Welcome to www.villagedefrance.net!

Who is Villagedefrance ?

My name is Philippe Marion, French by nationality but British by heart, I live in Chichester, West Sussex, in the south of England. I have a regular job in a local factory and in my spare time, I write codes and design extensions for OpenCart™ shopping cart. Just in case you wondered, the name Villagedefrance comes from a previous business I used to run, selling traditional French food specialties online, which started it all!

Why OpenCart shopping cart ?

After a lot of research and numerous tests with other free CMS, blogs and shopping carts, including the like of Elxis, CmsMadeSimple, WordPress, Oscommerce, Zencart, Drupal, Magento or Prestashop, just to name a few, I chose OpenCart as the best overall. This was back in the days where OpenCart v1.4.9.3 was the current release. Since then, I never looked back. I did try a few alternatives randomly in the last few years but none came anywhere near the unique flexibility of OpenCart. The best thing about OpenCart is its logical folders and files architecture, things are where they are supposed to be. This means that Opencart can be turned into almost any type of website, with a very strong shopping cart code as a backbone. Also, a standard OpenCart package comes pretty much as an empty shell, leaving a lot of freedom to store owners to customise the code to match their businesses.

What's the drive ?

I found myself a passion for writing codes back in 2009. I like the challenge, sometimes it brings frustration, and sometimes it brings the satisfaction of having created a good program. I try to push the limits of every code I am writing, adding extra features and functionalities, making them as easy to use as possible for both administrators and visitors. More importantly, I am commited to find the most elegant solutions, with the correct coding rules in HTML5, PHP, or jQuery, to insure maximum compatibility and efficiency accross all platforms. Learning new, better ways of doing things, is one of the most satisfying achievement, and that is what drives me.

What else do I do ?

I am co-administrator of OpenCart France, the official Home of OpenCart in France.
I am also a Global Moderator on the official OpenCart Forum.