I am considering learning the ropes for an open source ecommerce package. I\'ve

Question

I am considering learning the ropes for an open source ecommerce package. I've played with opencart in the past and I basically want to get opinions on actually using it for clients.

Make any suggestions you like, my priorities are: 1. not worrying about checkout integration 2. plugin writing 3. theming, and premade theme availability

I develop with php (oo), Javascript(with Jquery) and mySQL.

In a nutshell, I want to know if Opencart makes checkout easy to do, whether the api's are kept up to date and how active the community is. Or alternatively, another opensource cart that makes checkout easier than opencart (a checkout wrapper is basically all I want - other features are bonuses).

Thanks.

Explanation / Answer

I think some things to consider are the deployment needs.

With a small number of products (say, an writer with a single book), you'll probably want something with a faster/more direct checkout.

If you're rolling it out to someone with low volume, a few products, not quite their core business type of thing, there's a large suite of things to get it done. Open Cart is one of them. I think its UI is very strong, and it's administration is pretty good. Architecture is pretty good, and development is pretty active. Personally, at this level, I've used Presta quite a bit, but I'm not as happy with the product "culture" I guess.

For larger projects, I nearly always default to Magento - this is generally my first consideration with businesses that are high volume, product count, and amount of customization. The community is active, and there's a ton of free and paid plugins. It's also based on Zend, which is a pain at first, but once you learn the system, it is quite amazing.

I think it would be worth it to invest at least some time with a few of the modern carts - you'll probably find yourself using a couple. Magento would be absolute overkill on a small site, where OpenCart would be perfect.

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse I
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.