[Phpwm] magento

[Andy Cowan]

Hi All,

Based on current versions - again, we use it in anger every day.

1. Performance is more than acceptable - second what Greg says, you need 
a properly set up accelerator, but that's more or less a given these 
days isn't it?
2. Yes, there's a lot of XML - but you don't need to get that involved 
most of the time.
3. The API is much better now - however, as Greg says, there's no real 
documentation, so getting started is a pain.
4. I'm pretty sure there are lot more Magento devs around now than there 
used to be - so many us seem to have come to Magento after being 
frustrated by Zen/OS Commerce/ Uber Cart et al.
5. No, disagree - theming is good. Especially in comparison to  Os/Zen. 
It feels like it has designers much more in mind than the alternatives.

Also, I'd point out that users love the admin backend. We've moved 
several over from OS/Zen and they've all been very happy with the 
backend improvements.

So, I suppose to sum up, along with ModX and Symfony, it's one of our 
three weapons of choice these days. Clearly its not perfect, but we get 
sites done quicker, with more functionality and looking better in 
Magento than the alternatives.

A.

On 14/12/2009 21:19, Greg Jones wrote:
> Hiya,
>
> I'm doing Magento development pretty much full-time at the moment and
> it's pretty good once you get to grips with it.
>
> There's an awful lot of abstraction, and there is no developer
> documentation but it's pretty solid, really flexible in what you can
> hook into and extend (there's a mechanism for extending any built-in
> class, and/or you can listen for events that get fired pretty much
> everywhere - you'll never need to change a 'core' file and be faced
> with upgrade problems) with a boat-load of useful ecommerce
> functionality.
>
> With APC (and magento setup to use APC as it's cache backend - it's
> Zend_Cache under the hood) then performance is pretty good - for
> development, with none of the app caching turned on then things are
> really, really slow as it's parsing and merging those many XML files
> every time.
>
> Theming difficult? There are a lot of files, every little bit of the
> page will be it's own template file but the developer-mode tells you
> which bit of the page is in which file, and it's all very
> logical...just completely undocumented. There are also plenty of
> 3rd-party themes out there that even if not exactly what you're after,
> can provide a useful starting point.
>
> It's far, far from perfect, and I spend plenty of time cursing it, but
> there is plenty that's good about it, and it does seem to be so much
> better than anything else that's available.
>
> Greg.
>
> 2009/12/14 David Goodwin<david at codepoets.co.uk>:
>    
>> j michaelson wrote :
>>      
>>> My brother in law is making websites with magento and I remember
>>> hearing some pretty bad things about it at the meal we had at
>>> wagamamas. What exactly is wrong with magento and are there any
>>> similar products that do a better job?
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>>        
>> Random summary:
>>
>> 1) It's very slow
>> 2) There are a lot of XML Files involved
>> 3) The API is not necessarily complete - it appears to offer all the
>> features you need, but then you may find they aren't completely
>> implemented
>> 4) There aren't many people out there who do Magento development
>> 5) Theming is apparently difficult.
>>
>> I looked at Magento about 2-3 years ago; a lot may have chanced since
>> then... but I've not heard many speak good about it.
>>
>> David.
>> --
>> David Goodwin
>>
>> [ david at codepoets dot co dot uk ]
>> [ http://www.codepoets.co.uk       ]
>>
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