Falling into a 'Zen' like trance

Ever noticed how all the counterfeit ugg sites kinda look the same? I mean the margins, the titles in the margins, the center of the home page, etc. There's a certain 'feel' to them that you get when you look at these sites, and I'm not saying that just because I see them everyday. There's a reason for that. They all use the same shopping cart software called zen cart. It's free to download and use (no surprise there, why spend a lot developing a site that could potentially be taken down by legal action shortly after it goes up?) . So far, I've not seen any authorized retailers using it, that's not to say there aren't any.

So how can you check if a site is using zen cart? It's simple. Sometimes there's a link at the very bottom of the page, but usually not. So you have to do a bit of detective work.

First, navigate to the home page of the site you suspect sells fakes. Then, using the right mouse button, click anywhere on the page (except an image) and then select 'View Source' or similar (depending on your browser). Then, when you're staring at all that code, press CTRL-F to open the search box. Then search for the word 'zen' (without the quotes) or 'zen cart', 'cart' or 'zen-cart' and read through the code a bit. If there's a reference to zen cart's website, more than likely you're dealing with a counterfeit site.

A lot of these sites don't change their 'favorite' icon either. This is the little icon you see when you save a favorite on your browser or in the tab of the browser window (like the little white B in the orange background you see for this blog). The favorite icon for the zen cart software is a little orange shopping cart and looks like this:

If you see this icon, it's a sure sign you're most likely dealing with a site that sells fakes

Cheers!