nopCommerce is improving. Very Fast !!
Being a nopCommerce solution provider we get many different type of development requests from our customers. This includes customisation's directly in source code or plugin development to extend or add some feature in nopCommerce and even nopCommerce theme development (Includes psd to html then nopCommerce theme or copying an existing website design).
These day by day changes and customisations are easy with nopCommerce architecture but widgets were always a good choice when it is needed to display some data based on customers choice at some particular place on website. Despite, widgets in nopCommerce also bring pain to developers as it drastically slows down page due to its old architecture and most important it does not allow page to load unless it is loaded itself and widget functions are called for almost all widgets on page at time of loading.
In new version of nopCommerce which is nopCommerce 4.00, I just saw a change in widget implementation and it bring big happiness on my face because the way it is implemented now, it is not going to be a pain in either cases.
I also like the way they have implemented action filters and other things. nopCommerce now seems much fast and improved. Way to go.. One day we will beat Magento for sure..