Magento

[...] We’ve posted the first preview of the Magento admin panel on the Magento Blog. [...]

oh wow! This looks great. I love the drag and drop and the interface. It seems you guys have put a lot of thinking on the usability and user experience.

Very cool work!

You guys and gals have a date for this thing to launch yet?

Adam - we are still on for Summer 2007, most likely towards the end of July / early August.

Very nice.  I think I’m most excited about the guided navigation.  Can that be the next screencast?

Jonathan - sure thing. We’ll do our best to have a screencast of the guided navigation feature shortly. Keep those requests coming ... we’d love to hear what you want to see.

Would love to see what you refer to as “blocks” looks like.

What kind of open-source model will Magento have?  I’m asking because the development of Zen-Cart, although open-source, is kept completely private and only available to the few developers.

Will there be a community-based development system, kind of like what WordPress has, where users can submit tickets and modifications themselves?

Everything sounds great so far, and I’m excited to see how it’s going to turn out.  But I’m curious why you don’t release the code for it, given that it is, afterall, open-source.

Trevor - we will have more information on the open source model in the future. I can say, however, that the core will be controlled by our core developers consisting of Varien and community resources. Quality is an important part of Magento and it is our goal to maintain a high-level of quality throughout the life of the project.

As far as community based development, we will certainly provide a platform for the community to share and contribute modules - this is all in the works.

The code is not yet available because it’s not ready We expect the beta to launch in the next few months by early August or so at the latest.

Thank you for your interest and let us know if you have any additional questions

it this drupal mod?

Adam - Blocks are the building bricks that allow a user to create custom layouts, or customize existing layouts. It can also be considered as a ‘block’ of functionality that can be reused across the site.

Examples of blocks:
* mini shopping cart that may be on most of the catalog pages
* mini login form in page’s header
* left column navigation
* newsletter form

(really anything on the site …)

Blocks can render HTML on their own or from templates (there is no restriction on the template engine used – you can use Smarty, Zend_View, or anything else) and you can even mix them if you wish.

This may be a bit confusing at this stage of the project but we’ll have detailed documentation as we get closer to launch.

alexey - no, this is not a drupal mod/project. However, we do plan on integrating Magento with Drupal.

Very impressive !
Hard and great job

=D

Wonderfull !
Does the cart will get a drad and drop system too ? (like http://formationvideo.emob.fr/vod/famille/d/0/2-graphisme.html ). =)

[...] posted a screencast on their blog that shows a pretty cool looking backend.  It already looks much better than anything like [...]

Hi Roy, Looking great!  What kind of integration are you planning on doing with Drupal.  I am looking at starting a site using Drupal and would love to have Magento as my store!  BTW, do you need beta testers?

It looks great !
I would really like to prepare a french version of this. Is there anyway we can discuss this by email ?

I was wondering if your product will have the ability to Charge the customer for access to web pages for specific time periods.

Israel - the functionality as you described will not be available out of the box at this phase. You can, however, develop this functionality fairly easily on your own

Capitaine Commerce - I will contact you by email - thank you for the interest

pinxi - we are currently testing Magento internally. Thanks!

Lol : it looks more to a demo of the extjs kit from Jack Slocum.com than Magento eCommerce.
But the implementation of extjs is still a great succes!

Awesome
I’ld love to participate to the beta… It seems to be a powerfull solution, I’m working in the ecommerce industry (pixmania.com)… and we don’t have such tools.

Well you seem to have the DHTML widgets working, but then again Dojo or Prototype offer this sort of stuff out of the box so nothing new there.

I noticed you didn’t click on any themes or actually show how flexible the variant management is (which is really what makes or breaks a shopping cart system. Whats the products data model look like. I notices rows and rows of what looked like the same product repeated. Not very handy when trying to sort though hundreds of products.

Come on guys. This is a widgets demo, not a shopping cart demo.

CpILL - In the screencast you will a notice a “filter” button to the top left of the product (list) grid. We’ll present the functionality in future presentation, but you’ll be surprised how much control one has to view a list of products based on criteria. This comes very handy when managing a large catalog of products.

We’ll also present the control of variants(options/attributes) once its ready. Stay tuned and thanks for your interest.

So far I like I what I am seeing. Will you have option level inventory control with this?

jeff - Yes. Attribute/Option (variant) level SKU/inventory control will be supported.

Any plans to offer more sophisticated promotional functionality like business rules?  What about A/B tests?  For example: setting a two types of promotions on the same product (ie: price discount and free shipping) and offering the promotion to every other visitor—then compare the results and see which was best.

Also.. what about fulfillment?  Seems like most cart never get into that.  Do you plan to integrate with an order management tool like Stone Edge, Mailware, Fishbowl inventory?  Or do you plan to have fulfillment functionality to print shipping labels, etc?

npearson - you touch on some very interesting points, and we’ve internally discussed most of them. I can say that part of our strategy is to provide an end-to-end solution, so I do expect the product to address them as we move forward.

Fulfillment is a huge issue to online retailers and we are fully aware of the lack of a comprehensive solution in the market that properly addresses it.

In regards to your suggestion on A/B testing for promotions, I don’t expect this will be something available out of the box (unless the demand is there). I like the idea, and I believe it will be easy to achieve such functionality with a few simple lines of code.

Thanks for the suggestions and keep ‘em coming.

Hi roy, thanks for the reply.

I just wanted to follow up.  I’m a small business merchant, not a developer, so I hope my feedback will be taken in context.  IMHO the back office functionality, including inventory management and fulfillment, should all be handled by an independent middleware app.  Developing too much of that functionality into the cart would limit multi-channel operations.

However, having a well thought out integration plan with various 3rd party apps would make it easier for merchants to get up and running with your system.

Just my 2 cents.

npearson - I agree with your comments. Our focus has been on flexibility from day one, so extracting data (via flat files, direct DB access, XML, API, etc.), should allow a business owner/merchant the compatibility needed to integrate with 3rd party apps for any type of complementary service.

Hot hot hot hot hot hot…
I seriously can’t wait.. because you know we need something… something that tis clean looking… the best part its free wow wow....

I don’t think anyone is expecting this to be free and plus we need good commercial solution in this space. There are plenty of free packages already available. I am looking for an Enterprise level solution which cannot possibly be free. That said I would like to see the source code accessible for customization.

Hearing that this is open source, what language is is written in? Ruby on Rails? PHP? Java? or ASP.Net?

Do you have a screencast of what the shopping cart looks like from the front end?

Also will there be ways of using this for creating pages that are not a store front. So lets say we use this to create a complete site AND the store front in one set of code, that way I don’t need to create two code bases or use two code bases to accomplish this.

Thanks,
Tony

Tony - Magento is a PHP5 open source eCommerce platform based on the Zend Framework. We’ll have screencasts posted soon that will include the frontend as well (although the frontend can look and function in any way you choose).

In regards to your question about adding pages - no problem. You can add as many content pages as you wish and share common headers/footers/columns/*blocks* (as we call it), or not.

Let us know if you have any other questions.

Just a note of encouragement:
We are anxiously awaiting the release of Magento. Our web consulting clients hate oscommerce. It’s extraordinary that it’s still around. It feels like it’s from the dinosour age. We have put some customers with Shopify as a short term solution but as soon as a stable testing environment is ready we are eager to port them over to magento!

Ethan - I feel your pain.

We know first hand the problems with osCommerce and it definitely feels from a different time period. Shopify, although visually appealing, does not allow the flexibility and control most merchants require (in fact, any hosted “software as a service” solution falls within that realm).

Magento is a product that is developed out of the frustration with the current solutions in the marketplace. Given our experience and with the help of the community, I am certain we can develop the next generation product that will allow the flexibility merchants need and expect.

Thanks for your comment!

Roy

I just stumbled on this and am already loving what I see.

Really can’t wait to see the final product.

Kudos Magento!

*IMPORTANT*

I feel that a front end filtering system is greatly needed.

No platform currently has this, and i feel it would be greatly valued. Have a look at http://demo.elasticpath.com/ and see their filtering system. I really like it and i think it would be a great asset to have.

Other than that, im greatly anticipation a release of this.

Thanks

Andre - Magento will support Guided Navigation (Faceted Navigation) out of the box. Additionally, tags will be available as well.

Roy

[...] Your First Look At Magento We released the first screencast of Magento’s catalog system a few weeks ago, and feedback has been coming in ever since. Take a look at it, and don’t forget to tell us what you think.  [...]

Just a couple things I’d like to see:

- checkout without an account (guest checkout)
- export to QuickBooks
- different pricing depending on customer level (so distributors can order with wholesale pricing directly on the site)
- guided navigation within a product (options for size, color, etc) that allow each option to determine the next (different sizes come in different colors, etc)

Also, you never commented on whether or not this will be available for free...though I’ll probably be switching to it regardless

Ben - I believe all of the features you specified will be available. Magento *is* open source eCommerce so access to the code is certainly free.

A roadmap will be published in the next few weeks with a detailed list of functionality and milestones.

So far so good. I wish you would have shown more “Magento specific” features. To me it just seems like a nice widget demo for Jack Slocum’s ExtJS framework. However, I look forward to seeing how this progresses. Keep up the good work.

P.S.) Will there be any support for product barcodes?

Josh - more information will be released very soon, including in-depth screencasts ahead of the release. In terms of barcodes - what did you have in mind? We’d love to hear your ideas.

Please include quantity discounts in the cart. 

For example a quantity of 1-10 the price is 20.00, for 11-20 the price is 17.00, for 21 + the price is 15.00

Thanks, this cart looks awesome! Cant wait!

jeff - you’ll be happy to hear that bulk pricing / quantity pricing will be supported in Magento

Hello,

URL rewriting will be supported in Magento ?

Allande - Yes. URL Rewriting (search engine friendly URL’s) and other advanced SEO capabilities will be supported. The cart will be *very* SEO friendly.

What about a way to list products by UPC Code?
I think this is what Josh is talking about.

Jim - this should be possible with the addition of a few lines of code. We’ll have out-of-box front-end sorting for things like price, ratings, best sellers, and more. A list of features will be published soon.

I’m sorry, but what kind of demo shows sort orders and customizable columns as anything to do with ecommerce? I fail to see how this showcased anything to do with technology or any power behind this system because the Outlook does the same things with its columns and hierarchy.  I think the subject matter on this screen cast needs work because those in search of ecommrece systems need to see more than “sort ascending.” I was somewhat disappointed.

I have to agree with Daisy.  I was waiting for something to happen and nothing did.  I was left thinking...what was the point of showing me that??  Still very excited for the release, just hoping to get an better look.

Daisy and Tim - more information will be available soon and future screencasts will show additional functionality. In the meantime, you car refer to the blog posts for information about Magento’s upcoming features.

How easy will it be to integrate your cart with an existing design?
(btw - initial shot looks good and I look forward to its release)

Bjarni - if you are a designer and have worked with templating system before, it will be a snap. We expect to have detailed documentation and tutorials to assist designers and webmasters in getting started.

Cheers Roy, I have to admit I’m a bit excited and look forward to its public release.

One thing I’d love to see as a merchant is the inclusion of an ‘estimated delivery’ option… some products just take longer to produce.  Also, a great feature would be, with that ‘estimated delivery’ option, a feature that you could ‘rush produce’ the product.  So, normal turnaround for product x is 10 business days, and rush is 5… there would be an extra charge for the rush which may vary by product.  Product 7 is 6 business days as a rushed option, so the estimated delivery would be 6 business days (not counting weekends), plus estimated ship times on the selected shippiong option.
I could write all day on this, but I’ll stop.
I’m excited about this product!

I’d be even more excited if I could spell or construct a coherent sentence.

Product ‘7’ was supposed to be product ‘y’

Floyd - great ideas! I don’t believe such a feature will be available out-of-the-box initially, but we’ll certainly add it to the list and consider it for future releases. You can, however, choose to develop this on your own, given that the source is 100% available.

I’m a designer and not too familiar or comfortable with code. How easy is it to intall this and customize?

Thanks

Nirz - With Magento’s templating system, you do not need to know ‘code’. There are a few template structures to learn (we’ll provided tutorials) in order to control the layout effectively.

Along the lines of this possibly becoming a Drupal theme, do you have plans to integrate this into Joomla 1.5 also? I’m new to both CMSs but have found myself self leaning more towards Joomla for it’s theming engine while leaning towards Drupal for it’s architecture. However I wonder how Drupal 6 and Joomla 1.5 stack up seeing how Joomla 1.5 looks like it’s getting completely rewritten from the bottom up. I dunno I’m a n00b in this area.

Tony - no immediate support for either Drupal or Joomla. This is something we’d love the community to work with us on once the product is released.

Looks good, and people have been giving good questions/requests here. One more thing tho, what kind of payment modules are available out of the box? Or did someone already develop for example Italy specific modules (people working for the italian version maybe..)?

Anyway, if Magento turns out to be as flexible as hyped, it shouldn’t be too much work to modify an existing payment system or even create it from scratch.

Oh, also, I hope the IRC channel gets more lively

ojt - you can see my response to the payment gateways here - look for #5

nice, can we have the beta/demo version ? i can’t wait to review this magento commerce. btw, is your product support many kinds of payment gateway such as paypal, 2co, authorize, stormpay, T/T, western Union, money gram etc ?

is is available for us to change the looks/theme of your product as easy as wordpress theme ?

eko - not yet. A beta will released in the coming weeks. In regards to payment gateways, see comment #66.

It will be relatively simple to change the look and theme of Magento (given its template-driven architecture). The real power and flexibility of Magento allows you to apply a different layout, theme, design on a per page, per category and even per product basis.

Recently one of my clients asked me to build an ecommerce web site. I had worked with oscommerce in the past, but the experience was less than satisfying.

I started investigating the alternatives and finally settled on CubeCart. It’s quite nice, but it still doesn’t give me the desired freedom.

I’m excited to see if Magento will be the holy grail in open source ecommerce development.

Here is my question:

Why is the core going to be zend encoded and NOT open to the public? If so, this is not a truly open source application.

Please feel free to correct me.

I do like all the new features and the approach to resolve some long unanswered questions and solutions on the consumer level. The only thing I am concerned about is the core or anything that will be zend encoded to shy away form true opne source.

We do look forward to this release and I am hoping to develop on this platform for my clients if it delivers the promises.

Thanks and good work magento staff!

Jim - Magento is not “Zend Encoded” - it is based on the Zend Framework which is an open-source PHP5 framework. None of the components with Magento are encoded or compiled.

Ok, thanks for clearing this up for me. I just wanted to make sure.