AnaP  | 2007-02-15
It needs some PHP knowledge
Zen Cart is an open source e-commerce solution based on the PHP programming language and a MySQL database, developed by a community of developers and based on another popular open-source e-commerce software, osCommerce shopping cart. The administration interface has a very big number of options that are overwhelming. It was hard to know where to start to set things up as there are so many options, which is a mixed blessing. Zen Cart ships with a few skins, but there are more available for free and commercially. The ugly part is that if you want to get deeper into the skinning, expect a significant battle and some mid-level PHP skills required. An aspect I really liked were the reports. Sales, most popular products, customers, order status, etc, are all available. Overall, Zen Cart is certainly a powerful piece of software. Zen Cart is worth considering if your requirements are very basic and you aren't very fussy about the look and setup of it, or if you enjoy hacking PHP and are moderately good.