“Change is the law of life
and those who look only to the past or present
are certain to miss the future.”
John F. Kennedy
Hello,
Today, I would like to take a chance to share our vision regarding the CS-Cart evolution and future perspectives.
In this post, I will try to convince you that the path CS-Cart has chosen will make for better backward compatibility, flexibility, and wider functionality in the future, as well as will allow CS-Cart to go higher than ever.
The Present
CS-Cart 4 will be a milestone release introducing some innovative features. Not only is it a breakthrough for the CS-Cart software of now—it will also be our flagship for the future.
To keep pace with time and create a reliable basis for future development, we have made some serious core code changes in CS-Cart 4. These changes will be beneficial for both our own CS-Cart development team, making for faster development with strong backward compatibility, and for everybody who customizes CS-Cart for their own needs or creates commercial add-ons and storefront themes:
- PSR as the coding standard will provide third-party developers with a familiar development environment.
- Usage of namespaces makes it easier to understand the CS-Cart core functionality and use it in new add-ons.
- The new directory structure is more logical and easier to navigate through.
- The new approach to storefront skins will allow developers to create highly customizable themes that will work across future CS-Cart versions with minimal changes.
Of course, these changes are significant, but they are necessary to keep CS-Cart modern and fresh. By accepting these modifications now, we can avoid making significant core changes in the future; CS-Cart will be able to evolve gracefully and deliver better backward compatibility in the long run.
Now, let’s take a look into the future and the next big step for the CS-Cart software (after the upcoming 4.0.1 release)—version 4.1.
The Future
CS-Cart would never be where it is today without a strong and supportive community. Creating a welcoming environment for community members, both existing and new, is one of the top priorities for CS-Cart 4.1.
To keep our community growing and attract more independent developers, we are creating a marketplace—a place where third-party developers will be able to present and promote their add-ons, themes, and all things CS-Cart to a wide audience of store owners.
Establishing a project of such scale will require serious improvements in the CS-Cart source code related to the add-on management, including storefront-based add-on activation.
Additionally, we plan to do some serious work regarding the checkout routine—allow separate checkout for vendors and improve usability.
CS-Cart API, first to be introduced in version 4.0.1, will be improved and used more widely.
I hope that our vision is now more clear and that you will better accept the latest turns in the CS-Cart path. We really care about the community’s opinion, and we hope for your understanding.
With all the necessary changes introduced in versions 4.0 and 4.1, CS-Cart will offer better version compatibility, easier upgrades, and a great open community for new third-party developers.
We believe that CS-Cart has chosen the right path, and we, the CS-Cart development team, as well as our clients, have a very bright future ahead. Get on board!
You can ask us any questions right below in the comment section.
Thanks!