X-Cart forums

[AJ]

I'd give my right arm to have X-Cart without Smarty. Has anyone ever looked into how hard it would be to rebuild X-Cart using just PHP and strip out Smarty completely?

C'mon, you know you've thought about it

[funkydunk]

I was of that opinion to start with, being a devout PHP junky as I could not get into (or didn't have the time to study) smarty at all.

However, once you get used to how smarty works and what is possible through x-cart (i.e. most if not all things) I wouldn't switch now.

Keep persavering - it is worth it

A good resource for info on smarty is: http://smarty.php.net/manual/en/what.is.smarty.html

Funkydunk

[AJ]

Originally Posted by funkydunk

I was of that opinion to start with, being a devout PHP junky as I could not get into (or didn't have the time to study) smarty at all.

I certainly don't mean to cause a ruckuss over Smarty. I think the biggest reason why I have such a problem with it is because I've been building my own php-based "templatized" websites for quite a while now.

Smarty makes a big deal that it "facilitates a managable way to separate application logic and content from its presentation". Yeah, so what? It's really easy to do that with just some basic PHP, and I don't have to learn a new language or syntax.

Here is what all my site pages look like:

<include global configuration file>
<define some page/section specific variables>
<include global header>
Page content goes here.
<include global footer>

What's so hard about that? The configuration file holds stuff like path information and some global functions, such as page title display. The page itself has variables such as $section, $subsection, $pagetitle, $printable, etc. and the headers and footers contain the "look" of the site, including all the logic code necessary to build navigation, etc.

Doing it my own way with just a few files and some common sense, I can totally change a site's look and architecture in a few minutes, no matter how big the site is. So that's why I just can't grasp why Smarty is necessary. I just think it complicates things unnecessarily.

Just my two cents.

[funkydunk]

AJ,

Me too. I build custom shopping carts using very much the same methodology that you described. However, I normally charge clients a fair degree for a custom build.

If they come to me with a limited budget - then I cannot afford to spend that amount of time on doing it my way.

Having searched the internet several times over for a cheap and effective shopping cart. I have built using actinic developer, get trolleyed etc... and searched high and low for something that allows me to use php if I want to add extra features in -- x-cart wins hands down.

I am not biased in any way, but x-cart gives me the ability to customise just enough to make my clients happy or the reasonably easy middle ground of adding special bits in just for them.

Now I love hand coding in php and would far prefer that to buying an off the shelf cart but business is business.

[AJ]

Originally Posted by funkydunk

Now I love hand coding in php and would far prefer that to buying an off the shelf cart but business is business.

I agree. And if I end up working with a small client with a minimal budget, and they don't mind the out-of-the-box configuration, maybe I'd use X-Cart again.

But I've spent probably 40-50 hours on this site so far just getting X-Cart installed and modified for functionality, and haven't even started customizing the look and feel.

I've already told the client that after the site is launched, forget about upgrades, because it'll be too cost-prohibitive to go back and upgrade by hand.

So unless I get a low-end client that doesn't mind the site looking like X-Cart, this will probably be the last time I use it. And that's truly a shame, as the software itself just rocks.