It’s hard to believe but around the time of the Millenium there were only two types of shopping cart software available – Actinic or custom coded in-house software specifically tailored to the needs of that particular company selling online. Neither option was cheap but the latter option was only available to big companies with big pockets. Yes, there were also HTML websites with Pay Pal “Buy Now” buttons – but this is not “shopping cart software”.
In 2001 along came osCommerce, a free Open Source eCommerce, PHP based, shopping cart – which put selling products online within reach of anyone with the drive and determination to succeed. Later, along came offshoots of osCommerce called Zen Cart and CRE Loaded, and within the past two years some new players arrived – Magento and Prestashop. But for a long time the original osCommerce languished and failed to progress as it should have.
There are of course many other pieces of shopping cart software available, but I have mentioned the main players whose names people may recognise.
At the latter end of last year I left the old osCommerce project, having resigned as a Team Member some time before, and started a new osCommerce Project. The new team and myself took over and switched the old oscanswers.com forum to forums.oscommerceproject.org. Our aim at that time was to bring the MS2 stream of osCommerce to a conclusion with a version 2.0 (Final), which we did, and to complete the MS3 stream – which we did not. We decided early in 2009 to build a new cart, from the ground up, to modern coding standards and practices and with no left-over osCommerce coding. We recently announced the name of that new cart – which will be osQuantum.
As is the way with any new project we have experienced some setbacks, with shifting goals and team changes, but we are on track now with a schedule to release our first Alpha version by the New Year at the latest, with the first Production version within six months of that.
osQuantum is being built with a wealth of knowledge about what works and what doesn’t work well in shopping carts, and what website owners want and need (also what they don’t want and need). osQuantum will use Kohana as its framework. Kohana is a light, fast, pure PHP 5 Object Orientated Programming (OOP) coded platform with a Model, View Controller (MVC) architecture.
If you were to ask me to explain in a nutshell what we are trying to achieve with osQuantum I suppose the most understandable reply would have to be – to provide what Magento does but to do it quicker, better, with a lighter footprint and so cause much less of a strain on server resources.
Below is a preview of just some of what will be contained in the 1st Alpha version:
a. Several payment modules, including but not limited to Pay Pal and Pay By Cheque/Money Order.
b. A modern up to date template design. Users may provide templates in any manner they wish, with templates being dropped into a templates folder and actioned from within the admin panel.
c. Minimum PHP version will be 5.2
d. osQuantum can be used with most major SQL types e.g. MySQL, Postgre SQL and MS SQL.
e. SEO URLs that will work across server types.
f. Discount Coupons, but not eGift Vouchers.
g. Multi Product images.
h. Cross Sell capability.
i. Multi-tier easy attribute management.
j. Advanced sales reporting.
To find out more about osQuantum visit http://forums.oscommerceproject.org
Miss Rhea Anthony (Vger)
I’m very much looking forward to osQuantum. It’s clear that in many ways it will be a step ahead of osCommerce (which in my opinion has become a bit of a joke). If osQuantum lives up to its impressive expectations, I first plan on participating in the Community Developer Group with the ultimate aim of one day joining The Team. I hope that the much-publicised trademark issue is resolved one way or another as I hate to see all of the current animosity. P.S. Please implement guest-checkout. All the best. Steven.