Developers are gushing about the template override system offered by Zen Cart. It’s not something that every platform offers and it has made life a whole lot easier for everybody who wants to customize shopping cart using the Zen cart platform. Any Zen Cart developer will tell you that what he/she most feared was the customization work being unknowingly changed resulting in a loss of files. This leads to a lot of heart break, frustration, a loss of time and effort.
This is why the Zen Cart’s template override system is so important. It helps protect all the customization work and ensures that the changes and the customizations are not lost.
What does the Override System Protect?
The Zen Cart’s Template Override System Protects four types of files including core files, language files, coding files and template files:
- The core files, as the name suggests, are a very important part of the Zen cart template and there are vulnerable to changes. In spite of the override systems, developers find that certain changes made are usually lost because of the changes undertaken for SEO purposes.
- The language files found in the language directory are also a vulnerable lot; even though they are override files. Developers have always complained that the language folder of Zen Cart is not given enough importance, as it can be a changed with minimum alteration of the files that have been put in place.
- Coding files are used for customizing modules. If there is any loss of coding files, chances are that the files cannot be reproduced again. Therefore, it’s of paramount importance that these files are secured as they are a result of intricate PHP customization.
- Template files, as the name suggests, are the building blocks of templates and the Zen Cart platform has a proven system in place for the protection of these files.
The Override System
By using Zen Cart’s Template Override System developers can save the changes to their cart, and make sure that their changes are not lost when the Zen Carts launches a new upgrade or patch. The override system includes language files, module files, template files, extra definition and extra data files.
With the use of the override system, you don’t have to worry that your custom files will get over-written whenever a new upgrade comes along ( which is every other day), this is because you are storing your custom files in safe and secure custom directories. There might be a case wherein you will find that a recent upgrade resulted in a new code being added to your core files. But, by using the template override system, you can compare the files that are already present in your override directories to the upgraded files. You can then incorporate these changes in the override files and save those files before uploading them onto your server.
The template override system has made developers more confident about the fact that their templates will remain the same, irrespective of any upgrade or change taking place on Zen cart.
