Zen Cart Support Site

The new support site is a custom-built Laravel application. Static pages, such as help articles, guides, and general site content, are managed through an in-built CMS rather than hard-coded templates, so content can be updated without a deploy. Forums and plugins run on their own set of Laravel controllers and services, built around a custom entitlement system that drives policy-based forum permissions, controlling who can view, post, or moderate, down to individual forums and threads. Behind the scenes, an extensive Filament-based admin dashboard handles day-to-day management of users, content, forums, and permissions.

The old support site ran on vBulletin, an aging forum platform tied to an old, outdated version of PHP. Static content had to be bolted on rather than managed properly, making pages like guides and help articles awkward to update. Search was unreliable and often failed to surface relevant results, and the platform itself was a real resource hog, placing a heavy load on the server even under normal traffic. These limitations were a key driver behind building a replacement from scratch.