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An introduction to JShop Server shopping cart

There’s no such thing as a perfect shopping cart system because users needs and expectations are never exactly the same. Perhaps a cart won’t work as required without modifications, the admin interface is confusing, or the cart can’t be made visually pleasing, usable and accessible.

Enter JShop…

Now, I’m not saying JShop is 100% perfect all of the time, but when comparing it to other popular systems it does tend to stand out. It doesn’t have every last bell and whistle you find in some other “bloated” carts, instead it offers a balanced set of features that are incredibly flexible and suitable for the vast majority of online shops small and large.

Design your shop your way

If you’re a web developer/designer (what are we called these days?) you may have struggled to incorporate your design into a shopping cart. From my experience with most carts you have to integrate your design into the cart along with all the restrictions and headaches that brings!

With JShop you can do it the other way around, fit the cart into your design. I like to think of it like building a house around your furniture - you have total freedom as to what size and type of house you build. It’s no real secret as to how this is done because JShop runs on pure XHTML/CSS templates with special tags for where the content goes. There’s no PHP to worry about in the templates either which makes marking up your cart HTML a breeze, though you can still include PHP snippets if you really want to!

The content tags will probably see daunting at first, but if you’re familiar with templating systems such as Smarty you’ll soon pick up the logic. Once you have sussed it out you’ll find you have total control over how content is presented. Take a typical products list/category page for example, you can use the tagging system to define exactly what product data you want displayed in the list - the data can come from any information associated with the product, name, price, short description, or even a custom data field such as an ISBN number.

You can even create your own templates so you can output category or product pages in a second style or layout. Often some product types really beg for a different presentation because you need to use different sized images or there is product specific data. With many expensive carts you’re stuck with what they give you.

Managing content

Needless to say JShop has everything you’d expect - categories, products, user accounts, digital products, affiliate system, stock control, shipping and tax, data import/export, news/newsletters, order administration, multi languages and a myriad of settings to fine tune everything.

One useful feature is the ability to display key products in a number of ways, Bestsellers, Special offers, Random items, New items and “Top” products (the word Top could be anything you wish, Hot, Clearance, As seen on TV...!), using you imagination you can adapt these in any number of ways.

The admin interface is sleek with everything divided into logical sections, and it’s only when you start looking around that you realise how detailed JShop is. For instance there are currently around 40 different settings on the product edit page - not counting custom ones you create - which gives thousands of possible combinations. The chances are most products will only use 7 or 8 data fields but it’s reassuring to know the flexibility is there if you need it.

For the non-tecchie user I’ve found most people adapt to JShop very quickly. Of course there is a learning curve but a little tuition on the basics is adequate for most to get started.

I love it!

After many years working with the popular cart systems JShop offers me the best mix of flexibility and ease of integration, combined with being able to build in accessibility and usability features. I like to offer my customers quality solutions and JShop is just that.