There are only few bugs remained in that late version, even if I was still able to find some of them. Furthermore Magento-people have really speed their System up, which was enormously important to my eyes. So now it seems that Magento becomes really competitive E Commerce Platform and that is just great! If the development goes so further on. None of the competing Systems will survive.

However one need much time to get familiar with Magento. That platform brings very much functionality and configuration options, so configuring Magento can become a new Profession! Unfortunately Configuration Options are just sparse documented at that point, so there is bunch of try and error till one can get his first Online-Shop of dreams.

On the other side Magento has growing online Community, which is effect more worth as full documentation.

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It is done professional! Yes, in my opinion that describes all advantages of that shop short. Cause in comparison to others shop systems it offers very much functionality and flexibility out of the box, combined with good looking default template. Just visit the demo-shop of Magento to see it self. I will not describe every detail of Magento here, cause it was done many times before, like that article, which describes (in German) why Magento is flexible, self-contained, individual, and is prepared for the future. But the best impression you can make by trying it out. I tried it for you and i can point some disadvantages to.

The greatest disadvantage of that system is that its powered by Zend Framework. Wait! You are Zend Framework evangelist? Let me explain. I don’t say that Zend Framework is bad, no i say – it’s slow ! Of cause it may be that Magento is so bad written on that brilliant framework making it, so slow, i don’t know, but it is really, really slow on normal PHP without Zend engine. And it’s don’t comes out with standard 8Mb configuration of your PHP engine, it needs at least 20Mb, otherwise it not works.

And of cause you need some not ever usual extensions of your PHP (which is PHP 5.2.0 or newer):

• PDO/MySQL
• MySQLi
• mcrypt
• mhash
• simplexml
• DOM

I called my host provider before a had all required addons. But i was supported by good installation routine in this exercise.

Further my shop installation was not such intuitive as it can be in the admin area, but it’s OK, cause there are really many configuration possibilities that have to be placed somewhere. I think it will mature in the future and is not so relevant at all ,cause admins will learn how to configure Magento, but customer will/must not learn it. And precisely customers will like your Magento usability, i think.

Last but not least my version (0.6.13…) of Magneto was pretty buggy. After doing some configuration steps in admin area the store produces errors (Zend Framework pointed me to SQL Errors) and was no more functional anymore . That are of cause teething problems, that are possibly already fixed in the new Version: “… Fixed few database foreign keys problems …“.

Finally i would say, that Magento is best online shop system that i know at the moment, i will stay watching Magento development and will try out newer matured versions. But at the moment Magento is not really ready for productive run, especially the slowness of the systen is greatest disadvantage of Magento for me.

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So this post don’t try to compare all of available online shop products in matrix of functionality (I grant you that it was initial wish). It gives just my personal impression of some of then. No even shorter, after i have tried out several shops that are was before completely unknown to me, i stop at only one which deserve to be written about.

I look for online shop system for relative small company, with relative few products in one branch with moderate product diversifications. So far important for me are following features:

• good looking and handling
• price policy mechanisms
• html product definitions
• good support of product variants
• good support of payment methods
• statistic
• all of that out of the box

My favorites so far:

OXID

The shop at his self looks fine and also admin site is good structured. Here the demo shop. Finally it provides the basic functionality of osCommerce and some nice additional features for discount and price policy what i like. Also it has nice template and template configuration out of the box.

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Everybody who ever searched for open source online shop system have heard about osCommerce. My first installation of this online shop was at least two years ago. For two years that system does not much impression on me, but i will install it again and try it out, cause it might be the one of the mightiest shop systems on the web (please correct me if you know better ones). Of cause mighty is not automatically good.

OsCommerece is based on PHP and MYSQL, the advantages of that are clear for every blogger. But there may be also many disadvantages that of such constellation. But they are not the theme of that article.

19:30

I have downloaded osCommerce v2.2 rc1. And now it’s in uploading process. That takes pretty much time, cause there are many files in the base already in the base installation. So there was time to check mails and write this post till here in parallel.

19:45

Upload is ready. Begin of setup…

19:46

Cool I like it. Nice Ajax front end provides possibility to setup DB credentials and server-path. After that you are able to set up the Store Name, Store owner name and password.

That’s it.

19:50

I can start play around. I see that default template that makes me ill… But let’s continue.

20:20

First impressions. Not bad, but also not so good. The base installation has awful template. But it works and brings already in base installation enough functionality to use shop productive. Functionality at glance:

• Support of Products and product categories.
• HTML based Product description.
• Definition of product attributes. That nice and allows user to define some characteristics of product instead of defining thousands of products with few varieties.
• Support of manufacturers management.
• Supports of bargain offers is nice to, but is may be to simple.
• Tax calculation support.
• Many payment possibilities, that can be enabled in the admin console.
• and other things like “awaited products” or user evaluation.

All in one the osCommerce system appears to me to be usable. Of cause with other template and maybe some additional plug-ins.

On the osCommerce site you can read about thousands of plug-ins, handling every situation of life. OK, i have to search them, then base functionality is not enough for my needs. Especially reporting system is not really provided in base version. But i need one extended in any case.

20:45

Thanks for your attention! I’m gone to search for new templates and useful plug-ins.

P.S. Please give me hints about other online shop systems and links to good osCommerce plug-ins!

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