What's Next for Zen Cart?

Upcoming changes to Zen Cart

🚧 UNDER CONSTRUCTION!

PLEASE NOTE: The content listed below has not yet been finalized, and this document is a work in progress.

3.0.0

  • New Feature: Child Templates will be supported, so that storeowners can more easily determine what has been changed from the base release of a template.
  • Modernization: Zen Cart 3.0 will use Bootstrap 5.
  • Modernization: support for older define based language files will be dropped. Moving forward, only Array based language files will be supported.

2.2.0

  • Admin: Banner manager crashes when no image provided on update.
  • Admin: Improvements in Sales Report with Graphs.
  • Admin: TinyMCE added as the default admin HTML Editor. (CKEditor is locked at an older version; no updates planned.)
  • Admin: Added capability to customize the upper right link bar using a notifier.
  • Admin: Fixed - Deprecated “Passing null to parameter #1” log will be created when viewing Admin Packingslip or Admin Invoice.
  • Core: Improved handling of product table records which do not have associated products_description records.
  • The DB_CHARSET setting in the dist-configure.php files (Storefront and Admin) has been updated to utf8mb4, which is the character set your database should be using at this point. If it isn’t, see Converting to UTF8MB4 for instructions.
  • Core: Improved PHP 8.4 compatibility.
  • Core: Typo in notifier name NOTIFY_ADMIN_INVOICE_HEADERS_AFTER_TAX corrected.
  • Core: Updates to POSM to support Edit Orders 5.0.
  • Core: Correct PHP warnings when added product isn’t POSM-managed
  • Core: Password reset via URL (versus emailing a temporary password) is being added to the core. Credit to forum users Numinix and Retched for inspiration.
  • Extras: Curltester now includes REST API endpoints for USPS and PayPal.
  • Storefront: Correct get_template_dir loading behavior for CSS, JS and PHP.
  • Storefront: Notifier added for additional product details.
  • Storefront: Updated embedded MobileDetect to latest version for responsive_classic template.
  • Storefront: Updated - Refreshed look for responsive classic template. See this repo from contributor chadlly2003.
  • Storefront: Fixed - Customer’s wholesale status captured when order is placed.
  • Storefront: Fixed - PHP log created when empty shipping quote returned.
  • Storefront: Fixed - JavaScript problems can occur when gv_balance is null. This is an important fix for JavaScript heavy checkouts (OPC, some payment modules).

2.1.0

Zen Cart 2.1.0 has been released; changes are now listed in What’s New in 2.1.x.

2.0.1

Zen Cart 2.0.1 has been released; changes are now listed in What’s New in 2.0.x.



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 20, 2025 by Chris Brown (fcff98b).