Re: shopping carts

On Feb 7, 2008 9:59 AM, Nathan Nobbe <quickshiftin@gmail.com> wrote: > On Feb 7, 2008 9:24 AM, Eric Butera <eric.butera@gmail.com> wrote: > > > While I agree that if the end user doesn't get it, then you don't get > > paid... but quality matters if you have to extend/maintain/secure it. > > Well, I guess not. Look at how wildly popular MySpace is. > > > im guessing most people who use oscommerce or zencart dont ever > look at the code, let alone extend it. a couple years back i setup a > zencart install for someone and i remember looking on the forums at > that time.. someone was trying to mod it a little and one of the core > devs said something like 'what are you doing, mucking around in the > code..'; i was somewhat shocked at that. > > did you see the thread that started last night about a zencart module > and php arrays?? if thats indicative of the typical user (which i suspect > it is) i think these guys are safe to assume not many people are going > to extend their code. but thats no excuse for poor code (here i assume > the code is bad, but from a cursory glance it looks like zencart has > improved since i last used it [though ive not looked at the code much]). > > if i were going to use it id almost certainly end up maintaining some sort > of forked version or perhaps just grabbing some functionality from it, like > maybe integration w/ a payment gateway or something. hopefully that > cant be too bad, and small enough to easily tweak in the event it needed > a face-lift. > > -nathan > > If you look at plugin architectures of projects such as drupal, phorum, or serendipity you can see there are better ways of doing things rather than messing up the source code. I recently found Magento, and the code looked really promising, but it is just too slow. Having to diff your project and upgrade changes is a horrible thing each time a security patch comes out. A big part of what I do is work on e-commerce solutitons for local stores and such. Each one has wildly different needs that just cannot be packaged up easily. So in the end I've implemented my own solution because I felt that to be able to address clients needs properly I needed a system where swapping out the hard parts were easier. Now when somebody comes to us with their fancy new payment gateway I can read the docs and integrate it fairly easy without breaking anything because I know how the other parts work and can implement accordingly.