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Got Thoughts on CubeCart, OpenCart, or PrestaShop?

Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2009 1:05 pm
by jack_indigo
I took a look at osCommerce and ZenCart the other day and man was I disappointed. There is no addon architecture with it in like the WordPress sense where you can activate or deactivate a plugin. Instead, you have to do a bunch of diff checks and work the PHP in, and cross your fingers that you don't break something. Very fragile. Man, that sucks.

So now a client lead came in and the guy wants to have me work on CubeCart, OpenCart, and PestaShop for ongoing projects. Do you have an opinion on these cart products good or bad?

Re: Got Thoughts on CubeCart, OpenCart, or PrestaShop?

Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2009 1:11 pm
by jack_indigo
Well, I can tell you already that OpenCart gets an F. Slick interface, nice website, but the module architecture is nothing but a bunch of DIFFs. Some modules don't even tell you to work the source in -- just replace the existing source! Oh, that will go well. (Not.)

Re: Got Thoughts on CubeCart, OpenCart, or PrestaShop?

Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2009 1:14 pm
by jack_indigo
CubeCart gets a D. They hardly have any modules, the community website is odd, but at least with CubeCart they have a module architecture where you can activate or deactivate each module.

Re: Got Thoughts on CubeCart, OpenCart, or PrestaShop?

Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2009 1:56 pm
by jack_indigo
PrestaShop has modules, but I didn't see any free ones -- they were all charge-only. And so I couldn't see the installation process. This is critical for me because doing diff-file addons is like being a bull in a china closet -- it's a fragile situation, prone to error. So, I'd like to see how PrestaShop does its module installation process.

Re: Got Thoughts on CubeCart, OpenCart, or PrestaShop?

Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2009 1:58 pm
by jack_indigo
Magento looks like the only F/OSS product catalog system out there with:

- a wide developer following
- a system which is somewhat easy to theme (because it is MVC-based)
- an easy activation/deactivation plugin architecture from what I could tell

Thoughts?

Re: Got Thoughts on CubeCart, OpenCart, or PrestaShop?

Posted: Mon Aug 31, 2009 10:32 am
by blueyon
- a system which is somewhat easy to theme (because it is MVC-based)

no its not! you need atleast 100 hours to theme magento. itsa the worest code bease you will ever see!

- an easy activation/deactivation plugin architecture from what I could tell

so has many other shopping cart systems! shows you know nothing about e-commerce

Re: Got Thoughts on CubeCart, OpenCart, or PrestaShop?

Posted: Mon Aug 31, 2009 7:12 pm
by alex.barylski
I've looked at OpenCart and Magento and I'd personally go with OpenCart for it's simplicity. Although I did have difficulties building addon modules, mostly because there were no docs/tutrorials...I could have probably figured it out quickly though...

Templating was relatively easy but could also use additional documentation.

I always prefer simple first until it reaches it's breaking point, at which time I would look for something a little more robust. Most clients IMHO always prefer simple to sophisticated

Re: Got Thoughts on CubeCart, OpenCart, or PrestaShop?

Posted: Sat Sep 12, 2009 12:00 pm
by greyhoundcode
Yeah I did a job with OpenCart a couple of months ago, and in my case it did all that was required.

Particularly easy to theme, especially when compared to Zencart etc, but perhaps it just fitted better with how my mind works.

Re: Got Thoughts on CubeCart, OpenCart, or PrestaShop?

Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2009 5:44 pm
by blueyon
jack_indigo wrote:Well, I can tell you already that OpenCart gets an F. Slick interface, nice website, but the module architecture is nothing but a bunch of DIFFs. Some modules don't even tell you to work the source in -- just replace the existing source! Oh, that will go well. (Not.)

What the hell are you talking about! there is not one diff in it.

Re: Got Thoughts on CubeCart, OpenCart, or PrestaShop?

Posted: Tue May 28, 2013 4:39 am
by Tamara
Well, each cart has its pros and cons. CubeCart can offer a wide range of tools that definitely meet demands of small as well as middle size companies. OpenCart is a perfect solution for merchants, who don’t want to pay money to start an online business because this shopping cart is free. The variety of modules that Prestashop offers, gives endless possibilities for business growth. Here are nice articles(goo.gl/ud7qs) (goo.gl/OQH8c) after reading them, it will be easier for you to decide which cart is better.

Re: Got Thoughts on CubeCart, OpenCart, or PrestaShop?

Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2013 5:58 pm
by josh
I have extensive experience with Magento, and some experience with xcart, oscommerce & prestashop

xcart & oscommerce are extremely dated.
Prestashop isn't that much more modern, but somewhat more so. Its extension architecture is somewhat procedural.

Magento is very object oriented, but has heavy usage of the singleton design pattern, which is essentially a global variable (but then again the other solutions also use global variables). Magento has more extensibility - you can override (extend) core code, but the way they do that is use a "factory" to instantiate objects instead of hard coding the class names. If you extend a class, that factory now creates your custom class instead of the built in one. This makes the code harder to work with because you never know for sure what class its actually returning, it breaks auto-complete in your IDE, etc. The way they assign templates to controller actions is with a proprietary "layout XML" language, which if you get it right, works pretty nicely, but if you make a mistake there is no error reporting, and can be difficult to debug.