Magento

Hello community, Tim here… Some of you might have read my first post last week, and I wanted to provide you with another update before signing off for the weekend.

As I’ve been learning more about our community over the last couple weeks, one thing that has impressed me is the level of quality coming from our extension-marketplace.  As Magento Connect continues to grow, many developers are building fantastic products (as well as thriving businesses) around our platform, resulting in hundreds of extensions that make our 35,000+ merchants successful.  With such a thriving ecosystem, I thought it would be fitting to begin featuring the most impressive Magento-Connect developers. and our very first featured story is aheadWorks.

aheadWorks began developing extensions for Magento Connect last year as “lostdocs7”, and this past week they celebrated their first-year anniversary.  They’ve built over 30 extensions and 18 themes in just one year, and they have plans to develop that same amount this year.  If you haven’t seen any of their extensions yet, be sure to take a look at their website.  For you extension developers out there looking to take your businesses to the next level, pay particular attention to the creative quality of aheadWorks’ product presentation, marketing, and value-driven product descriptions (i.e. explaining the business impact of their extensions in the first 5 seconds). 

I’m also happy to announce that aheadWorks is now offering a special 35% discount specifically for our Magento community.  From now until Monday, January 25th, enter promo-code MAGENTOCONNECT35 upon checkout and you’ll receive 35% off the final total (click here to jump to their website) .  If you’ve been holding out to purchase your aheadWorks extensions, here’s your chance!  There are many to choose from, but I’ve listed my top-10 favorites below.

But just before I dive into the top-10… If you know of any interesting success stories from our community, please feel free to email me.  I’m looking to post many more featured stories like these in the future.  Have a great weekend!

Tim’s Top-10 Favorite aheadWorks extensions

Z-Blocks
Uses native Magento functionality to create an unlimited number of static blocks and content items so you don’t need to manually change your template and layout files every time you make changes.

Follow-Up Email
A comfortable and flexible way to automatically reach out to customers on day X after an order had been placed.

AJAX Cart Pro
Effectively removes those annoying page reloads that frequently occur when users click “add to cart” and “delete from cart”.

Help Desk Ultimate
A fully-featured help desk extension.

Advanced Reports
Improves the functionality of native Magento reports and creates a complete picture of your business.

On Sale
Allows users to add visually-appealing labels to any product image. The labels can then be displayed in both the product and catalog views.

Subscriptions and Recurring Payments
Extends native Magento abilities by allowing merchants to accept recurring payments and sell subscription products.

Featured Products
Drive more of your visitors’ attention to your best and most profitable products.

Facebook Link
Makes it easier for customers to invite their friends to your store via Facebook.

Automatic Related Products
Allows you to automate the process of related products creation.