The Zen Cart Expert
My name is
Scott C. Wilson and I'm That Software Guy.
I am a
Zen Cart expert. Now lots of people
claim to be a
Zen Cart expert (or a
Zen Cart master or a
Zen Cart guru),
but you may want to examine the evidence instead of taking their word for it.
The proof that I offer? You can look at my
testimonials,
portfolio, and
GitHub commits. No one has more. And I've been
developing with Zen Cart for over 10 years.
I am the only independent software developer who is allowed to
advertise on the Zen Cart forum (see the
Services tab).
I’m a software developer. But unlike most software developers, I have also
done both product and project management. Most software developers have to be
told exactly what needs to be built, but I can work with you to help you figure out what you need. Then, I can help you stack rank your todo list so that the most valuable features are done first.
Here's my interview with tech journalist Ramon Ray:
If you have - or want -
an eCommerce website for your
product or service business, and you use
Zen Cart,
osCommerce,
OpenCart,
BigCommerce, or
Shopify,
you're at the right place.
I have been helping small businesses improve their eCommerce operations
since 2006.
I create reliable, maintainable software customizations that work the way YOUR business works, and all for a reasonable price within a workable timeframe.
What can I build for you?
Or do you just need
Zen Cart Support or a
Zen Cart Upgrade? I can help there too.
Talk to me and see -
no one works harder for your small business selling online.
Current Status
- The current release of Zen Cart is 1.5.7b. Many improvements have been made over the prior major release (1.5.6), which was first shipped at the end of 2018. (Read more...)
- The Zen Cart documentation has been moved to Github so that anyone can update it. You can see how it looks at docs.zen-cart.com. It uses
Hugo and the
Docsy template on the Netlify platform. (Read more ...)
- Development is underway on Zen Cart 1.5.8. You can follow the excitement on the Zen Cart github page.
Zen Cart Delete Spam Customers
Posted March, 2021
Due to the ever evolving behavior of spammers,
I have updated
Zen Cart Delete Spam Customers
to run multiple queries to find fake accounts.
Seasonal Centerbox Updates
Posted February, 2021
Seasonal Centerbox
now can be configured from your Zen Cart admin.
Disabled Products Report
Posted January, 2021
Disabled Products Report
allows you to easily review all of the disabled products in your store.
Downloads Fix
Posted December, 2020
Does your store offer downloads? Here's a nice fix.
If you go to Admin > Orders and edit an order, you can reset the timer on an expired download so your customer can re-download the file.
The trouble is, in some situations, in versions 1.5.6a-c and 1.5.7a-b, it doesn't work; instead, you get a SQL error that looks like this:
--> PHP Fatal error: 1064:You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ''5
WHERE orders_id = 12656
' at line 3 :: UPDATE zen_orders_products_download
SET download_maxdays = 0,
download_count = '5
WHERE orders_id = 12656
AND orders_products_download_id = 25334 ==> (as called by) ...
I have fixed this bug in the latest development stream.
Here's the fix, which you can just apply to your copy of admin/orders.php.
Seasonal Centerbox
Posted November, 2020
Seasonal Centerbox
allows you to show randomly selected products from a specific category in a centerbox on your home page.
Zen Cart 1.5.7b
Posted November, 2020
The first patch release to Zen Cart 1.5.7 was released at the end of October 2020, with a follow on patch in late November. Several dozen important fixes and improvements are included;
see the
Zen Cart 1.5.7b Release Notes and the
1.5.7 Known Bugs List.
Test Checkout Email
Posted October, 2020
Preview Email helps you style your HTML emails. But what if you need to test a content change to the
most commonly customized email, the checkout (order confirmation) email?
In the past, you had to go through the time-consuming process of entering a new order for each test. Now there's
Test Checkout Email.
Test Checkout Email will take any order you specify and re-send the order confirmation email for that order to you, running it through the same
order:send_order_email()
function that sent the original email.
Search Helper Admin
Posted September, 2020
My
Search Helper plugin can really improve search performance - but it is configured using code, which is not practical for many storeowners. To solve this problem, I created
Search Helper Admin.
Orders in Status Dashboard Widget
Posted August, 2020
If you want to show all orders in a specific status in one place on your admin dashboard, this plugin can help. Take a look at
Orders in Status Dashboard Widget.
Preview Email and Direct email
Posted August, 2020
If you want to test how your direct email (sent via Admin > Tools > Send Email,
or perhaps by
Zen Cart bulk email) look,
you can now use a test input file which will be displayed by
Preview Email.
Make a Payment
Posted August, 2020
Zen Cart has no direct mechanism to track accounts receivable,
but if you have clients who need to pay you for transactions outside
your shopping cart,
Make a Payment could be a good
solution. It allows your customers to use your cart's existing payment methods
to send you money.
Bulk Email
Posted July, 2020
Want to send email to people who have purchased specific products
during a specific date range?
I have built a tool that can do this for you - it's called
Zen Cart bulk email.
Zen Cart 1.5.7
Posted June, 2020
Zen Cart 1.5.7 is now available for download. Boasting
hundreds of improvements
and bug fixes, and full PHP 7.4 compatibility, you should be planning your upgrade as soon as possible, especially if you are running Zen Cart 1.5.5 or below.
You can read more about
Zen Cart 1.5.7 and the
Zen Cart Documentation update on my blog.
Reward Points
Posted June, 2020
Discounts are great, but reward points can be a powerful tool
to build loyalty while deferring the costs.
My
Zen Cart Rewards Points
module lets you implement a loyalty rewards plan using a schedule set by
Frequency Discounts.
Zen Cart Preview Email
Posted May, 2020
Preview Email
helps you tweak your HTML emails from the admin panel.
When I first created this mod, it only did the Welcome and Checkout
emails; now it does the rest of the Zen Cart emails.
Zen Cart Copy Shipping Label
Posted May, 2020
Tired of typing in customer address information by hand to your
labelmaker or shipping program? Take a look at
Zen Cart Copy Shipping Label.
Zen Cart Order Total Edit
Posted April, 2020
I have made some recent changes to
Zen Cart Order Total Edit
to allow it to handle multi-currency carts.
Zen Cart View Schema
Posted April, 2020
If you've ever wanted a quick look at the database schema for a site,
but not wanted to go through the trouble of accessing phpMyAdmin,
View Schema
can help. It produces a report in your admin that shows you
every table in your database.
Changed Files Report
Posted March, 2020
I just did an update to the
Zen Cart Changed Files report
to show 0 byte files (which are likely failed uploads) in red
for easy identification.
Zen Cart Missing Images
Posted March, 2020
Missing Images
reviews the image setting for each of your
products, and reports on the images which cannot be found.
It's a great auditing tool to help you improve the look of your
store by finding and fixing your missing product images.
Help for Zen Cart Rookies
Posted February, 2020
I just created a guide to
Zen Cart Version information
and
Zen Cart Logs.
There's also a page on white screen problems called
Zen Cart Blank Screen.
Copying Zen Cart Native Quantity Discounts
Posted February, 2020
If you make use of the builtin Zen Cart Quantity Discounting system,
which discounts bulk purchases of a single product, I can help you
copy discounts on one product to every other product in the same
master category. Rather than doing each product, you can do one
product and then press the copy button!
Take a look at how I
copy Zen Cart Quantity Discounts.
Zen Cart Native Quantity Discounts on Listing Page
Posted January, 2020
If you make use of the builtin Zen Cart Quantity Discounting system,
which discounts bulk purchases of a single product, I can help you
display these discounts on your listing pages.
Take a look at how I
show Zen Cart Quantity Discounts on the product listing page.
Zen Cart documentation updates
Posted December, 2019
The Zen Cart documentation site is being refreshed! Although the
old Zen Cart documentation URL will still be used,
the documentation is now in Github so that more people can contribute.
There are sub-sites for
Zen Cart storeowner documentation and
Zen Cart developer documentation.
Manufacturer Discount Updates
Posted November, 2019
Zen Cart Manufacturer Discount
now allows you to discount only the
base price (product's price) of a product, rather than the
final price, which includes the prices of all attribute settings.
Audit
Posted October, 2019
Audit allows you to easily find and fix anomalies in your database,
such as items with a master category of 0.
Try
Zen Cart Audit and see what it
reports on your database.
Jerkblocker
Posted September, 2019
Are you tired of getting Russian spam sent to your Zen Cart
via your Contact Us page, and fake accounts created by bad guys?
My clients were, so I built
Zen Cart Jerkblocker.
Zen Cart Default Attribute
Posted August, 2019
Default Attribute for Zen Cart is the latest of my mods that has been added to the Zen Cart core for release 1.5.7. But don't worry! If you are running Zen Cart 1.5.5 or 1.5.6, I have simplified the install so it's much easier.
If you're selling downloadable products with a single attribute values
(Zip Files or PDF files, for example), Default Attribute is a great
addition to your store. It allows your customers to add downloadable products
(which have just one single-valued attribute) to their cart from a listing page,
like search results or a category page, rather than having to click through to the product info page.
osCommerce updates for Phoenix
Posted August, 2019
The following modules have been updated for the
Phoenix Community release of osCommerce:
Phoenix introduces a number of not upwardly compatible
changes from osCommerce 2.3, so your older mods won't work
right out of the box.
If you're updating software yourself,
some notes on the required changes are provided in
osCommerce Phoenix updates.
Zen Cart Notify Patch
Posted July, 2019
The Zen Cart team has released a high priority patch for all
versions prior to Zen Cart 1.5.6c (which was just released).
My
support clients
get this patch immediately. If you don't get
support from me, you need to install this patch yourself.
You can read more about
Zen Cart patches
if you don't understand why this is important, and for a
link to the patch.
Zen Cart Fix Company
Posted July, 2019
Fix Company resolves an issue in some versions of Chrome which autofills the Company Name field with the year of birth stored in the cache of a user's browser.
If your Zen Cart address book is filled with company names which are
4 digits long, the
Zen Cart Fix Company
contribution can clean them out.
Zen Cart Responsive Template Fallback
Posted June, 2019
Love your desktop template, but want to be mobile-friendly too?
I have a solution for that. Check out
Zen Cart Responsive Template Fallback.
Zen Cart Delete Spam Customers
Posted June, 2019
Bad guys never sleep! I have noticed an uptick in spam account
creation in Zen Cart. If this is happening to you, use my
Zen Cart Delete Spam Customers
contribution to easily remove junk accounts.
Zen Cart Order Total Edit
Posted May, 2019
Sometimes, you just need to tweak the line items on an order.
Whether it's to meet a price commitment you made offline, or
because some detail on the order changed, it happens.
Order Edit is a great mod, but some things aren't completely under your control with it - which was why I created
Zen Cart Order Total Edit.
Zen Cart and Sales Reps
Posted April, 2019
Some Zen Cart storeowners have a sales or customer support team.
I created a page to show some modifications I have done in support
of this model. Take a look at
Zen Cart Sales Rep Management.
Shipping Restrictions for Zen Cart
Posted April, 2019
Many products are subject to restrictions in certain
jurisdictions. For example, live plants, live animals,
alcohol and firearms often have restrictions on where
they can be shipped. If this applies to your Zen Cart,
take a look at my
Zen Cart Shipping Restrictions page.
Changed Files Report
Posted March, 2019
I just did an update to the
ZenCart Changed Files report
to prevent the creation of error logs when a folder isn't readable.
(Later Addition: I also added the ability to ignore specific filetypes
to shorten the report.)
It's in the Plugins area.
Products Price Manager
Posted February, 2019
I have always found it confusing that when you go into the
Zen Cart Products Price Manager (Admin > Catalog > Products Price Manager),
the fields on the screen
appear to be editable
but they're not.
So finally I fixed this issue! My fix will be available in
Zen Cart 1.5.6b, but you can merge it into your fileset at your convenience;
it's in
this Github pull request.
My Mods and PHP7
Posted January, 2019
A lot of my mods needed PHP7 updates. You can see the complete list
of
Zen Cart mods and PHP7 to see if your favorite mod is ready.
That Software Guy in Salesforce Video
Posted January, 2019
I'm ready for my close-up!