Comments for Zen Cart
Re: Based on osCommerce
A Zen Cart wiki (www.zen-cart.com/wiki/) was added in november -05, for most of your documentation needs. :-)
The forums and FAQ sections are also places to look for info.
Based on osCommerce
This project is based on osCommerce. I wish they specified
that on their pages somewhere. As such, it can be confusing
trying to find documentation for it. I will say that it seems to
be easier to modify than osCommerce is.
alternative storefront/templating
ZenMagick (freshmeat.net/projects...) is an alternative storefront module for zen-cart.
It has a simpler templating structure and even allows to use Smarty (via plugin). Other template engines would be possible, too.
The code is build on top of an object-oriented API that allows access to pretty much everything.
It implements a full MVC stack, including a validation framework, plugins, pluggable logging, database layer, caching and more.
Note: zen-cart now considers ZenMagick a fork. However, ZenMagick is installed on top of zen-cart (like any other zen-cart mod) and can't be used alone.