There are so many great websites out there, but so little time to discover them. I came across a great site that discusses eCommerce and shopping platforms called Practical eCommerce.
Real folks are behind this company. We are a small business ourselves, and we take seriously the notion of helping other businesses decipher the complexities of migrating online or improving their online operations.
There it was in front of my eyes. The headline in osCommerce's forum read, "Is OsC Dead?, Discussion of the Progress of OsC" [link removed by osCommerce folks?]. Despite how some may read the title, the thread isn't about bashing osCommerce. Instead, it is about users and community members concerned and even fearful of the slow pace of new development for osCommerce. Despite all the talk about osCommerce 3.0, it has been a year and a half since OsC 3 Alpha 4 was released with the roadmap showing that Alpha 5 and 6 are still under development. How can one not ask if the future of osCommerce is in jeopardy?
As mentioned at the osCommerce forum, Kerry Watson also has an article out about the new breed of open source shopping carts. The article starts off with a that was then, this is now statement regarding shopping carts.
While the Big Three of the old guard — osCommerce, Zen Cart, and CRE Loaded — continue to duke it out among themselves, new-generation open source commerce projects have begun to spring up with new ideas and new ways of thinking. Most noteworthy of the new crop are France-based Prestashop and US-based programs Ubercart and Magento.
These fresh Web 2.0-style carts are mature and production-ready contenders, and all are at or beyond version 1.0 in their production cycle. These carts are equal or superior to many commercial e-commerce programs, and are available for free under the GNU or OSL 3.0 Public License. We've previously reviewed Magento, so this column will focus on the other two next-generation carts: PrestaShop and Ubercart.
Personally, I've been working on recommending a friend to upgrade his osCommerce site to either Magento or Drupal's Ubercart. Even when the 3.0 version of osCommerce is released, it will likely still not have many of the Web 2.0 features that the new breed of shopping carts currently have now. It's not that I think osCommerce is dead, but I do think that osCommerce has stopped evolving. Good open source projects never die, they just fade away.
A new version of my favorite shopping cart has been released. Magento, an open source ecommerce platform, is now available under version 1.1.5.
This version includes many bug fixes for Magento 1.1.x that are listed in the release notes section.
This version also comes with new features:
- New category management tool that will allow store owners to manage a large number of categories, which can be tested on our demo admin site.
- New skin to the Magento Default theme which can be seen here
Roy Rubin over at Magento discussed what we can expect in the upcoming Magento 1.1. On top of that list are performance improvements with as much as a 40% improvement in the catalog and sales modules. Enhancements and new to Magento 1.1 will also include:
The release of Ubercart 1.0 was announced earlier today. Ubercart is an open source e-commerce package (shopping cart) that fully integrates your online store with the open source CMS, Drupal. We've been watching Ubercart for some time and like some of the look-and-feel it borrows from osCommerce.
Some of the features in Ubercart 1.0 as reported by their shopping cart's Website include:
Webdistortion, a web design studio in Northern Ireland, recently reviewed nine different e-commerce platforms. All nine platforms reviewed were open source software packages.
With e-commerce webdesign really starting to take off, its never been more important to choose a platform which suits you as a developer (i.e. one that you can support) and one that will provide your clients with the features that they need to run a successful online shop.
In 2006, I helped bring a friend's Fish and Tackle store online using open source osCommerce. The project was ugly in both appearance and code as I was merging a legacy site with an SMF forum together with the osCommerce software. As I indicated back then, while osCommerce was functional I was not pleased with the software. I kept on thinking how much easier this project would have been if I had used what I consider as modern CMS's. Specifically, I was thinking Drupal and perhaps even Joomla!.
One of the things I like about browsing the Web for posts on various CMS topics is that they always seem to show up on the Web when when I need them the most. For example, I'm starting to consider whether I'll continue to use osCommerce for some sites that I manage. While the yet to be released osCommerce 3.0 will likely be an option next year, I'm open to other possibilities. What I would like to see is a shopping cart that integrates well with a full CMS. In the past, I've found Joomla's Virtuemart extension and Drupal's e-Commerce module to fall just short of the clie
Good news for osCommerce fans, osCommerce Online Merchant v2.2 Release Candidate 1 was released early this month. If you're not an osCommerce user you're probably wondering what all the fuss is about a release candidate for the open source shopping cart. Consider this, osCommerce 2.2 first went public with Milestone 1 in early 2003 which means that the version 2.2 will be around for almost five years before it is considered "completed". In other words, an update of any kind to osCommerce is significant to it's developers and users alike.
This osCommerce release candidate also introduces a new name for the software titled "osCommerce Online Merchant". According to osCommerce, the new name helps strengthen their presence and marketing efforts for upcoming releases.
osCommerce, an open source shopping cart, is one more step closer to reaching a 3.0 release. Although the journey to completing the osCommerce 3.0 software continues to take users and developers on a very long road, Alpha 4 was released to the public on March 30th. As a reminder, alpha releases of osCommerce are for "testing to help fix and improve subsequent alpha releases for a final, stable, secure, and production ready 3.0 release". In other words, you shouldn't use the software for a "live" store.
We've already talked about the new features added in earlier alpha versions of osCommerce 3.0 so there is no need to mention them in this article. New features in Alpha 4 that have been added to the shopping cart since Alpha 3 include: