Why You Should Use Magento

Magento

Magento has really taken off in the past year or so, but behind the buzz there are some things that really grind my gears and others that make me flutter with excitement.

I wanted to begin by highlighting the pro’s and con’s of Magento, but they were too numerous to list together. I’ll post a detailed analysis of why Magneto may or may not be for you in the near future. Keep an eye out for it !

For anyone who has not looked at Magento yet, I think you should do. Its a very feature rich platform and sets the stands for others to follow extremely high.

Magento can be extended beyond its wide feature set. I’ll be adding a post soon on my top 10 must-have-extensions.

Below is a summary of why I think that Magneto could be the right choice for you:

• Multiple Website & Store Support.
  This means you can promote your inventory cross different domains (this is known as a ‘Website’, then using ‘stores’ create stores that could be differeing versions, designs or even languages.
• Widgets, Static Blocks
  When you get into playing with Magento, I just love how easily it can be configured, when it comes to widgets, there are some really useful options included by default and you can control these at many levels, product, category etc levels.
• Magento is a configuration-based MVC system.
  I have seen people moan about this, but Magento code alignment is in an easy to follow structure called Model View Controller. This in laymans terms means its really easy to extend or override/adapt Magento’s functions.
• A Wide Assortment of Extensions.
  Extending Magento is very easily done using the MVC system noted above. The Magento team have a online directory called ‘Magento Connect’ that contains hundreds of extensions, both free and paid for.
• Loads of Features & Functions Included from the Box
  Magento is a feature packed and makes other platforms blush. Here are a few neat features in absolutely no order:Order reports dashboard, multi level user control, API Access with configurable levels, extensble attributes, several different product types, including variations and digital dowloads, a very slick one page checkout process (or serveral if set), all major payment gateways supported (3D Secure for PayPal added in the last but one edition (that actually worked!!!)), multiple image support including a zoom slider, a decentfront end for users, newsletters, polls, product tagging, customer reviews, multiple currencies, out and in of stock notices, RSS for almost everything, including order status and updates, completely configurable down to website to store view and so on. I’m stopping here, you really need to see the demo or install it yourself.

  I did find a decent Magento features list if you’re after a full break down.

• Decent Content Management System.
  The CMS in Magento is pretty good, you’ll go far before needing any extras for this. The varibles  button is handy. The only negative is that I do not like the editor, but in true Magento fashion, you can turn this off in the system settings.
• Order Process
  The order process was a bit weird to get used to, to begin with, but it does make sense and you can process orders enmasse. Documents can be customised and outgoing emails can be altered as desired for each store.
• Almost Everything Has a ‘Setting’.
  No joke, there is a system setting for pretty muc everything in Magento, you can control at a global level and set defaults, then override at a website or even store level. Note: This is what allows you to change themes & languages between stores.
• Scaleablility.
  Magento has been designed so that it can be when needed to be run over many servers. This bit can go way over ones head, but see here for more info.
• Stable  & Updated.
  Since PayPal was finally sorted out in one of the recent versions (1.4.1.0), the version strain of 1.4 is pretty stable. You’ll be hardpressed to find any bugs and its being developed, so as new features, fixes and functions are added, they are released.
• Free ‘Community Edition’.
  Yep thats right there is a fully feature FREE version. However beware its not the easiest of systems to install and its requirements are not light. The Magento platform will not run particulally well on a shared host, it needs its own resources. TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) does need to be looked at if you are seriously considering Magento.
• Plently of Themes.
  Unlike bespoke systems, Magento is open source and there are many sites that offer themes for Magento, similarl there are plenty of companies that can give you a bespoke look and feel.A personal reccomendation is http://themeforest.net/category/magento for themes, although I did have an interesting conversation with a designer over thier design not suporting the #1 downloaded extension. This was a learning expereince and I strongly suggest you ask for compatibility tests with your chosen extensions before purchasing.

Within a few minutes of browsing the front and backend of Magento, you’ll understand the scale. It is quite a lot to take in, it took me several nights to get through everything from end to end, I take things in fast, its been noted many times that it takes a decent amount of time to get used to the system and the knowledge base can be 50/50 at  useful/lacking.

Youtube was actually a superb resource when learning the backend of Magento, there are many videos on all aspects of the system. See here on Youtube for a start in the right direction.

Thats enough of me typing, go check-out Magento yourself, here are links to the Community edition back and front ends: http://www.magentocommerce.com/demo (the Community Edition is at the bottom).

In summary, Magento sets the feature and stability bar extremely high, very few products can even try to compare. Its not without its faults and I’ll cover some of these off in a future post.