Interviews
Matt Fletcher
Community Profile: ecartz
Date Added: 29th June 2004
Tell us a little about yourself (Name, Age, Residency, ..)
I'm Matt Fletcher, a 32-year old American currently living in Youngstown, Ohio. I have an eclectic work background that includes pizza delivery, driving a tow truck, installing cable modems, and system administration. I have been coding for many years, starting with TRS-80 BASIC while in primary school. In college and work, I used C/C++ and Perl. While my BS is in Economics, I actually now have more credits in Computer Science.
How and when did you get introduced to PHP and osCommerce?
In April 2003, I was looking for an open source PHP shopping cart to try to jumpstart a project at work. Prior to that, I had never used PHP, but my Perl and C background made it an easy jump. A clean code base makes it easier. :)
Has osCommerce met your expectations? What would you like to see done in osCommerce?
Yes. The things I would most like to see are those already scheduled: easier methods to change aspects common across multiple pages (e.g. page layout) and multiple places in general; incorporation of more contribution functionality. For example, the current price break contribution centralizes product price decisions to one place. This makes it simple to add new ways to determine the price, as one only needs to make the changes in one place.
I wouldn't mind seeing some small stylistic changes in osCommerce as well. For example, if all queries were built the way that the advanced search query is built, it would be much easier to modify them. With advanced search, one just adds a $select_column_list .= ', table.new_column'; to add a new column to the results returned. This is very easy to explain in a contribution install file (one just adds the new line). By contrast, most queries are single lines, which require one to modify a line--more difficult than simply adding.
I'd also like to see checkout reordered to consistently add orders to the database prior to payment. I've seen too many complaints about order information being lost because the payment gateway didn't inform the store properly. This would also be consistent with modules like Check/Money Order, COD, and Purchase Order which already add the order prior to payment.
Can you describe the contributions you have made to osCommerce, if any?
File Uploads: this is a modification of Chandra's Product Attributes - Option Type Feature contribution which allows customers to upload pictures. Used for such things as selling personalized mugs with the customer's logo.
YASU: Yet Another SEF (Search Engine Friendly) URL contribution. This works with Apache's mod_rewrite to use links like http://www.domain.com/category/subcategory or http://www.domain.com/product_name to access various pages. It just makes it easier to see to what the URL actually refers.
Import/Export Module System: this is a suggested revision of the Easy Populate system to make it more modular. In particular, I would hope that we will eventually write import and export modules the way that we currently write shipping or payment modules.
Virtual Mall: this is just an update to John Paitel's system to incorporate product restrictions by store. Thus, one admin would only be able to edit some of the products rather than all of them. It also incorporates the venerable Admin Access w/ Levels contribution.
Minimum Order: again, just an update to a contribution. I needed to make certain changes to get it compatible with the project on which I was working, so I uploaded them. The advantage of open source...it's trivial to record even minor advances that one makes.
What keeps you motivated to work on osCommerce?
osCommerce simply makes things easier. I like working on shopping cart sites. It's fascinating the different little changes that people need to make their stores work the way that they want. osC has the cleanest code base of the shopping cart projects that I've seen.
Can you describe your experiences as a store administrator so far had with osCommerce?
I don't actually spend much time as store administrator. I usually just modify code.
What advice would you provide to those being introduced to osCommerce?
Backup. Make a test site. View your site as a work in progress. Implement what you can now and leave perfection to the future. Don't be afraid to try things...on your test site after backing up (saves rebuilding the test site from scratch when one's changes have unexpected consequences).
What do you think about the osCommerce community? Have you gained friends and contacts here?
Absolutely! Some familiar names in the new interviews section alone.Absolutely! Some familiar names in the new interviews section alone.
What slogan or logo would you wear on a t-shirt?
The shirt I'm wearing in the picture says
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
on the front and has self-replicating code in the shape of a camel on the back. I haven't seen a PHP version yet. I wouldn't mind something like "Most software costs you. With the GPL, software frees you."
How do you spend your average day?
Coding mostly. Intermixed with TV and some reading (not as much as when I was younger though).
How does your desktop look like?
My Microsoft desktop is pretty standard. The one change that I always make is to move the toolbar to the right hand side of the screen. I find it easier to keep track of open windows with it like that. My Linux desktop is better looking, but currently unavailable until I get a replacement second hard drive.
