Shopping cart that rises to the standard of MODx?

Hi, folks. I am developing the webfront for a click-and-mortar retail store.

I’ve been banging my head against Joomla for a month now, and am overjoyed to have discovered MODx. Joomla seemed pretty OK until I came here.

However, the nature of my project has changed. I need to get shopping cart online quickly and worry about the editorial content later. I’ve spent a couple days on oscommerce, and... what a mess that is.

Is there any shopping cart that is to ecommerce what MODx is to CMS?

I don’t have the programming savvy nor the time to accomplish a cart in MODx yet, so I have to look for something else. But now that I’ve seen MODx, dealing with something like oscommerce is gona drive me nuts!

TIA!

I’ve never integrated, only reviewed and played with a copy for a little bit, and anxiously await the chance to have the time to sitdown and try to integrate a demo with MODx, but for what it’s worth, I highly recommend taking a look at ecommercetemplates.

It is a paid solution, but very affordable, and integratable into existing site designs... truly the cart within the ecommerce solution. You can select one of many templates, but the beauty is that you can also by the generic cart and plug it into an existing site, rather than trying to skin an exsiting design over a cart.

There is also a SHOPx snippet that is/has been in development here that you might want to look at, but the impression so far has been that it has been more of a testing, proof of concept, rather than an implementable solution, though I think some sites have been setup with it.... just depends on your needs and abilities I guess.

ShopX is running the store at http://corganics.com/store.html ... using an echo-inc payment gateway, so it’s a fairly decent proof of concept. I wouldn’t run a huge store with it but for smaller applications, it’s really nice.

I like CPCommerce. http://cpcommerce.org/

It works with a framework and all the "blocks" are added, in much the same way MODx adds chunks. Because of this, it’s relatively easy to add "non-shop" pages to it as well. And templates aren’t too difficult, I’ve made one for it. http://cpcommerce.org/forums/index.php?topic=3108.0

Susan,

thanks for introducing cpCommerce. I hadn’t heard of that one, but just reading the info on the home page and a quick scan down the features list, it is certainly one that I want to take a look at. The list of ecommerce solutions that don’t force you into skinning a design or working with one of their designs is a rather short list... always good to have another choice.

My favourite is Zencart, but it’s a fork of oscommerce so you probably won’t like it. I keep zencart seperate from MODx but use the same template/css. There is a way of using the MODx API as a seperate PHP script to get MODx to generate the menus for non-MODx pages. I haven’t tried it though, but the author (xwisdom or opengeek - can’t remember right now) has used it for zencart.

Andy

Thanks for the helpful replies so far.

I’m not sure I get ecommercetemplates, but I’ll try looking at it some more. Their website is less than enlightening.

ShopX sounds like heaven, but alas won’t be practical for me to deploy in a short timeframe. And i need to sell a lot of things and integrate with a retail store POS, so that adds complexity that ShopX may not be ready for.

Is it not disconcerting that cpCommerce is two years old (almost exactly two, in fact)? E-commerce has come a long way in that time... or has it? Anyway, it seems like a dead project, no? I need to use LinkPoint, and I’m not sure I can do it from scratch (I know what an API is, but I am not really much of a programmer).

I’ll give ZenCart a closer look. The things I disliked most about osc were that step one is to turn on register globals, and that overall it is just a mess. As others say, content and logic blend in a very sloppy way. Oh, and the fact that there are over a thousand modules is actually a down-side. There is no way to evaluate them, and no way to really know what all is possible.

The system I’m next going to try is ViArt. I have just found it so dunno how much it will irk me when I play with it; but I do like the idea of an integrated CMS. And the product display logic seems pretty sophisticated.

That’s where I am now (sorry to be a downer, but hey, MODx has really raised my expectations ). More suggestions are very welcome, and I’ll keep this thread posted on what I learn.

Quote from: TheToe at Nov 03, 2006, 03:33 PM

I’m not sure I get ecommercetemplates, but I’ll try looking at it some more. Their website is less than enlightening.

Yes, I’ve never been too thrilled with their site... just a little too much stuff scattered all about. It isn’t perfect... there are a few things that I think should be in the core that aren’t, but nearly anything you want that isn’t can be added through an add-on module, and there are a handful of developers creating 3rd party add-ons, most are at the $20 or below mark.

Check their forum, fairly active. One great thing that I haven’t seen too many other commercial scripts offer, once you buy your license, as long as you own the other sites, you can use the script on as many other sites as you would like with just the one license.

If you want to integrate into an existing design, you would be best to just get their generic version. Then, it is simply a matter of copy, paste, and modify about 5-6 lines of code, dropping them into your pages, not much different than dropping in a TV in MODx. Your cart content will then show up wherever you placed the includes. Unfortunately, you might be somewhat limited on fine-tuning the actual cart and produt layouts without modifying the code... last I saw, I don’t think they have introduced a templating system yet. Either way, you’d be lightyears ahead of most other carts in regards to customizing.

But again, I’ve never actually put the script to work, just reviewed it and have barely played with a copy. If I was to consider a cart, again no actual use, but others that looked good or had potential were ZenCart as mentioned and CubeCart... I think both have their pros and cons.

ZenCart is a monster. IMO, once you played with MODx it will be a headache to work with ZenCart.

You might want to check a simple, yet proofed, QuickCart if you have to set your cart quickly.

I would love to find a solution for a MODx site where I can have a not shopping, "shopping" cart. I want to gather items that a user wants and send a quote to them upon submission rather than check out. Or something to that effect. Anyone have experience with something similar?