About Plugins

Modifying your shopping cart using plugins

Zen Cart is an open source software tool, which means the code may be modified to fit your own specific needs.

Plugins allow users to extend the capabilities of Zen Cart without knowing all the details of what’s involved in writing software. Plugins each have their own support thread on the Zen Cart forum, and are supported by the community.

Plugins are sometimes also called Add-Ons (or Addons), Mods, or Downloads.

The free plugins in the Plugins Library are sometimes called Contributions, whereas commercial plugins that must be paid for are sometimes called Extensions.

All these terms really mean the same thing: code modifications for Zen Cart that modify or extend the default behavior.

Plugin Interfaces

To enable developers to build plugins without touching core files, a number of facilities are provided:

More Information

If you’re a developer who wishes to create a plugin, please see the Plugins Pages for more information.

If you’re a storeowner who wishes to see what plugins are available, please see the Plugins Library.




Still have questions? Use the Search box in the upper right, or try the full list of FAQs. If you can't find it there, head over to the Zen Cart support forum and ask there in the appropriate subforum. In your post, please include your Zen Cart and PHP versions, and a link to your site.

Is there an error or omission on this page? Please post to General Questions on the support forum. Or, if you'd like to open a pull request, just review the guidelines and get started. You can even PR right here.
Last modified May 2, 2022 by Scott C Wilson (d414e80).