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What is it?

Zen Cart is a free, user-friendly open source shopping cart and online store management system. It is PHP-based and uses a MySQL database and HTML components. It branched from osCommerce as a separate project, with the major difference being Zen Cart’s long list of added features. The original design was created by Jose Vasquez, and the software is in continuous development by the Zen Cart team: Ian Wilson, Kim Elliot, Linda McGrath, and Chris Brown. The latest version 1.3.8a was released on December 11, 2007.

Who is it for?

Zen Cart is software intended for anyone wishing to create a successful online store. The capability to handle any number of products makes it ideal for businesses of all sizes. It boasts superiority over other shopping cart programs in ease-of-use, features, and price. It was developed by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. The program is built by programmers and designers with a complete understanding of the online selling process. The software includes all of the tools necessary to build a successful online store, and it is being improved and upgraded constantly based on users’ requirements and feedback.

Features

Some of the key features of Zen Cart include multiple language support, multiple customer modes, unlimited category depth, multiple sales and discounts, multiple display modes, an XHTML 1.0 compliant template system, unlimited extra pages, multiple ad banner controller, multiple shipping and payment options with multiple language and tax support, a newsletter manager, discount coupons, gift certificates, featured products, quantity discounts, phpBB integration through an external module, and easy installation. Zen Cart’s default installation provides everything needed to maintain a professional shopping cart Web site for an unlimited number of products. It also checks the database and server for requirements before installing and pre-populates the basic store information. The software offers unlimited category depth and capabilities for both physical merchandise and downloadable virtual products. Products, pricing, shipping, newsletters, sales and more are managed by the store owner through the powerful administration area, which also allows users to configure minimum and maximum values, choose layout settings for spotlight listings, and pick the details to show on the product details page. The content management tool makes adding new content pages easy as well. The shopping cart is already set up to receive payments from any major credit card and several popular payment gateway services are included.

Compatibility

The Zen Cart operating system is cross-platform. The software requires an Apache Web server with PHP and a suitable database, ideally MySQL, installed. Future versions of the software starting with 1.4.0 will require PHP 5.2 as a minimum.

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