osCommerce Blows Chunks
If you don’t know, now you know – osCommerce completely and utterly sucks. I tried setting up an osCommerce shopping cart but got so frustrated trying to customized it that I vow never to fuck with it again. The problem is that osCommerce does not have a skinning system. By default, there are no templates and no themes. If you want to be able to customize the look and feel you have to go and search through the source code and hack it up. If you want to extend its functionality with a module you have to overwrite the default osCommerce installation files, making multiple “modules” not function or work together at all. Everything in the osCommerce open source world is hacked together by its various users. The osCommerce user contribution add-on “themes”, buttons, and more are so ugly they make me want to puke. It was such a complete waste of time downloading and viewing them. I can truly say I know the reason why all osCommerce carts look the same, because customizing it is next to impossible to those of us who have a life. I am being completely honest and hope you heed my warning because the time you waste with osCommerce will be your own.
What really frustrated me even more is that if you want to install user contributions or modules you’ll usually find say, “MyModule 1.0″, then you’ll also see “MyModule 1.0a Update Patch”. It is so bad that there are usually 3 or 4 or more updates off of a main release. So if you want to be able to use the latest version of a module you’ll have to download first the main release then you’ll have to also download and apply all the various patch updates that are available for it. Nothing in the osCommerce world is up to date. The source code itself is hardly maintained.
I don’t even know why I ventured into osCommerce territory. I should have figured and took note that when a shopping cart’s administration area is not password protected then it is a total piece of shit and shouldn’t be bothered with.
Side note: At work we have our own proprietary shopping cart which was built from scratch and which I help maintain. Let me say that after becoming so frustrated with osCommerce, I am more appreciative of the templating system that we have built into our cart at work.
As I said, after fussing around with osCommerce for 3 or 4 hours and finding I wasn’t getting anywhere I quickly looked for an alternative.
I looked at the commercial osCommerce branch product CREloaded. What is total bullshit is that the CREloaded site makes you go through a checkout process to even be able to download the thing!! I mean.. what a serious way to lose customers. I did not actually try out CREloaded, but I found out that if their website makes things that difficult and frustrating then their software cannot be that much better. Hasn’t anybody ever heard of a straight forward download link? I don’t want to go through your shopping cart to download some thing that is $0.00. Furthermore I don’t get why somebody would pay for, according to their website, “A compilation of many contributions into the latest MS2 release of osCommerce,” when osCommerce and all their user contributions are horrible.
Scouring the Internet I found that I am not the only one who thinks osCommerce is terrible. There is an article called 5 Reasons Why osCommerce Sucks that Google helped me locate. Everything this guy says it totally true. Upon his recommendation I took a look at ZenCart.
When I first started my search for open source shopping carts I saw ZenCart, but because their demo cart had a really kid-like feel and buttons to it I passed it by. Upon trying it out I found out that it’s origins are osCommerce, which from their demo cart you would have no idea that is based off of osCommerce. Fortunately ZenCart is such an improvement over the original osCommerce distribution that it is not even funny. I would not be surprised if ZenCart was almost completely rewritten. It is no wonder that osCommerce is not maintained or improved anymore because it has been simply been passed up by it’s various branch projects. The administration section of ZenCart is way way better than the shitty one in osCommerce, plus it is even password protected. The installation was pretty much a breeze although uploading all the files through FTP to my server took atleast an hour or so. Customizing the shopping cart was just how it should be. It comes with example templates that you simply just copy and edit where desired. I highly recommend ZenCart to anybody who is looking for a free open-source shopping cart.
Frankly, it would do everybody a great service if osCommerce stopped making their original distribution available on the Internet.
December 26th, 2006 at 5:51 pm
yup….i go with shop-script myself
February 21st, 2007 at 2:08 pm
When I was trying to set up a store site for the webcomic I administer I tried out both OScommerce and Zencart and frankly they both were crappy in one way or another. I’m all about open source, but I decided on buying X-cart because it is pretty good, still in development, cheap (less than $200 once with all improvements for free therafter), and has a relatively easy template system.
Sometimes you do have to pay for quality.
November 28th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
What you just said is nonsense, zencart is not better than oscommerce, and its not our fault if you don’t have no php skills to customize oscommerce.
December 1st, 2007 at 3:06 am
francis:
It is not about having skills. It is about utilitizing your time. Have fun wasting yours with osCommerce.
December 18th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
i disagree. oscommerce is the best. You have to be a really good php programmer to get it to work the way you want it though. Ive done dozens of sites with oscommerce and all the clients love it. Zen cart wishes it was oscommerce. Ive tried EVERY major open source cart system and none of them stand up to it. And most of your gripes about oscommerce can be solved with a contribution or two.
its sad but true, if you dont have super php skills you wont like oscommerce.
December 19th, 2007 at 12:34 am
Yea osCommerce works great if you want a shopping cart that looks exactly the same as every other osCommerce shopping cart. Then you might say, ok, osCommerce has a user contribution that makes templating better. It is more like osCommerce has 50+ user contributions that enable templating. Why waste your time? ZenCart already has templating. It already has an administration area that is password protected. If I wanted to waste my time downloading user contributions I would have used osCommerce.
And let me say this again, it’s not about PHP skills, it’s about osCommerce skills. If you want to major in osCommerce be my guest. Have fun setting osCommerce up for your customers for the rest of your life.
Ditch osCommerce and find something that will allow you to utilize more time else where, like in design.
December 19th, 2007 at 12:38 am
The problem with user contributions is that you have to
1. Find one that does what you want it to
2. Download it and all subsequent patches
3. Figure out how it expects to be installed
4. Learn how to configure it to your liking
This is a lot of time to spend just on a user contribution that may or may not work as you want it to. Sure you can mod the user contribution, but that is an extra step.
5. Mod the user contribution to do what you want it to
6. And then test and debug the modifications
It is just that much easier to find a shopping cart solution that already includes all the functionality that you need.
December 23rd, 2007 at 11:22 pm
The problem with OhShxtCommerce is that many Webhosts list it as feature, i.e., a DIY shopping cart to the unsuspecting. For a new online business starting with a small budget, it promises much, but requires too much. And since it is open source and unsupported, these individual businesses have been detoured into a one way street, ending in a blind alley.
This is neither my first online business nor am I a stranger to programming. However, OhShxtCommerce is not a turnkey solution; it is only a solution for professional programmers/webmasters who are maintaining business websites.
After wasting valuable time, time is money and I have a life, and still having the shopping cart show an error statement that should have been corrected with the first chmod permission change, I googled osCommerce sucks and found too many pages including this one.
Having a shopping cart that will work with a very large product database that changes daily sounds very attractive. Even hand coding shopping carts in html was considerably faster than osCommerce.
Maybe the people that say they love xsCxmmxrce are programmers that make their daily bread from individuals who in frustration hire these very same programmers.
January 29th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
OsCommerce does require Advanced PHP skills to master. In the beginning I had a rough time figuring out the design and layout, but once I got a hang of it, I could program it with my eyes closed.
Default OsCommerce look is SUPEREASY, I made a OsCommerce site for a client – which required existing mods PLUS custom mods, which were scary at first, but a FEW hours of work and it paid off.
Time = money, so it made me money. I was happy, my client was happy.
Some people want a software that is GUI based and requires ZERO programming. I am sure you hate WINDOWS OS too. When you drop your wireless connection, I am sure you B*itch and complain about the 802.11 protocol as well. Some people can never be happy.
OpenSource is FREE for a reason, everybody contributes and makes other people’s life easy. If you can’t do it, then hire someone who can and you can have your store for a few hundred dollars.
Some people don’t appreciate anything in life – If it’s free it must be bad. FALSE – Learn PHP and rock the Shopping cart.
A default shopping cart with important mods such as SEO, tracking, sales tracking, unlimited images etc should take no longer than two – three hours to launch (from scratch)
February 8th, 2008 at 6:00 am
@Ray
>>You have to be a really good php programmer to get it to work the way you want it though<<
Ray, if you are a really good programmer (PHP or otherwise) looking at the OSCommerce code will make you puke.
I’ve been a commercial software developer for over 20 years and have contributed to many FOSS projects too.
OSC is without doubt the worst-designed, most poorly coded piece of crap I have ever laid eyes on. Markup and PHP code are intermingled everywhere. Basic functionality is missing out of the box (search for a customer in admin using customer number? No can do! Duh!).
OSC is a shame to the Open Source community. I can’t express how much I loath it.
February 8th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Gill – if you are able to customize OSCommerce…..I would LOVE to have contact information for you, should you be interested in some freelance programming. I work for a web design marketing firm…and we’ve only had a couple of oscommerce sites…and the programmers we’ve dealt with are alos unable to customize them . You can email me at my yahoo address. ts_tk_2005@yahoo.com if this interests you.
thanks!!!
February 13th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Teresa
>>the programmers we’ve dealt with are alos unable to customize them<<
Probably the programmers said that because customizing OSC is such a ‘world of pain’ that they would rather pull their own teeth out with rusty pliers,
It’s not that they CAN’T do it, they just don’t want the hassle. If you’re desperate for OSC customization, just up the $$$ until they give in to sheer greed.
Sag
March 15th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
After having worked a few days over Oscommerce, I have to admit its code is really, really shitty.
It’s just so much bloated and crappy it will require you so much times tweaking it to something usable (but still crappy), it’s worth considering buying a commercial cart system.
AND the “contribution” system is plain shit.
I wonder if the OSC guys ever learn something about Design Patterns.
Something that the Wordpress team knows definitely best.
In fact, installing a WP plugin takes approximately 5 seconds, against the 2 hours a OSC contribution requires to be set up accurately.
March 31st, 2008 at 6:39 am
Very interesting discussion!
I must admit that I agree with most of you. OsCommerce is a real stinker when it comes to the programming and modding it is realy hard and somtimes a tiresome work.
Having said that i think the product is very good!
Why?
Well, It certainly helped me launching my site http://www.audiowalks.dk (as you can provbably see it is heavily modded), a task I wouldn’t have been able to do without the Oscommerce!
I needed a strong backend that could handle multi language, multi currency, integration with danish payment gateway and download options for files. I simply could not find any other open source systems out there that could do the same and therefore i am greatful that OScommerce was there.
Sure it takes some getting used to it, but after a couples of days working with it I definately got the hang of it.
Now could it be done better?
Well absolutely! And I think a discussion of alternertives is exellent and I am looking forward to hear other experiences with other products. But i am still to see any serious competition and for now I look forward to the new version 3 of the product!
Jesper, audiowalks.dk
April 15th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
You should give Zen Cart another look. It has many themes. So if the look-and-feel put you off, that can be changed easily.
May 6th, 2008 at 4:56 am
I agree. OSC is the biggest pile of monkey nuts ever created! It’s one big amateur hack that has become so unweildy that it tends to scare the wits out of even seasoned web developers / programmers.
The world would be a better place without osc!
May 7th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
I SOOOO wish I had read your post before going ahead with an OSCommerce site for a client… HOURS AND HOURS OF PURE HELL.
OSCommerce has to be the worst designed software I’ve ever come across, to the one saying it’s great you just need to be a good PHP coder… PHP isn’t the issue it’s really the incredibly poor design (incase it isn’t obvious I’m not talking about what the user sees).
May 18th, 2008 at 9:55 am
If you’re interested in alternatives not coded in php, you should check out satchmo. It uses the django framework and is being actively developed. Site is here http://www.satchmoproject.com
July 21st, 2008 at 3:08 pm
I offer the following as an example of the brilliance of the OSCommerce developers. I discovered this gem of the coders art in the admin/customers.php file after my client wondered why the Customers page in OSC Admin took about 25 minutes to load (they have around 30,000 customers).
######Query 1
$customersrecords = mysql_query(”SELECT * FROM customers”) or die (”Wha Happen??? Error 1″);
while($customerrows = tep_db_fetch_array($customersrecords))
{
$e = mysql_query(”SELECT * FROM address_book WHERE customers_id =’$customerrows[customers_id]‘”) or die (”Wha Happen??? Error 2″);
$real = tep_db_fetch_array($e);
$updatedefaultaddress = mysql_query(”UPDATE customers SET customers_default_address_id = ‘$real[address_book_id]‘ WHERE customers_id=’$customerrows[customers_id]‘”) or die (”Wha Happen??? Error 3″);
This is executed for EVERY customer EVERY time the admin customers page is loaded.
Fantastic skilzz eh?
September 15th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
I just tried osC for the first time, and yes it is a bear. I actually hacked up my installation to the point where it didn’t resemble osC at all. I’ve taken a look at zen cart, magento, and prestashop, but I don’t know what to go with. I liked the fact that the prestashop html validated, but their site is SUPER slow and support from the community would be equally as slow. The best part of osC is that there is a huge community for support. On the other hand, if osC was easier to use, it wouldn’t need a huge community for support. What open source eCommerce solution is everyone (who is smart) going with these days?
October 5th, 2008 at 10:57 am
osc sucks monkey dick. Yes, it does require advanced PHP skills to get to grips with, but that’s beside the point. The code base is that screwed up that you’ll waste time getting it to do things that other systems can be made to do far more easily. It’s OK for low end ecommerce websites where the admin wants to have a level of control over the site. It’s not a professional piece of software. Unfortunately, inspite of many open source ecommerce packages, there not much that is decent, though Magento looks to have some potential.
October 12th, 2008 at 7:51 am
I put up an OSCommerce site for a customer in 2004. I don’t consider myself a programmer, but it seems to me the ‘coders’ who work on that software need to learn that a ‘patch’ isn’t a complete file with changes.
They need to learn how to use diff and actually make patches. It would make module integration so much easier.
February 2nd, 2009 at 3:12 pm
This is my second comment to this forum, as I sit up at 10pm trying to get shitty osCommerce to display shipping values correctly and figure out tax on gift vouchers. As the site I’ve worked on for the past year – it’s a large, high traffic, high turnover ecommerce site – has many times caused me to sit there tearing what little hair I have left, out.
I expect to be up for much longer.
Thanks a f**kin’ bunch osc! You owe me!
I suggest we find an osc core developer tie him to a chair and make him give us a valid reason why osc is so screwed up, or else he suffers terribly.
February 14th, 2009 at 9:18 am
I would have to agree that osCommerce is not the best tool for customizing layout. For example:
I wanted to simply center everything on the page (I didn’t want it to be 100% width) so I had to go through about 40 files and wrap ALL the HTML inside of a div that I applied a class to called “container”. This allowed me to put a width and a margin of auto to center the page.
Then after I did that, I wanted to put a background color to the div … Now if I DID NOT put a div I would not be able to separate my body background and my actual page background colors.
It is far, far away from being CSS friendly. If they would AT LEAST assign a class to each table that would be great, for example:
- The Header table would be a div
- The left column would be a div
Something along those lines. If everything would be assigned properly we could use CSS to customize the layout MUCH easier…. Then there would have been no need for me to add to the HTML on every page!
I’m very grateful for the people that make open source to what it is and I appreciate everyone that built osCommerce and put their time into it, but I think it’s time to revamp and bring osCommerce into the new ago of programming and design techniques. (Especially the design side)
That’s my rant, sorry. Have a great day!