Introduction About Magneto

Introducing Magento

Magento is an ''open source'' software, which basically means that you are allowed to view, edit, and contribute to the source code. A lot of people also think that ''open source'' means

''free''. Although it is certainly true that most open source solutions are available for free,

it isn't a mandatory part of the open source principle. Looking at Magento we immediately

recognize that, because Magento is available freely as well as in a paid for version. We'll

cover more on the differences between those versions later on.

As we already mentioned in this Preface, Magento isn't the only open source e-commerce solution in the market. There are other ones as well. We'll name a few alternatives, without being complete:

‹   OpenCart

‹   PrestaShop

‹   osCommerce (more or less obsolete)

‹   Joomla with VirtueMart

‹   WordPress with e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce

‹   Zen Cart

The first two candidates in this list are the more serious options, whereas the other ones are generally used for smaller shops. But don't get me wrong, as I've already seen excellent shops based on something relatively simple, such as WordPress with WooCommerce as well.

Looking at the commercial/paid market, there are really lots of players and it's hard to make

a choice if you're new to the business. Also in here, we'd like to name a few solutions, so that

you could get an idea of what's available in the market:

‹   Shopify

‹   X-Cart

‹   Interspire

‹   Volusion

Moreover, we see solution providers offering an online solution that you can use straight out of the box, without having to do any installation. Magento is doing this as well and we'll tell you more on this possibility in our Magento version overview.

The history of Magento

It was way back in 2001 when Roy Rubin and Yoav Kutner founded a company named Varien. They did many e-commerce implementations during those years, especially using osCommerce. But they were never satisfied with the solution. The lack of stability and flexibility made them think that it could be done better. So they decided to start a new

e-commerce project in 2007 and named it Magento. The very first beta version was released in August of that year and it took them until March 2008 to release Magento Version 1.0. From that moment on, things moved fast. The solution became incredibly popular within a couple of years and new versions were released once or twice per year. Starting from that first version in 2008, we've currently reached Version 1.7 at the beginning of 2013.

Meanwhile, a lot has changed in the Varien company. It is now called Magento Inc. and has been acquired completely by eBay during 2011. The Magento community is a bit worried about the plans that eBay has with Magento, especially now that one of the original founders, Yoav Kutner, has left the company. Even keeping possible scenarios

in mind, Magento has currently grown to be by far the most popular e-commerce solutions available:

            

Especially knowing that older solutions such as osCommerce and VirtueMart are losing market shares and Magento is still growing makes this picture even more clear about the major role Magento is playing in the e-commerce market at this moment.

Magento versions

Magento being the number one choice at this moment is great, but what does that mean for the company delivering the solution? How are they making money to continue to support

the platform? This is where the various Magento versions come in. During the first few years of Magento, only the free 'Community Edition' was available. Actually, this free Community Edition is the one we'll be covering in this book since most users will start using that version. Magento currently offers two other possibilities:

Enterprise Edition

The Enterprise Edition is Magento's flagship solution, made for large-scale online stores. The Enterprise Edition has functionality on board that the Community Edition is missing and we currently often see that new features are first released in this Enterprise Edition. For companies using this version, the important fact is that Magento offers support on it. The Enterprise Edition has its own version numbers that do not have anything to do with the version number of the Community Edition. Magento Enterprise Edition is currently at Version 1.12 and is currently priced at over $14,000 annually. If you'd like to read more on the Enterprise Edition and its features please browse to:

http://www.magentocommerce.com/product/enterprise-edition.

Formerly, Magento also offered a ''Professional Edition'', which was priced in between the Community and Enterprise Editions. It was discontinued, forcing its customers to the more expensive Enterprise Edition.

Magento Go

Seeing more and more competitors like, for instance, Shopify and Volusion offering online e-commerce solutions, Magento has decided to offer such a service as well. Magento Go

is an online Magento platform, that you can simply rent by paying a monthly fee. The good thing is that you do not have to worry about hosting, installation, and maintenance. Magento will do it for you. The downside however, is that Magento Go isn't yet suitable for every market and you cannot expand its functionality like you can in running your own installation. If you are interested, please pay special attention to anything that is required for your local market, payment service providers being the most important one. Pricing of Magento Go currently starts at $15 per month for a single store in one language.

More information on Magento Go can be found at:

http://go.magento.com.

Why choose Magento?

We've already mentioned that Magento is currently the most popular e-commerce solution, but why would you choose Magento? There are plenty of alternatives, so what makes Magento so popular? Since you're reading this book you have probably already made your choice. Still it is good to look at a few pros and cons of Magento, to make sure that you made the right decision for your business.

Magento pros

‹        Multi site: One of the strongest pros of Magento is that it's relatively easy to set up multiple stores in multiple languages offering different (or the same) products. You are in control.

‹        Product catalog management: Magento offers extended possibilities to set up and manage your online product catalog. From simple products to complete sets including options and customer variables anything seems to be possible. Magento also supports selling digital (downloadable) products.

Theming: If you want to change the look and feel of your store, you have to change your Magento theme or install a completely different one. The number of themes available is huge nowadays, and of course it is also possible to use a custom

design for your store. Generally speaking a good Magento theme isn't free. The Marketplace Themeforest (http://themeforest.net) is one of the possibilities to search for and buy a standard Magento theme:

        Extensions: Magento is already pretty complete out of the box. But there's always room for improvement or maybe you need to change the functionality because of local requirements. The Magento Community offers a lot of extensions that you can install and use to change the behavior of your store. There are free as well as paid for solutions available and there are (commercial) companies that completely focus on delivering one or multiple Magento extensions.

‹   Scalability: The Magento solution is not only versatile, it is very scalable as well.

You do not need a very large budget to start and once your company is growing,

Magento still offers you lots of possibilities. Magento can therefore be a very good

choice for small companies with high ambition levels.

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