Zen Cart, or Cube cart with MODx ?

E-commerce capability will really propell ModX to front pages.
I am part of about 1,800 people community where everybody is doing some sort of internet marketing. All these people basically have wonderful business ideas and most of them are struggling to find a way to easily create simple website (many of them) to market their ideas. BTW membership there cost about $8K/yr. Lots of these people are buying some sort of overpriced homegrown solutions to build their 1-5-10 page websites on their PC’s and upload to servers every time they want to change 1 word.
ModX *almost* has it all, and it’s CMS and it’s better and it’s free.
ModX is still too geeky for non-geeks but already looking very nice and appealing. Thousands of people are trying to convert WordPress to CMS for this simple reason - be able to easily build simple CMS websites. But here’s a ModX - and it’s CMS already from ground up and you can built simple website in 30 minutes and it does not require to enter anal to cure sore throat.
If i’d see a nice e-commerce solution for ModX - I’d fork out $500 for it no question asked. I might find few hundred people who’d do the same.
ModX needs e-commerce!!!

Gleb

Ryan,

Glad to hear that you are interested in this project.

Susan,

I got the impression that you had taken it as far as you could without having your head explode. Thanks for the hard work on it.

I think that the elegance of MODx lends itself beautifully to becoming a platform for a clean, uncluttered cart system. If someone wants to clutter it they will have the flexibility to do so. I only wish my PHP/MySQL prog skills were good enough to help on such a project.

All the best,

Jay

Right, so people want something in between a simple working system (ShopX) and a complicated feature-packed working system (Zen, Cube etc), that isn’t trying to please everyone but will enable non-programmers to get the results they want?

Paul,

I can’t speak for the "people" but I can tell you that I want to be able to quickly set up an integrated cart system without having to go through hours of admin settings and configurations.

The problem with Zen and others I have used is that they are filled with legacy garbage and don’t seem to abandon any useless or nearly useless features and, in addition, keep adding features and more features so what you have is a product that does everything under the sun but none of it well or easily.

What I would love in an ideal world is something that can be setup within a matter of minutes, customized and then allow the end user/client to administer the inventory and sales. From my observations it is actually harder to make simpler software intelligently. I appreciate the ideals behind the 37signals "Getting Real" method of making apps simpler, strip out features, not add them if it means making functional software.

The advantage of building something like a module or snippet that could be packaged for easy installation into MODx installs and then customized is that it would be able to use all of the amazing built in function without having to have redundant libraries, databases, etc.

I would love to see a set of small dev teams develop a solution on the MODx framework instead of implementing integrations for existing applications. Certainly with inspiration from successful projects but not getting hung up on dirty forks and bad usability.

We’re very much on the same page smashingred... wanna pitch in on the effort?

Ryan,

I am interested in helping out but my PHP/MySQL skills are limited (to say the least). I have some thoughts on process and I do have an basic understanding of app design. I will help out in any way I can.

My personal view is to just start laying out the "ideal" of the system, assess the key requirements, mock-up the front end/admin, and then engineer the backend. I wouldn’t go crazy doing a feature request thread or anything like that because you are then designing by commitee and you end up with osCommerce.

Let me know what I can do and I will get to work (between my ongoing projects).

I’d recommend looking around at ecommercetemplates.com for ideas on an approach that meshes well with the MODx approach.

When I was looking at carts while back, I came across ECT. What I liked most was that you weren’t forced to use a "this looks like every other ecommerce cart script" design or even try to skin your design over the cart. Adding cart functionality would be akin to adding snippets... drop your code in your design where you want the cart functionality to be.

I have no idea yet whether ECT could be integrated into MODx, but it is also a paid solution, so that may turn some away anyway. What I’m really suggesting is the creation of a cart along that same logic. In fact, I think a MODx cart might even be more powerful, using snippets, templates, and placeholders... the drawback to ECT is that you can drop the functionality wherever you want, but there isn’t really any templating, so aside from basic CSS styling, you either live with the layout or need to get under the hood.

The other benefit to this approach, versus integrating one of these "overfilled" carts or even ECT is that the may be a way to tie in existing MODx snippets... Ditto, Wayfinder, eForm, Maxigallery... which again falls in line with MODx.

@Identity: What is "ECT"? any url please .

Thanks.

I think it’s "ecommercetemplates.com". But I’m not certain either.

It seems since he mentioned it in the first paragraph of his post we can probably assume it is ecommercetemplates.com.

Based on their website and the sheer amount of words and links, I am scared to think of what the code looks like though

All the best,

Jay