I was recently asked if I’d be interested in reviewing a book about Zen Cart. Since I’ve never read a book about it I figured that that could perhaps be an interesting experience [Usually, I prefer to read the source].

The name of the book is Zen Cart: E-commerce Application Development, written by Suhreed Sarkar. It’s available from the original publishers site at Packt Publishing and also from the other usual suspects.

The book is mostly aimed at people considering starting an online business but also developers and existing Zen Cart users that want to improve their business. For my taste some of the book (in particular the introduction) are a bit to long winded for more experienced readers, but I guess that can be said of a lot of books.
Still, it will give beginners a good idea about what Zen Cart (and e-commerce) is about. Since there are so many different aspects to Zen Cart [and therefore this book] I’ll follow the book’s structure to organize the review, so here goes…

Chapter one is the obligatory introduction of Zen Cart. This is written with an eye on novice users and contains both information about running a store and general concepts and also a feature overview by means of comparing Zen Cart with its ancestor osCommerce. This is an interesting twist, however it leaves the question of why osCommerce and if another good cart application would have made some things look less shiney.

Next the installation process is described. Chapter two gives an overview about different types of installation (upload, fantastico) and also details about file permissions, editing configuration files and more. It also covers the installation wizard and all options within.

Once the store is installed it needs to be configured. Chapter three makes a good job of being a reference of pretty much all standard Zen Cart configuration options [and that are a lot!]. It also covers typical catalog options like setting up categories and adding products.
Modules (shipping, payments, order totals) are next. Each module is described and options explained. In addition to the standard Zen Cart payment modules there is also information about popular payment modules that are not included in Zen Cart.

The next logical step in setting up a Zen Cart store is customizing the look and feel. Templates and admin options to change the storefront are presented in chapter four. Since this is a critical part of running Zen Cart this covers a lot of stuff. The book touches all typical aspects of template customization:

• admin options
• the template directory structure
• file name conventions
• the override mechanism [that is how Zen Cart allows to replace core code without having to touch core files]
• CSS and image handling
• creating a template from scratch
• customizing email templates
• simple code snippets

Being a developer and more specific, working on a mod that replaces most of the Zen Cart templating code, I might add that I feel that the downsides of the templating system are not explained clear enough. To name just one example: the override system is praised for that it avoids modifying core code. However, all that the override system does is to allow to use copies of core files. The downside is that upgrades might require cumbersome and lengthy file by file comparisons. (This is actually mentioned, however not in this context).

Despite that and keeping in mind that this is not the authors fault there’s actually plenty of easy to follow instructions of how to customize a Zen Cart shop the right way

Chapter five explains what needs to be done to prepare a store for multiple languages. In Zen Cart this does not only mean the language or currency symbol, but also how to set up different tax zones, countries, etc. As everywhere in the book, all admin optins are described in detail.

Another important part of running a store is marketing. Chapter six explains how this is supported in Zen Cart. The options described in the book range from banner management, promotions, reviews and SEO features to things like gift certificates and sales options.

After that, the book explains in some detail how to migrate from osCommerce. Although that might be useful for some, it seems a bit odd to me. My feeling is that it stems from the authors strong feelings towards Zen Cart. Even though there is nothing wrong with that, I’d prefer to have that as part of another book about migration to Zen Cart, but then with details for a range of different carts and not just one.

On the other hand, details about integration into other CMS as discussed in chapter eight are very welcome and provide a good overview about what is [and isn't] possible at this point in time. Details about the various mods available and their current limits are given and together with the appendix should be a good starting point for anyone that wishes to do some integration.

Finally, the chapter that exists in perhaps every book about software: Troubleshooting. It starts with things to consider to avoid getting into trouble in the first place, for example file and database backups or hardening of the installation (as recommended on the Zen Cart site).
Then follows a discussion of a number of common problems and issues that might arise running a Zen Cart online store. Common error messages are explained and their causes listed and also some helpful tips to recover a lost admin password!

Like every good book, this one comes with an appendix. Here the reader will find an overview over all Zen Cart mods referenced in the book, useful URLs and information about other applications and tools that might be useful for store owners and developers.

The book is well written and thorough in explaining all available options of admin pages explained. It containes a lot of screenshots that help to get a feel for the admin interface, even without installing Zen Cart.
I like the fact that, despite the (sometimes criticized) number of features Zen Cart already has, lots of free and commercial mods are covered. This will help new users to get up to speed. Also, the growing number of mods available makes it a lot harder to find and pick the ones that might be useful, so some recommendations, together with initial information should is quite welcome.
One of the things where corners might have been cut is that even though options are usually explained, some descriptions are lacking a bit of background. For example the book recommends to disable the session referrer setting. There are three different methods listed to disable this PHP feature, but not a single word as to why.

Having never read a Zen Cart book before, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Ideally, I’d have perferred a printed version rather than an eBook [reading a full book on a computer is a pain for me as there are too many distractions just a click away...] . Either way, there is plenty of information and it is surely a good starting point for people seriously considering to open an online store using Zen Cart [unless, of course, they prefer to read the source code ].