osCommerce

osCommerce

Developer(s)	Harald Ponce de Leon
Stable release	3.0 / March 31, 2011; 7 months ago (2011-03-31)
Written in	PHP
Operating system	Cross-platform
Type	Webshop
License	GNU General Public License
Website	http://www.oscommerce.com/

osCommerce (“open source Commerce”) is an e-commerce and online store-management software program. It can be used on any web server that has PHP and MySQL installed. It is available as free software under the GNU General Public License.

History

osCommerce was started in March 2000 in Germany by project founder and leader Harald Ponce de Leon as The Exchange Project. As of August 2008 the osCommerce site says that there are over 14,000 'live' websites using the program.^[1] This number is almost certainly conservative, given the inclusion of osCommerce in hosting panel application installers such as Fantastico (web hosting) ^[2] and its dependency on osCommerce users linking their sites into the osCommerce Live Stores listings.

In November 2010 the development of osCommerce v2.2 was met with another stable release. Version 2.3, as it was branded, takes advantage of the benefits of Tableless web design, and includes a number of social networking tools.^[3]

Version 3.0 has been released on March 31st 2011 and is a major re-write of the program to incorporate an object-oriented backend, a template system to allow easy layout changes, and inclusion of an administration-area username and password definition during installation.

Versions

There are currently two supported stable releases of osCommerce. Versions 3.0 and 2.3 are developed as two independent programs, and as such do not share code. Contributions, the official name for the open-source community developed plugins, are developed for either 2.x or 3.0, and are incompatible with one another. There is much more support, and are many more contributions for osCommerce version 2 releases than version 3. Contributions are updated, or released daily.^[4]

Branches

Distributed under the GNU General Public License, osCommerce is one of the earliest PHP based Open Source shopping cart software distributions.^[5] As such, it has spawned a number of forks including Zen Cart,^[6] and Batavi ^[7]

Criticisms

Customization via add-on or custom code means that installation of additional add-ons may require manual rather than automated installation.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• List of Open Source eCommerce Software

References

1. ^ Shops OsCommerce
2. ^ Fantastico cPanel Hosting
3. ^ Ponce de Leon, Harald. "osCommerce Online Merchant v2.3". osCommerce Development Blog. http://www.oscommerce.com/about/news,134. Retrieved 20 March 2011. 
4. ^ http://addons.oscommerce.com/
5. ^ osCommerce: Copyright Policy
6. ^ Zen Cart - free shopping cart software
7. ^ Batavi - value chain ecommerce - value chain ecommerce

Notes

• Watson, Kerry. The osCommerce Technical Manual. Victoria, BC Canada: On Demand Manuals. pp. 11–14 ISBN 1-4120-3733-6.
• Gurevych, Vadym . osCommerce Webmaster's Guide to Selling Online. Birmingham, UK: Packt Publishing. p. 2 ISBN 1-8471-9202-5.

External links

• osCommerce official site
• OsCommerce at the Open Directory Project