Customer Reviews

Deep Inside osCommerce: The Cookbook: Ready-to-use recipes to customize and extend your e-commerce website

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is one of those books that does exactly what it tells you it's going to do. There are a few others out there, but not many. Add this to your short list.

I've read in a few places that this is not a beginner's book. That really depends on your definition of "beginner." If you've managed to get osCommerce up and running, and if you've managed to install even just one or two of the contributions from the osCommerce support site, this book is for you. This is much closer to a beginner's book than to an expert's book, though I'm sure there isn't an expert out there who couldn't use at least some of the presentations.

At first glance, the chapter titles seem to be a little too "cute." But they grow on you. And you get to appreciate them. Besides which, a little light-heartedness mixed in with your work is a good thing. In what might be Monika's terms, I'd say it makes for a good recipe. I think of those titles as a sign that she enjoys what she's doing. And it's obvious she does. And when you enjoy what you're doing, you do it best. And she has.

The format of the book works well. At the beginning of each section, she presents specifically what that sections coding will accomplish. She then gives you the list of all the files you'll need to be working with. (This is a good time to back those up.) After, she explains in clear, concise and simple terms the step-by-step process to accomplish the goal.

Again, if you've installed a single contribution, you'll recognize the format and be immediately comfortable with it. While most of the instructions that go with the contributions on the osCommerce support site are well done (no pun intended), these are all very well done. I couldn't find a bit of confusion anywhere.

A great feature of the book was the insertion of screen shots to give a graphic display of the expected results. And her decision to use the default display was excellent. Everyone who has used osCommerce knows what that looks like and can immediately see what's changed.

In essence, what Monika has done in a very easy to understand manner is provide numerous recipes to make your eshop a little sleeker and more appealing, and your customers stay more pleasant. That, of course, should mean money in your pocket.

If you're planning to go into ecommerce and osCommerce is your choice (which I highly recommend), buy this book now. Even if you've never seen a bit of code in your life. By the time you get your first installation up and running (an incredibly easy chore), and you figure out how to get rid of "What's new here," "Lets see what we have here...," and "This is the default osCommerce setup...," you'll be ready for this book.

Just don't be tempted by the goodies in this book to ignore the contributions on the support site. They'll do a lot of good things for you that aren't covered and are not meant to be covered in this book.

My one disappointment is that although Monika taught me how to put the billing address phone number in the confirmation email, she never taught me how to put the shipping address phone number in the confirmation email.

I'm going to repeat myself here for emphasis. If you're thinking of going into ecommerce and osCommerce is your choice, buy this book; you'll be glad you did.

And if you do that, I'll see you in the forums.

Look for me.

PS: After you buy the book, it's possible to get a download of the code to save yourself some typing. A great idea!

Deep Inside osCommerce is the latest osCommerce reference book from Packt Publishing. Written in a cookbook style, this book is filled with easy-to-understand recipes for improving your osCommerce site. If you are looking to take your osCommerce installation to the next level, you should definitely pick up a copy.

You won't just sit and read Deep Inside osCommerce from cover to cover. By the time I had finished chapter one I was already modifying my latest osCommerce project. As with any good cookbook, you will open it up to a recipe and work carefully through all the steps to completion. Each recipe is well laid out in an easy-to-follow style including screenshots clearly showing how the code change will affect an osCommerce default
shop. The "Chef's suggestions" at the end of each recipe provide increased clarity and add greater depth.

If you know Monika Mathé by reputation from the osCommerce forum, you know she is a well-respected expert in the community and that her code is well thought out and effective. By publishing Deep Inside osCommerce Monika has given osCommerce store developers a useful resource. I give this book a full 5 stars, highly recommended for all osCommerce users.

submitted by Ruth Maude - Dandelion Web Design Inc

An excellence source of information for anyone working in the open source osCommerce software. The book includes 69 different code solutions very cleverly developed and written by osCommerce expert Monika Mathe.

Although the book is targeted at intermediate users already familiar with osCommerce, I found that most chapters (or recipes as they are appropriately referred to in the book) were easy to implement as long as you have a working installation of osCommerce in place and have some basic understanding of php and html.

Free download and installation instructions of osCommerce can be found at www.oscommerce.com, however this book will allow you to apply several key enhancements and additional functionality to your basic installation. You will find a range of useful applications; from simple code snippets to customize the design of your shopping cart to much more sophisticated functionality to tweak shipping, payment and other modules. Check out a full chapter summary above in this page.

For those not familiar yet with osCommerce, Monika makes each recipe easy to implement and understand. She always offers a "plain English" practical description of the application before delving into the insights of the code. Additionally, screenshots of the final result are offered as well as a list of new files to be created and files that will need to be modified (useful for preliminary backups).

I strongly recommend you buy this book, you will be glad you did as soon as you see your shopping cart projects take on additional life with these recipes.

This is indeed a cookbook. Monika takes you step-by-step through 69 different "recipes" to make helfpul tweaks to an osCommerce installation. And along the way, you learn how to make other modifications you might need.

It's well-written and can even help those with just a little php knowledge.

Deep Inside osCommerce is proof that you can teach techie material without making your readers yawn. I downloaded the sample chapter from the author's website before I bought the book - I wanted to make sure I would not get the same style of book as the original osCommerce documentation or even the contributions. I saw immediately that this book is laid out in a completely different way, it is presented like a cookbook, a casual touch which I enjoyed very much.

I like the consistent style which shows you the status quo, lists the pages you will need to add or modify, and also shows which results you can expect from the finished module or "recipe". The step by step instructions are very clear and user-friendly.

This is not a book that you read cover to cover, instead you check the available recipes and pick and choose the ones that work for you to revamp your store. There were a few nice surprises too: the novel gift wrapping module offering a variety of wrapping paper and an extremely easy affiliate module. This book can be read like a dictionary - you only look up what you need to know - so you might think of it as a collection of contributions; some big, some small. The steps for implementation are explained well instead of just saying "add this" or "change that" which is normally the case in the install.txt files of contributions. This makes for a deeper understanding of the underlying code and allows for your own changes. The author encourages you throughout the book to do your own "hacking of the hack". I think that this book is a great extension to the contribution section on the osCommerce site.

Since the book offers ready made recipes of all levels, I'm sure every store owner will find modules to add to their shop. You can definitely expand your knowledge about osCommerce with this book and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone. Happy reading!

This book is a great reference to work with. It has lots of nice options to add to osCommerce that will fine tune your site. Very entertaining to read with the Cookbook stile, as a recipe you follow very clear instructions and you are sure you will not "burn" your program... it will come out nice and "tasty"!!! Great book to have and to use every time you need a little extra in your osCommerce site. I recommend this book absolutely!!

I have many years of programming experience in Java, C++, ABAP and hey, even BASIC, so PHP was not that difficult to pick up. So... how hard can it be to tweak one's own web shop?

Driven by all positive reviews I decided to buy this book, as I was eager to extend my knowledge in how to maintain and extend the horrendous code base called osCommerce.

The book's approach seemed promising and original, but it proved to be a disappointing experience for me. Many recipes provided very limited added value, e.g. recipe 21: Sort product listing by date added.

Yes my dear readers, we are going to modify an existing "order by" clause of an SQL statement. Now that required some serious hax0r skills, didn't it!?

Or recipe 44: Personalize your order confirmation email...

Yes!! Let's perform some highly sophisticated string concatenation to add "Hi <yourname>, OKTHXBYE!!1!" to the order confirmations.

'nuff said?

The screenshots don't show very well what is going to change and the additions made to the code are quite basic, requiring additional refining to make it suit one's needs.

I wanted to know how the internals of osCommerce worked and where I should start digging if I need to change things. I wanted to know what to look out for. I wanted to have explanations with my code snippets on *why* a certain implementation was chosen. When I see "Deep inside" in a software title, I expect to see deep inside the machine.

Oh, and besides, many of those improvements are already available in the support forums on osCommerce.com. Without the annoying "Bon apetitses" and "All you can eatses!" stir-fried through the gobbledigook code snippet mash in every #$%@-ing chapter. For free!

If you want to know all about things Deep Inside... osCommerce, then you'd better stick this book somewhere else

Deep Inside


Cheers!

This was an absolutely delightful book! I am a complete novice to osCommerce and almost didn't purchase the book as it was not marked as a "beginners" book. What a mistake that would have been. With this book my site went from ho-hum to professional and functional and fantastic (IMHO).

I was so impressed that I sent the author this message: "I love the cookbook style layout. Showing you what you will be doing, telling you what ingredients (pages) you will need and then taking you into detailed steps as to what needs to be done. There is no pretension in The Cook Book. The humor is great too. It really brings it to the comprehension level of the novice and still serves as a guide for those who are already "in the know".

If you decide to write another Cook Book style book, please shout it from the roof tops so I can hear it all the way here in Costa Rica. I can't wait to see more of your wit, know-how, and style."

Expert or novice, everyone will find simple and detailed recipes to improve your site. As mentioned in one of the other reviews, a zip file with all the recipes is available for those of us with fingers that live in fear of code.

Good Luck!
Athena

Has specific recipies for specific modifications to the standard OSC. If your desired mod is in the book is should work for you.

UPDATE: Despite the organized attack on this review (8 negative comments in 2 days... really?) I maintain this book is a terrible value. Do not be too quickly persuaded by the other glossy reviewers and spam negative ratings on my review.

The problem with most programming books is that their authors, while perhaps adept at computer programming languages, are generally less than fluent when it comes to human communication. They basically fail to explain their points in clear and enticing language. This book suffers from the worst of both worlds: its author is a poor writer who employs a series of annoying "cookbook" anecdotes to hide a serious lack of skill with the subject matter discussed. The result is an overpriced series of tutorials that are difficult to read and could just as easily be found on various online discussion forums for free.

I will start by acknowledging the need for a book on this topic: OsCommerce, while free and open source, is absolutely nightmarish to configure. In fact, if one were starting from scratch, I cannot recommend avoiding OsCommerce more strongly. Go with the modern, open-source ZenCart instead. OsCommerce's lack of flexibility, readily-accessible configuration options, and failure to make use of any template system is astounding. These problems are further compounded by a default style that is truly heinously ugly and unprofessional, in my not so humble opinion. Clearly there is room for a book that will show you how to configure and improve upon this system.

But this isn't it. The author here has copied and pasted various OsCommerce hacks gleaned from the online message boards supporting that program and simply thrown them into this book in a barely organized fashion. Then she has added an introductory sentence for each copied and pasted tip along the lines of "Mmmm, here's a fine helping of sizzling stir-fried goodness for your store" and throws on a "Bon appetit!" at the end. Over and over again. There is no attempt to explain anything about the inner workings of OsCommerce or how to extend upon her hacks to develop anything like a working understanding of how to truly configure your OsCommerce store. You're just dropped into the middle of each hack and left to either copy what she's doing exactly or find your own solution to these issues.

Programming books should explain what you're doing at all times and why. They should also adopt a professional and explanatory tone, not attempt to be unnecessarily cute (which always comes across as hopelessly annoying) with humorless anecdotes. They should also offer value over and above what you could find for free on an Internet message forum. This book fails on all counts, and given its high price, I have no choice but to give it the lowest rating possible for lack of value alone.