Customer Reviews

Zen Cart: E-commerce Application Development: A step-by-step developer's guide

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

 

 

Disappointing for developer. Don't have any thing for developer that can use to customize zen cart. It's the only admin page usage.

The book has lots of information but in more a tutorial form. This is good in some ways but when I wanted to create a template and make adjustments I went to internet resoruces instead. I supposed I was looking for a reference which was more how to do than a how to use.

Not a bad book, but could have been better for me. Might be perfect for someone looking to setup a pretty stock store and populate it.

This book is really no help at all. Each chapter starts with "I am sure you are already familiar with". You can get more info from zencarts online help. A complete waste of $40!

Certainly not for developers. May be okay for a beginner user to configure - but then all that info is freely available on zen-cart.com. Between large fonts, generous white space and a ton of screenshots there is not much going on. I am an experienced PHP programmer but could not get anything out of this book.

If you are a beginning user with not much exposure to eCommerce - the first few chapters give you a decent comparison of zen cart with other options.

I've set up Zen Cart for the first time, using this book as a primer.

In the course of getting everything configured and working, I've had many questions. None of my questions was answered by this book.

I've found answers in the documentation that comes with Zen Cart, I've found answers by searching online, I've gotten help in the Zen Cart forums, and I've figured out some things by trial and error... but not once has this book told me anything that wasn't obvious from looking at the screens.

Amazon service was as usual - flawless.

The book itself was a disappointment. It lacked some critical details that would have been necessary in explaining specific aspects of the ZenCart.

Given the choice I would not buy this book again. The other book by Goh Koon Hoek was much, much better.

I've been struggling with Zen Cart for several months now. I did not find the book all that helpful. The information seemed choppy and not well organized. Much of the book seemed to be copied and pasted from the online Wiki.

Like the title of the post says, the book is good for those who want to know how to install a zen cart store and set it up. Its pretty much up to date with the most current version.

CONS:

This is not the book you want if you are a developer and looking to customize the store front. You will get nothing out of it, if thats what you want to do.

Overall..I'd recommend this book to those who just want to know how to use the store and set it up

This is a perfect book for someone who has some experience with a PHP-based CMS, like WordPress, and wants to build an ecommerce site quickly. The author does a great job showing how to install Zen Cart, connect to a payment gateway, like PayPal, and modify the template.

It does as advertised. It will show a novice/beginner web developer how to quickly set up a basic store.

However, as other reviews have pointed out, this book doesn't really get into customizing Zen Cart and advanced topics like how to optimize Zen Cart for SEO. The problem is most Zen Cart books out today are not much help for experienced Zen Cart develoopers.

Still, this book gets five stars because it does a great job explaining how to configure Zen Cart. It doesn't claim to be a book for advanced users. I have looked at other Zen Cart books and this is the only one that I would recommend to others.

If you want to learn Zen Cart basics, this is a great start.

This book aims to allow the new user a tactile base of understanding the complexities of this very adjustable software platform. The company does offer an online forum and FAQ, however this offers the new user an easy desk referrance, and allows for the moderate user to understand the complexity this software can allow. All in all a wonderful software and book definately worth develing into.