{"id":3695,"date":"2013-06-03T16:55:26","date_gmt":"2013-06-03T12:55:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cs-cart.com\/?p=3695"},"modified":"2025-12-17T15:14:56","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T11:14:56","slug":"4-and-beyond-a-brief-overview-of-the-cs-cart-roadmap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cs-cart.com\/blog\/4-and-beyond-a-brief-overview-of-the-cs-cart-roadmap\/","title":{"rendered":"4 and Beyond: a Brief Overview of the CS-Cart Roadmap"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em>&#8220;Change is the law of life<br \/>\nand those who look only to the past or present<br \/>\nare certain to miss the future.&#8221;<br \/>\nJohn F. Kennedy<\/em><\/p>\n<p id=\"docs-internal-guid-77a7a209-09ff-497f-266a-f768dcebf36f\" dir=\"ltr\">Hello,<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Today, I would like to take a chance to share our vision regarding the CS-Cart evolution and future perspectives.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">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.<\/p>\n<h2 id='the-present'  id=\"boomdevs_1\">The Present<\/h2>\n<p>CS-Cart 4 will be a milestone release introducing <a title=\"CS-Cart 4 Beta Is on\" href=\"https:\/\/docs.cs-cart.com\/4.0.x\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">some innovative features<\/a>. Not only is it a breakthrough for the CS-Cart software of <em>now<\/em>\u2014it will also be our flagship for the <em>future<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>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:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"list-style-type: disc; padding-left: 15px; text-indent: 0;\">\n<li style=\"padding-left: 8px;\"><a title=\"PSR Coding Standards\" href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/php-fig\/fig-standards\/tree\/master\/accepted\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">PSR<\/a> as the coding standard will provide third-party developers with a familiar development environment.<\/li>\n<li style=\"padding-left: 8px;\">Usage of <a title=\"Namespaces on Wikipedia\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Namespace\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">namespaces<\/a> makes it easier to understand the CS-Cart core functionality and use it in new add-ons.<\/li>\n<li style=\"padding-left: 8px;\">The new directory structure is more logical and easier to navigate through.<\/li>\n<li style=\"padding-left: 8px;\">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.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3696\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3696\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img data-opt-id=1995959711  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3696\" title=\"Theme editor and Image zoom\" src=\"https:\/\/mldi5dmmdvnt.i.optimole.com\/cb:sOwt.3b410\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/www.cs-cart.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/resized_theme_editor_image_zoom.png\" alt=\"Theme editor and Image zoom\" width=\"600\" height=\"419\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mldi5dmmdvnt.i.optimole.com\/cb:sOwt.3b410\/w:600\/h:419\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/www.cs-cart.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/resized_theme_editor_image_zoom.png 600w, https:\/\/mldi5dmmdvnt.i.optimole.com\/cb:sOwt.3b410\/w:300\/h:4000\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/www.cs-cart.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/resized_theme_editor_image_zoom.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3696\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Live Theme editor and the beautiful Image zoom are new in CS-Cart 4.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Now, let&#8217;s take a look into the future and the next big step for the CS-Cart software (after the upcoming 4.0.1 release)\u2014version 4.1.<\/p>\n<h2 id='the-future'  id=\"boomdevs_2\">The Future<\/h2>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>To keep our community growing and attract more independent developers, we are creating a <strong>marketplace<\/strong>\u2014a 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.<\/p>\n<p>Establishing a project of such scale will require serious improvements in the CS-Cart source code related to the add-on management, including <strong>storefront-based add-on activation<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, we plan to do some serious work regarding the checkout routine\u2014allow separate checkout for vendors and improve usability.<\/p>\n<p>CS-Cart <a title=\"CS-Cart API Documentation\" href=\"https:\/\/docs.cs-cart.com\/4.1.x\/api\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">API<\/a>, first to be introduced in version 4.0.1, will be improved and used more widely.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>I hope \u00a0that 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&#8217;s opinion, and we hope for your understanding.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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!<\/p>\n<p>You can ask us any questions right below in the comment section.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8220;Change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain&hellip;","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_ayudawp_aiss_exclude":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_page_load_nextpost":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cs-cart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3695"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cs-cart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cs-cart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cs-cart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cs-cart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cs-cart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21131,"href":"https:\/\/www.cs-cart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3695\/revisions\/21131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cs-cart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cs-cart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cs-cart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}