Coming from a PHP / MySQL background, it was with great pleasure, then, that I came across TomatoCart, a powerful and full-feature shopping cart software based on the osCommerce package. It’s free, it’s fast and it looks great.

The Pros

• Simple installation and basic server requirements
• Great-looking out-of-the-box design
• Many extras normally added on built in and integrated
• Incredible, easy to use backend

The Cons

• Slow development of updates and patches
• Small bugs in operation

Installation

Firstly, TomatoCart has a nice, simple, step-by-step installation procedure. For a straightforward installation, you’ll need a Linux server running PHP 5.1.6 or greater, MySQL 4.1.3 or greater and ExtJS 2.2.1. Simple, eh? The installation will ask all the details it needs, such as database connection details and basic store configurations, such as the store name and owner details.

It’ll even check the server, to make sure it’s capable of running TomatoCart. Accept the license, check some boxes and you’re away. Tip: If you’re installing for the first time, I would select the option to install the dummy data, as it really help when it comes to configuring the setup later.

Out Of The Box

The first thing you’ll realise is the great-looking store front from the default installation. You can tell that someone has spent a while developing the default Glass-Gray theme as it looks uniform, sleek and clean. Compared to the other stores out there (particularly the open-source offerings) that this theme looks far more professional and clean.

An important point to make here is that theme support is limited, and relatively confined to the TomatoCart Extension Manager, although pretty much all of these offerings, as well as the default theme utilise up-to-date coding practices, such as abolishing tables. This alone is enough to put it ahead of osCommerce.

The interface interaction is pretty much what you’d expect of a modern ecommerce software, with some really nice touches. For instance the default inclusion of the product image rollover / zoom effect, which would normally involve the download / upload / install / configuration of an addon, means less time configuring and more time selling. Also of note is the fly-to-cart effect produced when adding a product into the cart.

The Glass-Gray theme also features use of ajax to speed up interaction. tasks  such as removing a product from your cart and changing quantities is made easy by utilising ajax calls to do the hard work, keeping focus on your products and articles. Banner rotation, categories and sideboxes are all sorted too.

The Admin Side of Things

This is what sets TomatoCart apart from the rest. For anyone who has ever laid hands on Windows Vista, you’ll feel at home with the admin panel and the way it’s laid out. Through (extensive) use of ExtJS, the developers have managed to create a streamline, great looking and easy to use admin and configuration panel.

Administrators are greeted by a familiar desktop, start menu and taskbar, aero windows with minimise / maximise control and sidebar widgets. A dashboard holds a quick-view of the site, providing an overview of recent orders, customer sign-ups, visitor stats and reviews.

Built in features include reporting from Piwik. Orders, products and customers are all displayed in grid-view with sorting and editing functionality. Gift vouchers, sales and coupon codes are all easily configured using the beautiful, window-orientated controls.

Okay, okay, so it’s not all sunshine and lollipops. Undoubtedly a project as large as this will have it’s downfalls – and for the large part these are incredibly minor. Small bugs that are a nuisance rather than a problem. Such as the fact that orders appear in the backend before payment is completed, leading to administrators having to delete or manually change incomplete orders. Or the fact that confirmation emails are not recieved by the customer until an order is updated or processed, meaning that sometimes customers end up asking whether the order was successful.

But, if you’re happy to put up with those little niggles, then the pros far outweigh the cons, and you’ll end up with a slick, great looking and highly-functional ecommerce system.

The osCommerce site is: http://www.tomatocart.com

A demo of the front can be found at http://demo.tomatocart.com

A demo of the admin panel can be found at http://demo.tomatocart.com/admin (use ‘admin’ as the username and password)