On Monday 13 October 2008, Phil M Perry wrote: > Yes, I agree that osCommerce is very ugly inside. I've looked at it > and the code is very difficult to work with. Potentially, it could > do a lot, but getting there looks to be painful. Apparently, osC's > development staff is down to 2 people, and they're going years > between updates. v2.2 has been in Release Candidate mode for a year > now, and v3.0 is eternally "just around the corner". > They insist on adding new function to RC's, and refuse to address > MySQL version 5 compatibility. There is a huge library of mods and > add-ons, and a fairly active user community, but it appears to be > difficult to customize the look and feel, and mods tend to > conflict badly with each other, so I'd be reluctant to use them.
osCommerce is impossible to even skin because of the hardcoded appearance throughout the files, so patches that alter the appearance thus have to alter many files. Similarly there are other patches to extend osCommerce, but they assume that it has been unpatched. :-/ Oh and did I mention that upgrades involve overwriting files... which means that if you upgrade, you loose the "plug-ins" that you've patched osCommerce with, which you then have to "reinstall", i.e. re-patch with the correct version of the "plug-in", if it exists. You get the idea -- it's complete and total maintenance disaster in the long-term. There are very good reasons to avoid it. > My hosting service offers, in addition to osCommerce, > CubeCart and Zen Cart (all via Fantastico). Would either > of the latter two get a thumbs up, or should I manually > install something else? I'd be looking for sales of both > physical stuff and downloadable files, and need to be able > to properly collect NY state sales tax (rate determined by > shipping address, not my address). Zen Cart is based on osCommerce, but it is at least skin-able. However as Sean mentioned, it's a beast. Like osCommerce, upgrades involve overwriting files, and the same goes for the plug-ins. Not thrilling. It's better than osCommerce but still not desirable; however it's what I see being used most commonly. Try to find an alternative that has a more suitable upgrade path. New York state has some very unfortunate problems when it comes to sales tax -- it's charged based on point of delivery and the rate is county dependent rather than a state-wide flat rate. Zen Cart like many others can only charge sales tax as a flat rate for each state, and it is not allowed to over-charge for sales tax. As such, the common recommendation is to charge the 7% minimum NYS Sales tax, and to eat the difference yourself. :-( > osC just isn't set up to easily handle this kind of > stuff. Anyone with first hand experience willing to > enthusiastically endorse a free product? I can't recommend anything at the moment -- we're currently using Zen Cart, but we'd rather find something that's easier to upgrade and still PHP-based. -- Chris -- Chris Knadle [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Sep 3 - Porkchop - The Areas of My Expertise Oct 1 - Ubikeys Oct 4 - Linux Fest Nov 5 - Releasing Open Source Software Dec 3 - TBD
