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OsCommerce vs Zen Cart: The On-going Debate in the Web Development Industry

PHP is a boon to the web designers, developers and to the site owners as well. Because of this server-side language, the web world has been able to keep up its growth. Moreover, PHP has also acted as a catalyst via its various open source software for all those individuals who wanted to make a presence in the web world. But, the evolution of so many PHP web application frameworks resulted into utter confusion. What’s even more baffling was that the features of a particular type of frameworks had very little differences little differences.

For an instance, if you want to use a good CMS written in PHP for your site, then you are surely going to have a tough time to choose between WordPress and Joomla. Both these content management systems are blooming open source software. The same condition prevails between Oscommerce and Zen Cart. Both these frameworks are meant for eCommerce site development and both houses plenty of useful features. Hence, they have resulted into an on-going debate in the web development industry, osCommerce vs Zen Cart.

While some developers prefer the ease and simplicity of osCommerce, other developers are inclined towards Zen Cart’s features. We’ll soon look peep into the comparison between these two PHP frameworks, but first, let’s see the similarities that these frameworks hold.

Similarities of Zen Cart and osCommerce
Some of the most obvious similarities between Zen Cart and osCommerce are as follows:
•    Both are online store management software program written in PHP.
•    Both are available as free software under GNU General Public License.
•    Both can be used on web servers that have PHP and My SQL installed.
•    Both of them feature lots of add-ons and have large community for help.
•    Both of them can be used for cross-platform (in terms of desktop operating systems) development.

Besides the above listed points, there is one more similarity between these two platforms and that is, both of them have easy installation. Now let’s have a look at the main debate topic.

osCommerce vs ZenCart
There are different criteria on which these software can be distinguished from each other. The very first criterion is their ease of use in development. While osCommerce is said to be simple, convenient software that requires no prior experience with content management systems, development of ecommerce sites in Zen Cart requires an intermediate level experience so that one can understand and use the core features in a better way.

The next distinguishing basis is the features that these platforms have. In this criterion, the superficial features of both the platforms are almost similar. A main reason for this could be that Zen Cart has its roots in osCommerce as it was in 2003, this software ‘forked’ from osCommerce as a separate project. However, when compared with each other, the major difference between the two platforms comes from the architectural changes of Zen Cart that include a template system along with additional ones in the core. Apart from the architectural changes, there are differences regarding the aesthetic changes too.

Another distinguishable criterion is the frequency of updates of the systems. In this criterion, Zen Cart gains an upper hand. Though both of them have excellent community support and plenty of add-ons, the frequency of updates in Zen Cart is far more than the frequency of osCommerce and for proper survival of an open source, regular updates are must.

In spite of the dissimilarities of the systems, the proper use of the systems depends a lot on the developers. Competent osCommerce developers as well as Zen Cart developers have their benefits of using these systems.

Posted By: PHP Developer




This post first appeared on PHP Web Developer India | Find Top Articles For An, please read the originial post: here

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OsCommerce vs Zen Cart: The On-going Debate in the Web Development Industry

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