@cerberus TY !
cerberus wrote: ↑Fri Oct 02, 2026 11:45 am
Softaculous installer, there are a few shopping carts on the Softaculous installer, as I know nothing about any of them it was a bit hit and miss what one I installed, all I knew was I was going to use paypal for payments so I wanted a cart with a free paypal module. On the Softaculous installer there were also a few carts that said they have not been updated for ages so I left them alone, also the ones that did not have a free paypal module. The first cart I installed was Prestashop, but at the time I was experimenting on free website space, and even though prestashop installed ok when I tried to test it the free webspace could not handle it, used up all resources or something like that. Then I installed Phoenix cart.
This is interesting that you found Phoenix via Softaculous. We deliberately keep the `size` of Phoenix very small, in fact `tiny` so that it can more or less run on any host - we do this by having Core Code (ie the Phoenix download that Softaculous uses) and Addons (what you find in the addons area & forum) stand
equally important side by side.
A few reasons why we care about this so much:
Hosting
Our tiny size, Phoenix will run comfortably on the cheapest shared hosting out there - exactly the kind of host that trips up bigger carts.
@cerberus , you actually hit this yourself - Prestashop chewed through the resources on your free webspace before you even got it tested. A tiny Core means that's much less likely to happen.
Backups & Migrations
A small Core is quick to back up, quick to clone, and quick to restore.
Moving a small codebase to a new host takes minutes, not the best part of an afternoon.
Security
Fewer files and fewer dependencies means a smaller attack surface, and less that needs patching or auditing over time.
Understanding the Code
A small Core is also one a single person - whether that's me maintaining it, or you running your own shop - can actually hold in their head.
@azpro touched on this earlier in the thread, being able to read the code and know what it'll do without needing to test it blind first. That gets a lot harder the bigger a codebase gets.
This is really the whole reason behind the "No Core Changes" way of doing things - Core stays lean because Addons carry all the weight of customisation, rather than everything getting folded into Core and bloating it over time. It's also, in part, a reaction to exactly the kind of "under the hood" unpredictability
@azpro described hitting with Magento - a bloated core is what makes software behave in ways even its own users can't foresee.
well at least in the end