Having used osCommerce for several ecommerce online shops over the last few years, I had been waiting for the latest update since March 2007. A little over a month ago, that wait ended with the release of osCommerce Alpha 5. The update came with very little warning and even less fanfare. Regardless, I excitedly downloaded the latest version and installed it. Once it was installed, I took a look at the front end and found there was not much change other than it using CSS layouts. I didn’t think this was that much of a big deal as most online shops end up being completely redesigned.
I then took a look at the Administration system and was completely underwhelmed. There were hardly any new features. I found this strange, especially after two years between updates. The developer has stated that he has put alot of effort into making this flexible platform so that others can add functionality through contributions (or plugins). Bitterly disappointed, and not wanting to wait for the functionality to be created by others six months down the track, I decided to look at other alternatives.
I had read about Magento as it was mentioned several times on the osCommerce forums as a competitor. After looking at the Magento demo administration and front end, I’d thought I would give it a try. Now to be fair to osCommerce, I found Magento to be alot harder to install. I downloaded Magento v1.3. The first attempt at installing wouldn’t get passed the database creation step. It kept giving me an error. I checked all my database settings but couldn’t find anything wrong with them. I did a search through the Magento forums and found other people were having the same problem. One suggestion was to just create a new database and user and use those during installation. Sure enough it worked. Strange thing was that I had created a new database and user just for Magento before my first install. Weird!
After the installation was done, I clicked on the link that takes you to the front end home page. Everything seemed to be working fine. I then logged into the Admin and started adding Categories and Products to see how it all works. This part of Magento is quite detailed. It combines the Product detail and SEO elements right from the start. I added my first product, saved it and then created a Category and added the Product to it. So far so good. Next step was to test out the front end with the newly added Category and Product. I typed in the URL for the front end. Up came the Home Page but no Category or Product. I went back into the Admin and checked what I had done but everything seemed to be in order. Tried the Home page again and still no Category menu or Product.
Magento Store Edit
I thought it might be the Default theme so I downloaded and installed the Modern theme (more on installing Extensions later in this article). Still no success. So like all good developers do, I hit the forums. Sure enough, I found what I was doing wrong. In the System->Manage Stores->Edit Store section I hadn’t set the root category for the store. Once I did this, Categories and Products were displayed on the Home Page.
Downloading extensions is pretty straight forward. You search through the Magento Extensions list and grab the extension key from the one you want. You then go into the Magento Connect Manager, enter the Extension Key and click on Install. The Extension is then downloaded and automatically installed.
You can filter the Extensions by choosing to see Core, Community or Commercial extensions. There are a plethora of Extensions already created. Extensions range from Payment Gateways to Administration Enhancements to Themes.
Another thing I like about the Administration System is it’s full of options that osCommerce doesn’t have. For example, you can set Roles for Users who log into the Administration System. You can set the Role to only access certain areas of the Administration System. This means that the Developer setting up the site can give access to the client but limit the areas they can access to avoid any accidental setup changes from being made. Magento also has in-built Google Sitemap creation, CMS management, URL rewrite management, Customer groups, report generation … the list goes on.
I’m still in the process of transferring an old osCommerce online shop across to Magento. However, from what I’ve seen so far, it outstrips osCommerce in terms of functionality and features that come standard. I would recommend Magento to any developer out there needing an Open Source ecommerce solution that provides them with the functionality and features they need right out of the box.
For more information: www.magentocommerce.com
Ed Baxter has created a screencast tutorial explaining the steps involved in installing and setting up a Magento ecommerce website. This is great for those of you who are new to Magento.
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