OsCommerce


OsCommerce is an e-commerce and online store-management software program. It can be used on any web server that has PHP and MySQL installed. It is available as free software under the GNU General Public License.

History

OsCommerce was started in March 2000 in Germany by project founder and leader Harald Ponce de Leon as The Exchange Project. In its infancy, OsCommerce was referred to by Ponce de Leon as "a side thing" and "an example research study". By late 2001, a team formed for its development and in the words of HPDL, this was the point the team started taking the project seriously. In 2005, over 2000 websites used OsCommerce, and in 2009 this amount grew to 13,000.
In November 2010 the development of OsCommerce v2.2 was met with another stable release. Version 2.3, as it was branded, takes advantage of the benefits of tableless web design, and includes a number of social networking tools.
As of March 2018, OsCommerce reported over 20,000 'live' websites using the program. This number is almost certainly conservative, given the inclusion of OsCommerce in hosting panel application installers such as Fantastico and Softaculous.
The current iteration is version 3.x and is a major re-write of the program to incorporate an object-oriented backend, a template system to allow easy layout changes, and inclusion of an administration-area username and password definition during installation. The latest development version is 3.0.2, and was released on 6 August 2011.

Official Version

There are currently two official releases of OsCommerce. Versions 2.3 and 3.0 are developed as two independent programs, and as such do not share code. Apps, the official name for the open-source community developed plugins, are developed for either 2.x or 3.0, and are incompatible with one another.
The Official version has not had any substantive updates for some time. The recognised "current" version is 2.3.4.1.
Release dateRelease name
12 March 2000The Exchange Project Preview Release 1.0
14 May 2000The Exchange Project Preview Release 1.1
2 December 2000The Exchange Project Preview Release 2.0
13 December 2000The Exchange Project Preview Release 2.0a
6 March 2001The Exchange Project Preview Release 2.1
17 February 2003OsCommerce 2.2 Milestone 1
7 December 2003OsCommerce 2.2 Milestone 2
12 November 2005OsCommerce 2.2 Milestone 2 Update 051112
13 November 2005OsCommerce 2.2 Milestone 2 Update 051113
17 August 2006OsCommerce 2.2 Milestone 2 Update 060817
3 July 2007OsCommerce Online Merchant 2.2 RC1
16 January 2008OsCommerce Online Merchant 2.2 RC2
30 January 2008OsCommerce Online Merchant 2.2 RC2a
12 November 2010OsCommerce Online Merchant 2.3
14 November 2010OsCommerce Online Merchant 2.3.1
31 March 2011OsCommerce Online Merchant 3.0
6 August 2011OsCommerce Online Merchant 3.0.2
18 July 2012OsCommerce Online Merchant 2.3.2
15 August 2012OsCommerce Online Merchant 2.3.3
26 September 2013OsCommerce Online Merchant 2.3.3.4
5 June 2014OsCommerce Online Merchant 2.3.4
18 August 2017OsCommerce Online Merchant 2.3.4.1

Official Community Version

is the official community-edition of osCommerce and the latest version of osCommerce. Unlike its counterpart, it:
is supported by members of the which is hosted on the official oscommerce site. The lead developer is
Release dateRelease name
4 July 2019CE Phoenix 1.0.0.0
18 July 2019CE Phoenix 1.0.1.0
14 August 2019CE Phoenix 1.0.2.0
25 October 2019CE Phoenix 1.0.3.0
25 November 2019CE Phoenix 1.0.4.0
5 February 2020CE Phoenix 1.0.5.0
6 May 2020CE Phoenix 1.0.6.0
19 May 2020CE Phoenix 1.0.6.1
26 May 2020CE Phoenix 1.0.6.2
29 May 2020CE Phoenix 1.0.6.3
29 May 2020CE Phoenix 1.0.7.0
30 May 2020CE Phoenix 1.0.7.1

Branches

Distributed under the GNU General Public License, OsCommerce is one of the earliest PHP based Open Source shopping cart software distributions. Also, it inspired the creation of many other online store platforms, such as Magento and Batavi. As such, it has spawned a number of forks, such as Zen Cart, xt:Commerce, CRE Loaded, Solomono, OSC-CMS, oscMAX, etc.

Publicised vulnerabilities

In August 2011 three vulnerabilities in version 2.2 of the OsCommerce system were exploited, allowing the addition of an iframe and JavaScript code to infect visitors to websites. Armorize reports this allowed infected web pages to hit 90,000 in a very short time until it was noticed and increasing further to 4.5 million pages within the space of a week. OsCommerce 2.3 was made available in November 2011 and patched the exploited security holes.