programming skills and experience, it would save many headaches to pay someone to install and customize your zen-cart site for you. But, this can be expensive, so each person needs to make the decision whether they are willing to put the hours into their zen-cart store to get it and all of the add-ons working, or whether they want to pay for help.

Re: mods. I try to use as few as possible, I think five or so are installed, because for any open source project, you always run the risk of incompatibility when a new version comes out. That being said, most of the popular mods are maintained, and are updated when “major” new releases come out (such as zen-cart 1.2x to 1.3x). You can always search the forum for any mod you are looking into to see if it is compatible.

I've built a store with zen cart, and it was the first store I've ever built. I had some html experience but no css and php experience. However the installing and adjustment of basic functions was easy. The upload of products very smooth. The add ons that are available for the version I work with (1.3.7) are working well, but if they need adjusting I get great support from people on the forum. Trough their support I've learned css almost completely and I'd say I'm halfway there with php. Most of the mods are compatible with multiple versions of zc or easely adjustable to be compatible.

I've tried oscommerce locally, but I have a hard time with it. Somehow it doesn't feel very complete and I'm having a way harder time working with it. I'm not nearly skilled enough to judge the entire shopsystem, but zc rules for me.

If I were you I would try and run both stores locally to see how they compare.

are paid by Harald

Now, let's not get silly. Harald doesn't pay anyone for anything :D

Vger

Wanted to throw my 2 cents in here

I have been doing development a loooong time. During that time I have worked with many e-comm products including OSC and ZC.

In my own experience I found OSC to be a major pain in the rear if you were going to do anything other than run an out-of-the-box solution. Ho many of us have clients that want a vanilla solution?

ZC has been a treat to work with. 1.3.8a is stable, is well equipped as-is and is very easy to modify and add to.

Rich
Dogsoldier.com, LLC