Sep 10th by Neil under Opencart, Product, Reviews, Web Design
Tags: Chatter, Ecommerce, Reviews, Shopping Cart, Web Design
Opencart is an open source shopping cart written in PHP that is rapidly growing in popularity. This is in part down to its creator Daniel Kerr’s hard work in building Opencart from the ground up using a logical MVC framework.
MVC explained:
Model: The database layer. All calls to the database are done here, referenced from the controller.
View: Template display for front and backend. This is where the HTML/CSS designing is done.
Controller: Main controlling code base. This is where the functional code logic is processed.
What this all means is that Opencart’s code is streamlined and easier to follow than some other bloated opensource ecommerce solutions such as OsCommerce and Zencart. The benefits of this easy to follow code makes it easier to customise. Opencart’s template system is pretty easy to get to grips with and an original template can be achieved with some HTML/CSS and image creation skills. However if you do not possess these skills, free templates can be found on numerous places on the web including the Opencart contribs page. Templates are easy to install and you can install your own logo through the Opencart admin area. Brilliant!
Opencart also appeals to designers and shop owners alike because it is fast, secure, well supported and expandable.
The current version is 1.3.2 which can be downloaded here. The current release boasts a multitude of great features, including multi-language capabilities, product ratings and my personal two favourites; downlaodble products and product review capabilities (reviews can also be written in the admin panel! Awesome.). There is built in compatibility with a number of payment gateways such as Worldpay and Sagepay. Paypal is supported too and Google Checkout will be in the next release v1.3.3 alongwith; Google Base, Google Talk, Google Site Map. Cant wait for that release!
In conclusion I really think Opencart can contend with the big boys and if it was a case of Opencart vs OsCommerce and Zencart then Opencart wins everytime. Well done to everyone who is involved and has contributed something to Opencart!
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11 Responses to “Opencart – Possibly the best open source shopping cart software!”
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UPDATE: Daniel has just announced that there will be a new templating system for the new 1.3.3 release it will use ‘Children’ to create a theme/template.
So there will be a main ‘Parent’ theme/template with basic structure etc (all of which will still be able to be accessed and hacked if needs be) and you will just have to create a ‘Child’ theme/template probably consisting of a few CSS files (maybe even just 1) and Bobs yer Uncle you have a new theme.
This is great news a great step forward, especially when it comes to upgrading, no hacking of core files mean templates can be easily installed, transferred etc.
I will start writing some tutorials on the new system once I have time and of course once it has been launched (and Ive figured it out).
great!
I thought the current templating system was fine!
I copied the default theme and had a custom built one up in a day (can’t say the same for Magento….took me 2 days to hide something in the footer…after opening about 100 xml files!)
Hi Justin,
Fine isnt brilliant…..I think it can be improved and it will be. It should actually give you more control and be a bit easier so no worries. Plus you can always still use v1.3.2 if its more comfortable.
I agree Magento is weird. I had a quick look at it and got depressed very quickly. Perhaps I will have a more indepth look when I have the time and patience. Right now Im an Opencart lover and will push it as much as I can!
I’m very new to opencart being a very long time zencart user… (and oscommerce hacker before that, o/c doesn’t really have users
There’s got to be something wrong, it can’t just be this easy
So far opencart does everything I need without any fuss or bother and it’s not US centric, a UK shop by default saves about 3 hours hacking
I did get excited about magento and then tried to implement an actual shop, oh my, no wonder most magento shops are based on the default theme and try explaining a how to alter stuff to a client who doesn’t know the difference between google and the Internet
Thank you opencart… The saviour of opensource shopping carts
Told you it was the best. I really need to right a new review as we are up to version 1.4.8b now. I looked into all the shopping carts before picking OC to concentrate on. Zencart was bloated, with slow code, Magento is too complicated to use, oscommerce is old and cubecart is OK but you have to pay for the new version. OC really is fantastic, easy to theme and use!
OC does have users! thousands of them and a lot that are dedicated to the project development. The developers listen to the users in the forum and really try and make it better with each release. I dont think I will ever use anything else other than OC…just love it.
Yeah, Opencart is great!!! Much better than OSCommerce and much less complicated than Magento. The problem is that there is a terrible lack of professional templates for it. Other than Opencarter.com templates, the rest are very poor and not very professional.
Anyway, if you can cope with ‘wasting’ one week to develop one theme, Opencart is a great solution.
Many versions later and it still doesn’t support Google Checkout.
There is an add-on module but it’s not integrated into the normal payment system due to the author’s misunderstanding of Google’ terms and conditions and how Opencart works.
Hi Jack yes a bit of a flaw granted. The Google Checkout module does work though right? I would suggest if you have a better understanding of Google Checkout and OC that you create a better mod. Speaking from personal experience creating one is problematic as Google isnt the easiest payment processor to integrate your cart with.
What are these misunderstandings you speak of anyway? Perhaps you should forward your concerns to the mods author so they can improve it.
I used OpenCart for a little over two months. In that amount of time I spent more time on learning how to add this file, modify that file, upgrade this file, and change that file than I actually spent on marketing and selling my products! Not that I don’t like to learn new things. It was interesting reading up on php and mySQL (what OpenCart is built on), but looking back it was a serious waste of time. I could have used that time to actually make money instead of spend it!
To elaborate on that, yes, OpenCart is open source software and free to use, but the options that come with it leave a little to be desired. If you want to actually upgrade your cart to, you know, look and do some of the things that other shopping cart solutions do, then you gotta pay a third party developer for an extension (or modification).
They do have quite a large group of people who develop all kinds of wonderful extensions that make the cart better, and to give them credit there are some very useful free 3rd party extensions available, but for the more serious extensions you usually have to pay someone for it. Also, you are responsible for searching through all the extensions, downloading them, uploading them to your site, making sure they work, figuring out why if they don’t, etc. etc. It takes a lot of time, and there’s no guarantee that one extension won’t break another extension (or your cart) and so on.
While it might seem like you are getting a good deal, you usually end up paying for extra themes (OpenCart only comes with 1 default theme), extensions, modifications, etc. I ended up spending close to $200 on my cart (and I wasn’t even finished with it yet) before I started to realize “At this rate i’m gonna end up paying more for this free cart than I would if I used a paid shopping cart service that already offers all these things built in!”
Bottom line, I really do like OpenCart. I think out of all the free open source shopping carts, it is probably the best. It is easy to use out of the box, easy to navigate the admin panel, and it has a good community behind it. However, if you are the type of person who only wants to focus on the sale and marketing of your products and leave all the technical aspects to someone else, then you should either go with a paid shopping cart solution, or hire a web developer who can deal with OpenCart for you.
I love OpenCart, it has a great future, but at moment I still preffer PrestaShop.