Magento

This looks just brilliant!
After years of working with osCommerce and xtCommerce and dealing with all their disadvantages, i’m so eager to switch to Magento. I know many people who also want to leave above ecommerce solutions, so you can be sure your script will become a one and only success story. Keep up the good work! And don’t forget us here in Germany!

Looks great so far.  “Optional elements will be called out here with an *.” Could something like videos of the product come in here somehow?  For example take a look at how I setup my product page.  Notice how I have tabs for each item I want to have on the page (ex: reviews, more pics, videos, installation, etc).  The only downside is the fact that they are separate pages rather than some sort of CSS thing...but I think it organizes a lot of information nicely...and allows for stores to be more customizable as a tab would only get added for the things that that store specifically wants.

I realize this is off topic, but something that would affect my desicion to use magento would be how it is installed onto the server. I couldn’t find it noted anywhere on the site. (ie. does it use a framework such as ruby on rails?).

Looks great.

Is it possible to choose different methods of showing the product detail photo? For example, I’m using the Flash tool Zoomify (http://www.zoomify.com) which gives you the possibility to see an extreme close up of a product if you provide a large photo.

Never mind.. answered my own question by going to the Zend Framework site..

btw, I very much like the features on the product page. I assume we would be able to substitute the product image enlargement with lightbox or other equivelant?

It would be great if we can make two “Regural Prices” of the same product but with different currency. For example “$12.99 or €9.40”.

Pepe - we won’t forget Germany.We have big plans for the German and European markets.

Anand - It shouldn’t be a problem. We’ll have a knowledge base article with instructions how to do so.

Dave - You can certainly have videos and any other data with the product.

I really can’t wait for this. For our site, we use Yahoo as our shopping cart and I’ve not been too happy with flexibility…

dimensions
weight
color swatches
can product image update with chosen varients

shipping calculator or shipping estimate for logged in customers

This looks great. How flexible is the product review feature? I’m going to be redesigning a store where the individual products are all one-of-a-kind handmade items, so an individual product review wouldn’t be of much use, but if the reviews could be applied to a category (but still displayed on product pages) instead of an individual item, it would be great. So for example, if I’m looking at a “red tote bag” product page, i would see reviews for all of the “tote bag” cagegory. Is this sort of thing possible?

Roy, its looking really good, very promising and cannot fault the product page, if you need someone to join your discussions, please let me know on my email.

I think what we need next is shots of the checkout process. Please let it be no more than a couple of pages long, with an option for ‘non-registration’ checkouts.

[...] Pepe - we won’t forget Germany.We have big plans for the German and European markets.  Share and Enjoy: Diese Icons verzweigen auf soziale Netzwerke bei denen Nutzer neue Inhalte finden und mit anderen teilen können. [...]

One nice feature would be to have a picture selection for the variants.

For example, if you’re selling flower arrangements in different sizes; instead of using a select box, it’d be nice if you could display an array of pictures with each variant - the user then clicks on the variant they like.

Other sites that rely on this type of function use a photo with the array of variants - then requiring the user to select the variant they like from a select box.

This is really excellent.

How easy would it be to integrate the ROI/ Sales Tracking code for Bizrate, Google, Shopping comparison sites etc.

Also, would it be possible to track Affiliate sales. I am a merchant at Shareasale and they provide a code to be inserted at the final succesful checkout page which would register a sale and send information to shareasale.com about the sale so that the affiliate may get the commission.

Once more, things are looking great, I especially like the fact that while there is a lot of information presented, it’s very clear for the customer what to do in order to put the product into the shopping cart.
I’ve got a suggestion for the variants, stemming from a recent xt:Commerce-project. It might be handy for sellers if they could create variants which determine each other. For instance, a shirt could be male/female and a certain color - however, for male there’d be only blue and black whereas for female there’d be black and red. It would be fantastic if, once the customer chose between male/female, the second variant would respectively alter on the fly.

[...] wachsende und ungeduldige Magento-Fangemeinde: Varien veröffentlicht mehrere Screenshots der Produktseiten und kommentiert diese auch. Wie nicht anders zu erwarten war, scheinen auch in diesem wichtigen [...]

It’s August… I want mine!!

"The product description resides above the fold”

Not on my screen!! (1024 x 768, Firefox on Windows with developer toolbar on)

Please focus on: Products with Variants

This is so extremly important!!!! Here good shops can separate from standard shops. Offering customers diversification/customizing is realy important.

For example using MC for pc/notebook configurators !!!!!

This could be included in the search. Only show products which are yellow. Only notebooks with 15” screens, etc....

Also, there is a module for Oscommerce which gives an option on the Product Page for a Bundle Offer.

It works by manually / automatically selecting 2 different products by giving a discount, if the bundle is bought.

Look below Add to Shopping Cart button.

Check example here:
http://www.arabianbazaar.com/product77/product_info.html

Buy Product A and Product B together at the discounted price of $120.00.

This is getting better and better…

A few questions:

1. Will the stock and shipping messages be tied to the attributes so that if one size/color/etc. is out of stock the message will change accordingly?

2. Will there be an option to allow image swapping as the user picks an attribute? For instance, if I chose a red shoe insteand of the black one you show on your example page, will the image change as well?

3. How are backorders supported, if at all? Can customers order items that are currently out of stock?

Zend Framework is the future of PHP and Magento is the future of eCommerce. Thank you and thank you again!

"3. How are backorders supported, if at all? Can customers order items that are currently out of stock?”

I too am interested in this.  What about support for pre-ordering?

Everything looks fabulous, in comparison to all those previous web v.1.0 ecommerce attempts.
BUT…
where is the capacity to add one own fields?
Like us, booksellers, we need to be able to add extra fields to the back-end database for authors, publishers, editions, etc.  Any chance?

Adding custom product variables would be handy for many different applications, including what Andy listed in #9.

per #23… Stock availability is often handled clumsily, and I am interested in this as well.

Couple of important issues left out of the wireframe. Majority of sites display
List Price: $xxx.xx
Your Price: $xxx.xx
You Save: $xxx.xx (xx%)

Very important from a customer service point of view to display the product ID/item#. We display it in a small font either directly above or below the product image.

The enlarge image button is shown as part of the product image. Should be either text link or image below the product image. We use the same product images on our datafeeds. Plus it would be a major pain to add the button on thousands of product images.

I do not see an update button to update the price after options have been selected. Is this handled automatically?

Also not shown because of type of product used on example is a clean table displaying specs/extra fields. For example -
Length: xxx
Width: xxx
Color:xxx
Not to be confused with product descriptions. These would be common field titles for all products with data being specific to unique product.

Ok, we all want this, we are getting greedy and we have not even seen more than a few screenshots, how desperate are we? Very : ) At least I am : )

So, I also ‘want’ something.. I was told there will be translations in different languages, I am sure willing to help here, but are there any documents already to make a start with the translations, or am I very very impatient? (I am : ) )

Magento looks amazing. I’ve been waiting for something like this for so long.
I’ll switch from OSCommerce in a heartbeat once it’s released.

I also sell on the Japanese market.
Will it be possible to have both Japanese and English text (included user info such as addresses) in the same backend?

Also will the system hold into account that the Japanese address system is the different compared that in most countries? (in Japan we use: postal code (line break) prefecture - city - house (line break) name - honorific suffix)

Looking forward to your first release!

Lots of questions today, my answers are below. One thing to note (and we’ll expand on this greatly in the future) - ANYTHING/EVERYTHING that defines a product (e.g. name, sku, price, description, color, size, cpu, hard drive size, etc.) is considered an attribute in Magento. This is a departure from what is common in many eCommerce platforms today. Customer configurable attributes (e.g. color, size, cpu, hard drive size, etc.) are considered “configurable attributes” in Magento. This may be a bit abstract at this point and I realize the concepts are new but you can expect a good amount of documentation and screencasts that will go in depth. That said, this is one of the most powerful concepts in Magento and provides an almost limitless ability to control the products.
Nat - The product review feature is pretty flexible, but to achieve the functionality you are looking for, I would expect some level of custom development to be needed.
Ian - Beta1 (preview version) will not support image(s) per variant combination (due to the support of infinite number of variant options). We do expect to have such functionality available in a future release. Please note that once a product is added to the cart, the image associated with the sku will be displayed if exists (or a default image for the product).
Ajnab - We expect to have support for Google Analytics conversion tracking in Beta1. You can certainly customize the success page to include other tracking codes you require. In regards to your second question about bundles, please checkout the roadmap - it is scheduled for a future release.
Roman - Dynamically chained options will be supported in Beta1 and be based on availability and stock.
Sebastian - You’ll be happy to hear that Magento will support configurable products in Beta1.
Ben/Dave - The admin will have a configuration value to determine if sku’s that are out of stock can be sold (if set to true, backorders can thus be accepted). Preorders are currently not supported in Beta1.
WisdOMbooks - Magento will support an infinite amount of fields (we call them attributes as everything that defines a product is an attribute).
Sam - Product price would change automatically. You can add any field (attribute) per product.
Piet - Unfortunately, we don’t have translation documents yet. We expect to have a process in place in the weeks ahead.
James - Multi-lingual stores will be supported and can be controlled within a single admin. Beta1 will not support Japanese addresses, but you can certainly customize the system to support it.

will it be possible to enter custom text as an attribute?  i.e. for making stamps or print/embroidery products?

Hi Roy,

Thanks!
how is it possible to make Magento free for everybody, I feel a bit guilty : )

Thanks alot, roy for answering the questions.

Hi roy (changed my username slightly as others are using the same!), are we expecting screen shots of the checkout in this blog or waiting for launch? Is that still expected late this month or has it been knocked back to Sept?

Roy, thanks for the reply, looking forward very much to trying the first beta.

The possibility of changing the display order of address fields depending on country would in a future release would definitely be a plus.

Allow me to elaborate a bit more.

All e-commerce solutions I’ve tried support lots of different countries but seem oblivious to the fact that the US is one of the very few countries with “States”, yet require this field to be filled in (even when a country has no such thing as “States").

My recommendations for addresses would be:

- Only display address fields which are actually relevant to a country. For instance there are no states but provinces in The Netherlands. Therefore there’s no need for a “state” field.
Furthermore provinces are not used in the Dutch address system so even though “state” would be a required field for US customers the “province” field should not be required but optional for Dutch customers.

- Display the different parts of the address in a different order depending on the postal rules of each country.
For instance: in the UK the postal code is placed on a new line after the city. In Japan it is the first line of the address.
In The Netherlands it is placed on the same line before of the city (and preferable there should be two spaces between the postal code and the city (which should be written in capital letters)).

I know, this may seem like nitpicking and parcels will generally arrive regardless of the order of the parts of the address, but for international customers it will mean a lot if the system adapts to them instead of the other way round.

Again regarding pricing of products. We like to specify exact prices for example £5 inc VAT. A simple request but the way our current cart works is that we input the price before VAT, the cart then calculates the price including VAT. Because of the rounding some prices actually become impossible to display!! Our work around has been to increase the number of decimal places in the price before VAT but this gets confusing when you start applying discounts etc. Is this an issue the team is aware of or just particular to my current cart!?

Good good, he have the behind but if we have no image for a product, what occurs?

Lopsta - Not initially but this is definitely in the plans. The architecture supports it.

Ian - We are still on track for late August. I hope we can start posting checkout screenshots once everything is finalized.

James - I’ll pass your comments along to our dev team.

oh, before I forget…
Will you support other ways of payment and shipping, if not, is it easy to customize this?

I hope that this gray design is only leyout

I will be honored if I can help in designing standard layout. I have lot of ecommerce desings on my folio. Msg me and i will send you my folio Roy.

Thanks for that Roy.

Btw I found the following website regarding international postal addresses.
This guy called Frank researched this stuff to the tiniest detail, it might be of help.

http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/postal.html

“FRANK’S COMPULSIVE GUIDE TO POSTAL ADDRESSES”

It’s still looking awesome but I would definetely like some feedback on this:

1. If a common user/client creates a lot of categories, what happens to the top bar?

2. I suggest placing the enlarge button beside the zoom function. Reason is it clearly defines the difference between the two better. A user could either zoom at will or if he’d like to view the image selected then he’ll just click Enlarge.

3. If I have Product Variants and Tier Pricing switched on, what will the interface look like?

4. I’m just wondering what’s the difference between Related Items and the ‘Might be interested in these items’. If they’re the same, possibly an option to select either position in the product area or the sidebar?

Overall, Magento is still looking strong as ever and I hope we’re all working to make it the e-commerce platform.

Zitat: “wachsende und ungeduldige Magento-Fangemeinde”

LOL seit wann gibt es eine Fangemeinde, für ein Produkt das noch niemand live in action gesehen hat ? Es wird wahrscheinlich auch noch länger dauern, bis es überhaupt für den deutschen Markt nutzbar ist. Soweit ich das verstanden habe, kommt ja (ich hoffe noch diesen Monat) in englischer Sprache heraus.

Are you still planning drupal integration?

Aaron - Drupal integration is in the plans, but not expected any time soon, unfortunately.

Hello

Roy, How can we import our products from Oscommerce to Magento.

Especially the passwords of the customer accounts and their order details.

Looks excellent so far! Did I read somewhere that Magento will be supllied with a number of basic layouts / templates? Can we have a sneak preview at some others (2 column etc)?

Thanks,

Konrad

Ajnab - we’ll have information about moving from osCommerce in the future. Passwords may be a problem, but we’ll try to have a workaround.

Konrad - Magento will initially be supplied with a default 3 column layout. We do expect to have many other options available over time.

Ah, running into problems with the lack of a formal view layout engine in ZF?  Hopefully this will be out soon.  Paddy Brady’s proposal is very strong.

This looks very VERY promising. I’m wondering how firm is the Late August release date?  I’ve got a new e-commerce project starting and I’d like to play around a bit with the source.  Don’t want to get my hopes up though. You guys think you can make it?

Nick - Beta1 (preview version) is scheduled for late August.

Roy, thanks for the quick reply! Glad your around.. while I still have your attention, can you explain to me whats NOT going to be in the Preview Version? I know this isn’t production site ready, but will it at least have most the features you guys have been marketing?  i.e Will it have a checkout
option? (Google checkout optionally). 

I ask because I’d love to setup a demo site to tweak and trick out, and provide support for other end-users, but it needs to be functional. I’m not expecting ALL of the features you’ve talked about. But which will it have?

Nick - check out the roadmap:

http://www.magentocommerce.com/ecommerce-roadmap

That should give you a better idea of what to expect when.

Thanks Dave!  I checked that out before. though, It starts with Beta 2 which I’m assuming is later this year. It just doesn’t tell how functional you all are planning Beta 1 to be.

I was just wondering, You’ve peaked my interest and before I crack open another project with Zencart I wanted to spend time with Magento.  No biggie, just another interested user!

Hey Guys, I think I found what I was looking for. I’m gonna post just in case other people like myself are scouring the site.

I found a good list of proposed features here:
http://www.magentocommerce.com/ecommerce-features/

However, I’m not sure if the features listed are slated for the Beta 1 Release.  Can Roy or Dave get back to me on that?

For Example.  The BATCH Import/EXPORT Admin panel Feature is listed Is that slated for Beta 1? Or planned eventually?

I also will be starting a new e-commerce project, which should be online on october 1st.. Is it wise to use this beta1 version, or would you not recommand it?

cheers

I’m in the same boat as 55. I’ll be creating a new e-commerce website for a client and am curious if I should put it off another week or two for Beta 1.

Nick - The items on the feature pages represent the items that are expected in Beta1. Batch Export/Import is expected in the upcoming Beta (Preview) release.

Piet/Alex - I would not recommend using Beta1 in a production environment at this time. We hope to have a production ready version as soon as possible after we receive community feedback.

Roy, thanks for the reply to my post earlier. Glad your in communication with your users!

Just a thought:

It might prove useful to get a forum up and running soon, possibly before the release.

I say that because people like myself and Piet/Alex whether preparing for production environments or not, will probably become active in using Magento and that would be great to start meeting other end-users in preparing magento for different environments. I’m anticipated being an active member of the site myself, so it’d be nice to meet others who may can provide help in addition to the Varien team.

Just a thought.

Nick - We have an extensive community site in the works with forums, knowledge base, blog, wiki, tags, rss and more. It is fully integrated so the user experience will be great. We expect to launch by the end of the month when Beta1 (preview) is released. It will definitely be worth the wait.

Hi Roy,

Thanks for the quick answers,
but with every answer I have some new questions : )

Can you give me/us a clue what the period will be between the Beta1 and a stable production ready version?
Will it be weeks, or months?

It will definitely help me to decide if I will wait for Magento, or will have to look for another solution.

I understand you maybe won’t be able to tell us exactly at which date this stable version will be available, but for me an estimate will surely help!

I have the same question as Danny Foo - what is the difference between ‘Related Items’ and ‘You might be interested in these items’?

Thanks,

Konrad

Hi can you give us more informaiton. than we need a shopsoftware for a new business . and than i will translate this in german languages. when you say, magento comes this week or next week, than is good. but later than i have a big time problem and we will look for an other solution.

So what happens when people tag products with “total crap” or “buy cheaper at competitor”?

Piet - Hard to say at this point. It’s in our interest to have a stable (production ready) version as soon as possible.

Ziggy - You have the option to moderate the tags. If you don’t like a tag, delete it. If you don’t like the concept of tags, don’t use them. Your in control.

pjone - Beta1 will be available in late August. Please note that its an early beta version when considering to use in a production environment.

thx roy - when you can give us the beta1, we can make the german, spain and french languages translation for our business

Roy, how much longer are you going to tease us with these behind the scene snapshots I am dying to check this baby out.

Konrad - The ‘You might be interested in these items’ was designated as a block for up-sales that a user might want instead of the item being viewed (e.g. on the product info page for a laptop with a 100gb hard drive you would set a laptop with 120gb as an up-sale).  The related items block is for items that are recommended to the customer as complementary to the viewed item (e.g. viewing a printer and having printer cables as related items). The related items block will have an option to add some or all of the related items to the cart when the viewed item is added to cart (this feature is not shown in the wireframe).

Yoav, - With regards to the related items being added to the cart simultaneously…

Will this be applicable to grouped items as well?

I know this one may be an off the wall request, but I actually have many uses for it among different clients, is it possible that there would be a way to use the system but without the purchase/ship sections. Basically an online catalog without purchase ability. I have a few clients that manufacture products that are only availible for purchase in specific retailers. Its possible I assume just to edit the source to provide for such a goal but it would be great if there were a way to switch it off

ps, we could use that forum i see you guys own to ask these questions, :D

Jason – Since both grouped items and configurable items require the customer to make choices, they will not have a direct ‘add to cart’ button or a checkbox. Instead they will have a link to more detail, so that the customer can make the appropriate selection before adding to cart. But since these kinds of products are built from regular products it is up to the store owner if they want to add the grouped (or configurable) items as related, or just list the individual items that constitute the grouped/configurable items.

Chris - Such functionality will be possible (you can remove all references to cart and checkout).

Roy can we expect Magento to be fast and robust enough to handle 100K or more products with variables/options on a high traffic store served from 2 dedicated servers (1 for cart, 1 for database) with about 6-8 customer service reps on the backend admin area doing their thing without the cart bogging down to a crawl or is it aimed at the smaller store owners. And how will heavy site search usage affect the mix, as this is one of the major downsides of other carts, or is there an alternate method in the works for the search such as a seperate DB so that site speed dosnt become an issue?

will this (above mentioned) functionality be available out of box or will I be modifying files? if its available out of box will it be a whole site or product specific? just interested, I MUST SAY “ i am extremely excited over the project “ i know its open source but id be willing to pay for this script over any other, its amazing

Sam, i’m sure magento can cope with big and small online shops a like, but in my opinion for such a large shop with that many products etc surely you’d be thinking about investing in a tailor-made solution? I know i would!

Like Chris, i’d pay for it too if it is put togeather right, but of course think you should implement this later when we’ve downloaded

Sam,
100K items shouldn’t be a problem, as long as you have proper database indexes set up.  Also, since this is based on Zend Framework, you can tailor caching based on many factors.  which should really help with displaying product pages, etc.  You can globally disable caching for requests tied to a session or not cache pages within a certain section of the site.  You can also cache the results of expensive function calls.

I’d say this has a lot of potential for big sites, but there may be need for customization in some circumstances.

Did you ever think of running an additional server or two.  You could push off backend processing to its own server, and possibly run seperate dbs for products and orders.

This gets tricky if it’s not thought out before hand.  I doubt you’d need to go to this lenth though, as long as your on a decent dual / quad xeon with plenty of memory and you do setup indexes where there are slow queries.

Hey! Remember:..
your deadline is 31 August (max!) !

Better you’re ready
to deliver the goods, really!  ;o}

(Can’t we have another teasing article,
in the meantime? Thanks).

Roy,

What about using the cart and checkout without using the storefront? I have a client who does this now because of excellent existing search engine ranks. They also like the “hand-built” control over the site.

Scott - Theoretically this is possible, but may require significant tweaking.

Roy, (or others)

Can you elaborate a bit about the CSS/templating abilities of Magento?

The shortcomings of OScommerce/ZenCart/ and other distributions was the disadvantage in actually CHANGING the default store’s look. Primarily because there was so much business logic/SQL statements built right into templates. How does magento handle this? Do store-owners have complete ability to change the look of their shops? If so, to what extent?  (I.e Can each element be tweaked? Is the CSS separate from the logic?)

Please elaborate on this some.

Nick - Magento’s templating capabilities are extensive and a blog comment would not do it justice. We’ll have more information on this shortly. I can say, that we are well aware of the limitations in other systems, and strongly believe that with Magento, you’ll be able to skin/template/customize extensively with no limitation by the system.

Just tell us now… the beta 1 release has been delayed. I’m so excited about Magento that my nerves are fraying.

Austin, lol. I’m with you! I’m almost waiting for the bad news, it seems like a message away.  Fingers crossed though, in any case I know the team is working hard.

Austin - We are still looking forward to an August release date for Beta1 ... and yes, we are working very hard to make it. That said, please remember this is an early preview version (and beta) of Magento so we still have a long road ahead of us.

Don’t worry, I’m not waiting on it to develop any e-commerce sites. =P

I’ve just read the site (read: drank the kool-aid), and am very excited to see what the first beta looks like. So don’t bother demurring to me - your marketing people are the ones who have me checking this blog daily *despite* the fact that I use an RSS reader so there’s really no point in me doing so.

Nick, since Magento is based on Zend Framework, it is built on an Model-View-Controller paradigm.  This means that business logic is kept separate from views (and views can be one or more templatized scripts).

I been using Zencart for several years now for my magic shop and need to move onto a more flexible product. From what I seen so far on this site Magento looks like a promising upgrade for me. I hope porting my 8000 products be fairly painless.

I’m using X-Cart right now, and hoping to port products (and ideally users!) right away to test this out (and hoping bug fixes will be coming shortly after the release!).  How difficult will porting data from X-Cart to Magento be?  Will there be any scripts?  Any how-to documents?

I’m guessing that, since you have an added layer of abstraction for products (configurable attributes) that doing an export from one and import into the other (after heavily massaging the data, of course) will not be at all straightforward.  Is this a fairly accurate assumption?

Hi I’ve read the comment of James (#34) and I’d like to point the fact that State/Province is not used in France, so this kind of input shouldn’t appear in the billing form.

Cheer