so what the cart you paid 299 for that is great?

I just installed CubeCart and it took about a week to get it working and to edit the CSS & HTML to the point where it looked clean and attractive. All told, a week is not to bad for a process most clients would pay a couple thousand dollars for. I definitely plan on re-using the templates and CSS for future e-commerce projects. Of the packages we tried (OSCommerce, OpenCart, etc), CubeCart won out for its relatively simple integration and sensible template scheme.

It's still got kinks (don't try to buy anything) and is not quite public yet, but here's what the basic storefront and product detail pages look like.

One day they will have a list of variables you can just pop into a few pages you built I think (one for category, one for product, etc.). I made one like that before, but never really finished it.

Try www.shopify.com for a much better ecommerce solution, everything is in place already all you have to do is edit the css for the layout. It's extremely simple and you'll have a site up and running very quickly.

Let me know what you think

http://digishop.sumeffect.com/

works great

Zenmagick allows for neat separation of code from html but it breaks a lot of other Zen Cart modules like ImageHandler.
Also, installing the Ultimate SEO (included with ZenMagick) makes the login / checkout impossible to work with. References with the mod_rewrite for these features are broken and unusable.

ZenCart, like OsCommerce, is really written by someone on crack. It has functions that build <form><input type="hidden" name="phpMyAdmin" value="4594f30712f4fabaff6997416810f3f2" />, <input> and other elements so you can't tamper with the form itself. The standard templating system is also a drag to work with. Sometimes it's necessary to go through 3 files to get to the end of a lousy template element. I don't like that it has "constructor" functions for the sidebox elements either. All of them are generated by code and you have minimal template options to go on.

ZenMagick would be great if it solved compatibility issues with ImageHandler and the Ultimate SEO addon. Until then, it's just nice to look at.

Hmm, if ZenMagick has all those problems, then it would be nice to let me know. I do not mean to whine, but it's hard to improve things when no one tells me they are broken.

I realise that ZenMagick breaks with a lot of existing modules. However, one of the key aspects was and is to make it as easy as possible to recreate functionallity in ZenMagick (in a cleaner fashion).
As for Ultimate SEO, the next version will have USEO optional, either for version2.x or the upcoming 3.x release. Seems to work well enough with the 3.0b1. Support will be implemented as ZenMagick plugin, so SEO code will have to be installed separately.
This is the second time people mention ImageHandler, so I might look into that. I seem to remember that there is an ImageHandler2 mod, too. If so, which is the one to look at?

As for concentration on the core, that is pretty much what ZenMagick is about - suggestions and improvements are always welcome. (As a sidenote, if zen-cart where to rebuild everything, mods would be broken too!)

Ta, mano

There are a lot of buzz around freecsscart but I doubt it will be released pretty soon.
Cubecart is bad shopping cart period the only good thing about cubecart it's easy template customization the rest of it full of b.s. It's build very ugly and has to many bugs and security holes.

Best, DS

Hmm, first thing I hear about email problems (obviously). You could have left a comment on my blog, though.
Anyhow, you are right in that the image scaling was broken, one reason being that personally I do not like the zen-cart approach
of image handling. The code was written at a point where I was still trying to re-implement everything in the same way.

Since then, that has changed a bit. While trying to be as compatible as possible, ZenMagick has started to go it's own way.
One good example is the introduction of a plugin architecture that will make installing mods a lot easier (and even more, uninstalling them).
And, of course, as you observed, it is not compatible with zen-cart mods. But them I guess freecsscart won't be either ;)

Thanks for the info, mano

I too would love to know the

"....Comparing to commercial one that I paid $299 for ..."

Which are you referring to?

Brad.

Eek, don't scare me off, mate. I've hacked together some osCommerce installs/templates in my time, and I'm hoping ZenCart is an improvement here. Thanks for the update about ZenMagick too, guys! At this point, I would beg/steal/perform <censored> acts if the Wordpress guys would work on a shopping cart.

I apologize if people think this is getting a bit off-topic, but it's just too important for me to let go...

# CommentAuthorenvisean
I am sorry that you had some bad experience with ZenMagick and I appreciate your openness about the problems you have had.
Let me try to answer some of your statements:
- ZenMagick is, despite the version number, still a relatively young project. The last few month it started to pick up speed, though. That means that
with the increasing number of users the number of bugs is dropping rapidely. If you follow the bug reports on sourceforge, I hope you'll see what I mean.

- ZenMagick is not just a mod, but a bigger pieces of software. It implements it's own templating/theme code and logic. Getting into that will need time. Leaving the admin side of zen-cart aside, how long did it take to be comfortable with the zen-cart templating code? I, for example, still struggle with some bits.

- Thanks for acknowledging that ZenMagick is trying to clean up some of zen-cart's mess.

- Related to the point above that ZenMagick is more than a single mod, ZenMagick is, in my opinion, a true MVC system. Still, it needs zen-cart, but I would consider that an advantage to re-use code that is trusted. In that context, why does everyone seem to miss the MVC pattern in ZenMagick?!?

- From my point of view, getting into ZenMagick doesn't take more than understandingh the zen-cart templates. There are quite a few similarities; views have corresponding names, so finding the page you want to change shouldn't take too long. For most people creating a new theme and modifying some view files will be enough.

Let me finish by asking you to explain what exactly caused you som much trouble. Maybe an email, comment on my blog or bug reports on sourceforge would be better than postin here.
I have always made a point of spending much time helping people. Quite a few of the posts on the ZenMagick blog are the result of email conversations and bug reports. So, rather than just complaining, be contructive!

Cheers, mano

I've been wrestling with Zen cart recently. I'm fairly new on the e-com scene and did like many other and installed and reviewed and researched LOTS of different options. I'm no coder so I paid someone to integrate my own custom template for the zen site, it seems to have all the functionality I'll even need.
Someone said earlier about Wordpress coming up with an e-com solution. Yes there is a simple one already but I too would LOVE to see them come up with an e-com plugin that has the same front-end usability.
I just checked http://digishop.sumeffect.com. Might even give that some more attention after seeing some pretty icons in the admin section. Might sound ridiculous but when you take it to the client it feels so much nicer to offer them something like that rather than the ugly zen backend and have to point them to the menu's they will need among all the functions they won't, (Yes I know, it's 'built for the merchant'). I'd really like to learn ONE well and stick with it.

I've just read some terrible reviews about it that scared me off a bit. Anyone else had any experience with Digishop?

Update: SunShop is fantastic. Great template system, standards-compliant markup & clean CSS.

@valeeum
Great site! It really doesn't look like an oscommerce site.

That last site is exactly what I came here looking for, a "Zen Cart site that does not look like Zen Cart"! My skills are not up to that level yet but it's very nice to know that it can be done!

Oh and a Zen Cart Gallery is on the same site too, there are some pretty nice looking zen cart stores around.

Zen-cart is obviously great in functionality and credibility as well, but at some time it become failure on the basis of AVS. I think that if we design some other shopping cart using HTML and CSS, that takes the believe of the customer, that would be better than any other shopping cart.
You could see some better shopping cart and also that is fully functional.Check out these.