Magento is coming. Is it time for osCommerce to retire?
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 3:40 pm | Articles, General
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Earlier this week I discovered Magento.
And I have to say, I wish I had discovered it sooner.
Magento is an open source e-commerce platform that aims to become the new standard for online shops.
Although still in Beta, version 1.0 is due out in the next few months (March 2008). It has already had over 100,000 downloads and the Magento community is growing fast.
I won’t go through all the features with you, but I do highly rate it. It feels and looks like a quality, safe, secure shopping cart solution.
Compare the default Magento template with that of osCommerce and it’s clear to see just how much osCommerce has dated since it was launched.
Try the store:
http://demo.magentocommerce.com/
Try the admin:
http://demo-admin.magentocommerce.com/
Where does Magento leave osCommerce?
osCommerce is still a funcitional solution for anyone starting an online business. It does the basics and there is a wealth of information available in case you get into trouble.
Not to mention the hundreds of contributions and templates that are available for download.
But osCommerce falls short in a key area: It uses old web standards.
The code is old. It’s not CSS. It still uses tables. For anyone who has to dig through the jumble of PHP and HTML code all mixed in together, you know how difficult making modifications can be.
Magento is all CSS and XHTML, and is firmly routed in the MVC school of thinking. That means the code that produces the layout is kept seperate from the code that does the grunt of the work (the logic). You can work on one without screwing up the other.
Magento also includes features such as compare products and wishlists right out of the box, whereas osCommerce requires you to install these as contributions.
The Verdict
It’s a little too early to switch your focus to Magento just yet. A stable release is not yet available and the documentation is lacking.
However, Magento is definitely a project to keep a close eye on.
If you earn a living designing and selling osCommerce stores I would recommend you start nosing around in the Magento code. That way you won’t be starting from scratch when Magento takes off.
Overall, it is shaping up to be an excellent solution.
By the end of the year I have a feeling we shall be seeing little Magento’s springing up around the internet.
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I checked out the admin, and WHY WHY WHY would they also not put attribute quantity!!! Another failure to be a fully operational e-commerce application to me, just with prettier gradient 2.0 buttons…
Rob | January 31st, 2008 at 3:30 am
Never fear Rob, Magento does allow you to specify attribute quantities.
Every product has several SKUs (Stock Keeping Units), and you can set a quantity in stock for each of these units.
For example, if you have a t-shirt available in red and black, and medium and large for both sizes, you would have 4 SKUs.
e.g.
tshirt_r_m,
tshirt_r_l,
tshirt_b_m,
tshirt_b_l
Even though there are 4 SKUs, they will all appear on the same ‘T-Shirt’ product page. In other words, the customer doesn’t see 4 products, just one with 4 options to choose from.
Everytime someone buys any of the items, the corresponding SKU quantity is reduced by 1, and the overall number of ‘T-Shirt’ products is reduced by one.
Once an SKU quantity reaches 0 (or any other value you specify) it will be shown as out of stock. The other attributes will be available though.
This flexibility is extremely good. As we all know, osCommerce does not have any way to do this.
Ed | January 31st, 2008 at 9:02 am
hi,
As far as I’m concerned, yes, i’m going to retire osc. As soon as Magento is stable I’ll pass to the other side of the force…well, not directly, I’ll need some time to study the code and to implement the major upgrades I’ve made to my store.
I’ve been working with OSC for more than 3 years now and I’m very thankfull to Harald and his team for what they did. But osc’s next version will have the exact same layout, as we can see from the beta they released: that’s one very good point for magento, the design.
As you say, another good point of Magento is his code. I’ve learn php and webmastering with OSC. Now with Magento, I’m going to learn it again, and better.
A very nice adventure is about to start
See you.
PS: Do you already have the magento-tips domain? lol
osdave | February 13th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
yes, the days are numbered for oscommerce and zencart. they both made great open source e-commerce contributions early on. they were awesome first-generation OS solutions for small business who needed an online store. MAGENTO just totally raised the bar with mvc, xhtml/css code, etc. MAGENTO’s code base will mark the beginning of second-generation OS e-commerce solutions.
chrisv | April 21st, 2008 at 4:55 pm
MAGENTO is really better in much ways that OSC. I recommend all designer and developer to keep an eye around MAGENTO Project.
And i believe that OSC team should regenerate a new structure for OSC or every body will forget about it.
webmaster | November 8th, 2008 at 12:30 pm