osCommerce Watch

Deep Inside osCommerce: The Cookbook

The byline on the cover states "Spice up your osCommerce website using 69 mouth-watering ready-made recipes". The cooking analogy that runs through this book is cute but probably unnecessary.

To be honest, my impressions of this book are not great, especially in comparison to the previous Packt books. I do think there are readers who will get value out of the content and I will be more specific about this below.

The book lists out 69 modifications that can be made to an osCommerce cart, divided into 11 Chapters. These include:

• customizing the design
• modifying the navigation
• modifying infoboxes
• changing the way products are displayed
• improving store search
• improving the checkout process
• adapting shipping modules
• tweaking payment modules
• using banners within your store
• improving the admin area

Some example "recipes" include:

• Make Removing Products From the Cart More Intuitive
• Add Your Customers' Email Addresses and Phone Numbers to Your Order Confirmation Email
• Highlight Orders According to their Order Status
• Add Images to Infoboxes

The recipes contain helpful screenshots of what the change will do and include instructions as well as all the code changes. This means the book is padded with a lot of code, so the substance is really much less than it appears.

Some of these recipes are very (perhaps too) simple and it is unlikely all will be useful for a store.

The book assumes some familiarity with osCommerce and also some knowledge of PHP and HTML, and also the database administration tool PHPMyAdmin. I would say anyone with a very basic understanding of PHP, and who likes to learn by example could use this to start "tinkering" with osCommerce. There seem to be lots of hobbyists and DIYers who have osCommerce stores. Many people get a great deal of enjoyment from being able to understand and make minor tweaks.

I am sure that after going through this book a novice would have an understanding of the structure of the osCommerce application files and would have enough experience to attempt their own simple modifications and perhaps go on to more advanced customization.

For anyone with more experience with PHP I would recommend the other Packt books on osCommerce or to simply dive into the osCommerce forums and osCommerce Contributions site.

Today I will provide a brief overview of some of the changes mentioned on the official osCommerce site that are in store in osCommerce 2.2 MS3.

The updated feature page contains a number of items that are part of the MS3 release:

1. Object Oriented Backend


2. Template struture implementation to allow easier layout changes and easier integration with an existing site


3. Built in Admin area security

The workboard features a number of tasks that are to be completed before the release of Milestone 3, some of which are already included in CVS versions available on the osCommerce site.

Tasks include:

• Add Various Secure Requesting Methods To The Payment Modules


• Combine Catalog And Administration Tool


• European Legislation


• Localize The Installation Routine


• More Use Of Classes


• register_globals Compatibility


• Service Modules


• Template Structure Implementation


• Weight Conversion Class

Check back for more information as I examine what MS3 means for storeowners and developers.

I received an interesting comment from a reader over the weekend in response to the post on improving admin usability. The reader made some excellent points about a number of issues which arise when a product catalog starts to exceed a few thousand (even a few hundred). Problems in the admin area include:

1. The admin area uses dropdown menus in several situations where if there are large numbers of products or customers the system will output huge dropdown lists.


2. The product attributes section becomes unusable (when it isn't very easy to use to start with).


3. Inputting large numbers of products is very time consuming.

There are other issues that arise specifically on the catalog related to searching 1000s of products.

The first issue, the use of dropdowns, really requires dropdown menus to be replaced with some kind of search box to filter results. The second two issues can partially be solved by installing a contribution such as Easy Populate to allow mass input of data or synchronization with an offline system.

Have you found any other problems with a large catalog? What solutions have you found? Are any contributions particularly useful in solving these problems?

Send us your experiences using osCommerce and we may share them with other osCommerce users.

Are you operating a New Zealand osCommerce shopping site? Send us your feedback on the challenges you have found in building and operating your store. Attitude is a New Zealand based company specialising in osCommerce related services to businesses around the world. We are looking to put together some contributions specifically for New Zealand osCommerce Users, including payment modules and shipping modules, to speed up development of NZ osCommerce based shopping sites. Some New Zealand-specific payment modules are already underway.

Contact us to send through your feedback.

Update: Payment module now available from Attitude suitable for New Zealand merchants conducting realtime credit card processing via DPS: DPS PxPost Payment Module

I have been poking round various forums (other than the osCommerce Forums) this weekend reading what people are writing on osCommerce in comparison to other shops with a view to completing the osCommerce Review I have been working on.

Here is an interesting post from the SitePoint Forums:

osCommerce vs. X-Cart vs. LiteCommerce

Some recurring themes include overall excellent features of osCommerce but a need to understand PHP (and how osCommerce is put together) to make changes. A couple also mention limitations getting answers from the osCommerce Forums and the lack of comprehensive documentation.

In my opinion there are alot of badly explained problems posted in the official osCommerce Forums, or people failing to take the time to search the forums and contributions to see what other people have done about similar issues. As the posters mention, there can be alot to digest to understand the issues involved in making changes to the system, or even explaining your problem!

Some of the posters are definitely sold on X-Cart.

In the end I think the main issue is how willing you are to get to grips with the code. If you are not interested in that then there is probably a serious need to either look for a developer who understands osCommerce and can offer the ongoing support that will be required, or evaluate other carts.