Gutted
Zen Cart is amazing, and all this time I was using Wordpress e-commerce lite.
Please note that this post was posted after a brief look through the features of Zen Cart. After slaving hard to create features that did similar things at an inferior level, you can imagine I was slightly annoyed that I hadn’t noticed it before.
I don’t agreee. e-commerce lite is so much much more practicle. I would much rather have all my forum software, blogging software, and of course my shop software in the one consolidated WP admin menu – you just cant beat it. And aside from that ZenCart is totally bloatware for 99% of cart users
I’ve fiddled with the code and it’s so messy it’s scary, I have also had to add several new features unavailable in the original.
Whatever! I use e-commerce lite and unlike trying to install Zen Cart which takes A LONG TIME to install and then integrate all I had to do was download and click install. I even upgraded to gold which was another simple click to install add on. And I agree with Jon about the one consolidated admin
I did take a look at the e-commerce code after reading your comment though. And although the markup is not very tidy there is actually nothing wrong with it. Why don’t you stop complaining about things though – and if you have written some code for the e-commerce plugin you should contribute it to their forums… the better the e-commerce plugin gets the better it is for me… and probably for many other WordPress users
OK, thanks a lot for your advice on Zen Cart, I was only judging by looking at the features. However, my comments do come out of experience of actually digging into the code. I have already sent quite a bit of code to Instinct Entertainment, and would post on their forums if I didn’t have quite a bit of work to do.
I must admit, I am slightly fed up with e-commerce though. I looked into buying their gold plugin, but the e-commerce plugin was malfunctioning on their site when I tried, maybe that would have been better.
I’ve joined the developer team for Wordpress Cart, which may be a little bit dodgily coded at the moment, but definitely has potential. I’ll see about handing on my e-commerce code to Instinct Entertainment though, it’s only fair.
I just found this posted in the WordPress support forums, could be a good reason to stay away from ZenCart and use a proper WordPress plugin
Zen cart is soooo sloooooooooooooowwwww… expect ~500 queries or more for just about _any_ page. It’s sick. And to make things worse, when you query the devs to know whether you did something wrong during the setup, you get a familiar-sounding “it’s normal, it’s a feature” type answer that a Windows95 user could have given you while explaining you needed to reboot your computer every hour.
Whoah! I was giving you the benefit of the doubt but not now. It was fairly obvious (given the extremity of your first post) that you might have had alternative motives.
Rather then putting down another plugin by pretending to compare it with Zen Cart to push your own plugin – you should just say hey guys we’re creating another shopping cart plugin please check it out. This whole page is totally suspect and if I feel this way I’m sure that other people will also notice.
Do the right thing mate… e-commerce is actually really really good. I did some research of my own since reading this and some people are saying that it is one of the best tidiest plugins that they have used. If you’ve got any sense left I’d stop plagiarizing, and sell yours on its own merits not the shortcomings of something else.
I was comparing it with Zen Cart because I thought Zen Cart was better. It was only after you commented that I even mentioned wordpress cart. I’ve already used e-commerce on two major sites. I don’t think I’m really the one to point the finger of criticism at.
I have slaved for hours over the e-commerce code, and have even provided bug fixes for it. I knew about wordpresscart a long time ago, but turned it down because e-commerce was better. I was only pointing out that there were alternatives out there. Those who know me know I often/always overexagerate on my first impressions, and I’m very glad you’ve told me about Zen Cart before I got tangled up in even worse knots with that. And seriously, if I wanted to push a plugin, I would not provide my only comment about it in the comments of an aside, arguably the most secret place on this site.
You’ll note I also never said wordpresscart was a good plugin. I thought it was a good idea and had potential, people say that kind of stuff about houses that need to be completely redecorated and renovated. As far as wordpresscart was concerned, I asked to be a developer because I don’t have the time for the steady, fixed hours of commercial web design any more, and needed a project I could do in loose ends of time. E-commerce is run by instinct entertainment, and is not an open project as much.
Please, don’t act like I’m a conspiracy any more, because if you do I will delete this post and all its associated comments off the face of the internet and no-one will hear what either of us have to say about shopping carts. If you have something to say that would help me in the posibility of me getting enough time to take up another shopping cart project in the future, please, tell me, I’d be glad to hear, you probably have more experience of web designing than me (I’ve only been doing it 3 years or so), but attacking me is a waste of both yours and my time, because I am a straw dog and officially represent nobody.
Hey Goose. I’m sorry, I’m not attacking you, I’m just saying that what you posted seems unnecessarily harsh. Maybe you posted it in the heat of the moment, in which case you can always edit it
Personally I would feel much better about this whole post if you just took out the roll over alt text on the link – I think it is uncalled for, why not just say “one of the many shopping cart plugins” without any judgement at all. That makes everything we say more powerful and based on fact, and takes away the impression that you may represent somebody…
I just checked out the WPC site forums and tried to install it and it broke my site
Which takes me back to the things that I like about e-commerce lite, I found it easy to install, the admin is very tidy, and it has all the functionality that I need. Incidentally I was reading last night that it now integrates with a new newsletter plugin so I can now email purchasers etc when I’m offering specials.
It also seems that Instinct have setup new user forums at the http://www.instinct.co.nz/blogshop site – I know people that have shared code with them before and I’ve seen it integrated into the shop – the gold search functionality is an example of that. Why don’t you upload your code there and you and I can try to get it integrated – I’m in way too deap to change to another plugin now…
Catch you later Goose, nice talking to you by the way. (and ps your design is sweet, what are you talking about
)
Fixed, thanks for being reasonable. I was hoping you weren’t one of these people who like argument for its own sake, because the internet has too many of those already.
Do you have a website btw?
I don’t have a personal website at the moment I’m working for a government agency and I don’t have the time to maintain my own blog these days… but I still enjoy sharing my pearls of wisdom every known and again
Dave…
Interesting topic… I’m working in this industry myself and I don’t agree about this in 100%, but I added your page to my bookmarks and hope to see more interesting articles in the future…