There are tons of articles about this topic, but as usual things are slightly different for for about just everyone writing about it.

The most helpful resource has been a post from Jeff Tchang about the very same thing. I’ve followed the instructions for Windows (XP) and with some small differences things do seem to work now – yay!

The differences were:

• ssh github.com does not work as described but gives an error ‘Permission denied (publickey)‘
• The git clone URL that finally worked was using ssh.github.com, but without the leading ssh://, so for example: git clone git@ssh.github.com:443/DerManoMann/zc-base.git

I haven’t actually tried to push anything via that connection – so far pulling was all I needed.

I finally managed to set up a new, extended donations page. Let me know if there are any useful values missing or if anything is broken. (I guess you’ll have to donate for that

I’ve just uploaded a new snapshot. I think this is now pretty close to 0.9.8…

I’ve been thinking about more patches that could easily be done to the zen cart base code to improve things.

One thing that I routinely do to make testing work better is to patch the database class queryFactory, replacing all calls of die(); with throwing a ZMDatabaseException.

If you can think of anything else that can be realized in a simple way and increasing usability, etc  I’d be happy to know.

On a unrelated matter, I am still looking for a reasonably looking admin theme that can be used to start rebuilding the admin UI…

One of the things on my todo list for ZenMagick is to review the different types of config/option/setting formats used. Right now there are:

• plain PHP with static code
  This is handled via the loader and the most prominent special cases here are local.php files which are fine, though
• PHP code without the <?phph ?> tags
  Used for the database mappings – this should/could be nicer I guess, in particular since it might get cached as serialized array anyway
• list of method calls in a single global function
  Done for the sacs and url mappings. These could be a single array and perhaps should be. However, it would be nice to have a simple format that can easily be parsed

So, what do I want/need? .ini fileformat is too simple as there is some hierarchical data, although not too deep. Some nesting would be good too.

Of course, XML might be an idea, however I do not have any experience with XML and PHP and do not know what performance is like.

Any ideas?

I’ve just checked in some code changes to the template manager class and and an initial version of a minify plugin to take advantage of those changes.

The plugin itself is still fairly simple and doesn’t take advantage of any advanced minify features (yet). All it does is to rewrite all CSS and JavaScript URLs with minify URLs using the f= syntax.

Seeing that I updated all themes just yesterday to use the template manager where possible that covers about all .css and .js files around!

I’d like to get rid of the optional $echo parameter on some of the toolbox methods. I think it just confuses things and makes it harder to figure out what is actually going on.

Also it should be left to the caller to echo if required. It will have some impact on templates, though.

Comments?

If you follow this blog you most likely already know all I’ve worked on the last week. If not, here is a recap:

• Forum
  The new forum is live and waiting to be used…
• PHP5.3 compatibility
  I’ve released a zen cart 1.3.8a version that includes both important general patches plus patches for PHP5.3. This zc-base named version also serves as base for a full ZenMagick release. The next version of ZenMagick will be available as either the classic Zen Cart mod or a full installer including all Zen Cart files and ZenMagick patches already applied.
• Other
  The usual amount of code tweaking, moving more MVC code to the mvc package, looking at PHP5.3 namespaces and more.

I’ve also enjoyed a preview for a new ZenMagick default theme. This theme is sponsored (and developed) by rubikintegration and it is really looking good. I can’t say for sure if this is going to be included in 0.9.8, but I am sure it will be ready for 0.9.9!

I’ve just uploaded a first snapshot of the upcoming full ZenMagick 0.9.8. The build contains zen cart (based on the just released Zen Cart PHP5.3 patches [and others]) and all changes made since 0.9.7.

The snapshot should be compatible with PHP5.2.x. Installation is done using the normal Zen Cart installer. Only difference is that after the installation ZenMagick and file and SQL patches should all be installed and the ZenMagick default theme should be shown.

Of course, feedback is more than welcome.

Since today seems to be the day for announcements, so here’s another one:

The new ZenMagick forum is now available!

I’d like to thank Carlos for the work he has put into getting everything ready. We hope that it will help to grow a real community and make ZenMagick an outstanding product.