Platforms & Shopping Carts
Understanding OpenCart Layouts
In version 1.5 of OpenCart, the developers have helped those of us who have, in the past, found it a bit difficult to isolate and manipulate page layouts. With the addition of a new backend menu, we can now begin to get a handle on how to use temp...
New Developer Tools on Windows Phone App Hub
The new Windows Phone operating system, code-named “Mango,” is now available for developers on App Hub, the developer portal to manage your account, find tools and resources, and submit applications. For the Mango release, App Hub has been updat...
Analyzing Open-Source Ecommerce Platforms, Part 7: PrestaShop
PrestaShop is a free, open-source ecommerce platform with more than 90,000 sites built on it, according to its creators. The solution has a very flexible theme-based design that makes it easy to customize and an extensive list of features and av...
Styling OpenCart 1.5
In my previous article, "Tweaking OpenCart 1.5 Layouts," I showed you how to create a new, revised instance of the default theme installed with OpenCart 1.5, and how to modify the footer. Now that we have some understanding as to how OpenCart them...
Analyzing Open-Source Ecommerce Platforms, Part 6: Magento
Magento is one of the most popular open-source ecommerce platforms, with more than 100,000 active merchants and a solid brand name in the ecommerce community. Many large retailers use Magento, such as The North Face; Olympus; and Dockers. ...
Tools and Resources on Twitter’s New Developer Site
Twitter’s new developer site, Dev.twitter.com, provides fresh support for the Twitter community and its over one million registered applications. The site should help to improve the microblogging company’s strained relationship with its third-par...
Analyzing Open-Source Ecommerce Platforms, Part 5: osCommerce
osCommerce is a PHP-based, open source ecommerce platform that has eleven years of continued development, a large community, and more than 12,000 live stores to its credit. Harold Ponce de Leon is osCommerce's lead developer and original creator....
Tweaking OpenCart 1.5 Layouts
The first thing most of us do after installing OpenCart is modify the store design to meet the requirements of our ecommerce project. If you’re like me, you look for a theme design that is close to what you want the store to be. This is usually ba...
Another SEO Wishlist for Content Management Systems
At an individual page editing level, most content management systems get the job done nicely. However, managing a product or content-browsing structure based on hierarchical levels of categories and subcategories can pose some challenges for searc...
Analyzing Open-Source Ecommerce Platforms, Part 4: LemonStand
LemonStand is a relatively new PHP-based ecommerce platform that emphasizes design flexibility and simplicity. This article is the fourth in a series where I analyze and review popular open-source ecommerce shopping cart platforms from a develo...
Analyzing Open-Source Ecommerce Platforms, Part 3: LiteCommerce
LiteCommerce 3 is a free, open source PHP-based ecommerce platform that can operate as a stand-alone solution or as a Drupal 7 module. This article is the third in a series where I analyze and review popular open-source ecommerce shopping cart pla...
Analyzing Open-Source Ecommerce Platforms, Part 2: Zen Cart
Zen Cart is a free, open source, PHP-based ecommerce platform with many live shops to its credit and a good reputation as a pioneering ecommerce solution. According to its documentation, Zen Cart seeks to be an easy-to-use ecommerce solution that...
An SEO Wishlist for Content Management Systems
What good to a search-engine-optimization professional is a site full of unique content with no way to optimize it? Not much, unless that professional enjoys nagging web developers to make minor edits. A strong content management system enables ma...
WordPress Theme Development Part 6: Integrating the CMS
With a functional HTML5 and CSS page completed, adding WordPress-specific PHP commands and dividing pages into template files are the final steps toward a competed WordPress theme. For the past several weeks, I have been going through the process...
Analyzing Open-Source Ecommerce Platforms, Part 1: OpenCart
OpenCart is an open source and free PHP-based ecommerce platform that includes many of the most important and popular store features. The platform is up and ready after a very short installation process —more on this in a moment — and offers many...
WordPress Theme Development Part 5: The WordPress Theme Tour
WordPress is a powerful content management system that lets you separate your content from your style and allows you to reuse PHP and HTML in a modular way. This article is part of a series describing one approach to developing a WordPress theme....
Create a Custom Magento Theme Part 21: Product Detail Pages
In terms of ecommerce conversion, the consumer's buying decision most often happens on the product detail page, so ensuring that this page looks good in your theme is essential. For the past several weeks, I have been demonstrating how to build a...
WordPress Theme Development Part 4: The Style-Making Continues
In theme development, it is often a good idea to first create the markup and style that you want for the theme and then worry about integrating that markup and style with the content management system in question. This is exactly the approach tha...
Meet OpenCart 1.5
One of the fastest growing open source ecommerce platforms is OpenCart. It was launched by a small team of PHP developers in 2006, led by Daniel Kerr. In this series, I will be exploring the new features and customization techniques of OpenCart 1....
60 Tools and Tutorials for Magento
Magento is a highly customizable ecommerce platform to build and run online stores. But with that flexibility comes some level of complexity, and sometimes you need help. Here is a list of Magento tutorials and resources. There are tools to hel...