Magento

Im a web designer and I have tried Magento. It is extremely bogged down. I spent 6 hours trying to customize the store but your code is such a mish-mash I found it impossible. How are you planning to solve this? We as web designers need to be able to easily customize Magento. If not, what good is it to us? I have 3 years experience with HTML CSS and PHP and your code is incredibly confusing to customize, edit and add to.

@foojativ - I’m sorry to hear of your experience. The feedback we’ve received is very much the opposite. In any case, thanks for taking part in the community and hopefully you’ll pick up the code and templating engine in the future. Glad to have you on board.

Yeah, foo… you should take a look at the designer’s guide. Designing for Magento is smooth like butter!

Honestly, try it, you’ll like it:
http://www.magentocommerce.com/media/screencasts

@foojative - I had a hard time at first as well, but that was because I came at Magento thinking I could just wing it and be OK without reading the manual.  There’s an acronym on the internet that goes RTFM, it means something along the lines of “Read the FULL manual” the designers guide and the screencasts will help you out a lot.  Just humble yourself so you will be in a position to receive.

http://www.magentocommerce.com/design_guide/

Be careful when you say “we as web designers”, Foojativ.  You’re not speaking on behalf of many web designers/developers that have been a part of this community longer than the less than two weeks you have.

I’m not trying to sound like a dick, but am sick of seeing people who complain in the blog comments, rather than ask for support in the forums.

Yes, Magento is more difficult to use than something like Wordpress, to some extent.......but I think it’s important to have a learning curve so we don’t end up with 10 million default Magento installations on the web.  The complexities serve as a fantastic filter to deter people that are too lazy to put a bit of work into learning and using it.

Remember, “if it were easy, everyone would do it”. 

The open source community doesn’t take well to criticism. Like good catholics they believe it is the critical individual who is always wrong and the hierarchy which is always right. Thus you have to ‘humble yourself’ and the code must be difficult to work with as a deterrent to such sacred knowledge becoming accessible to the masses. One must spend countless hours studying large and involved texts before one has the right to say “how can this be done easily and straightforwardly?”. The open source movement frequently answers a question or expression of dissatisfaction by telling you to be happy you’re getting something for free and to pipe down. Nonetheless the open source movement likes to harp on about how challenging to the commercial status quo it is and how it has the power to change the paradigms of the web.

I work as a web designer. My partner works. We have children. What makes you think I have endless hours to spend reading through stodgily written manuals in order to get something like a shopping cart to work? If it can’t be explained simply within an hour then it’s your explanations that are wrong, not the people using them. If you wish to take on the commercial world then you must show the same professionalism and dedication of usability that it exhibits. Otherwise you’re just techie priests acting as gatekeepers to keep the masses from viewing your ‘sacred knowledge’.

@Liam: in the end it is always your personal decision on your investment versus benefit.

We’ve spent countless hours working on Magento, and I consider my personal benefit (experience, achievement, satisfaction, small revelations about myself) is higher than investment (time i could spend on something else, fingers and wrists cramps, health in general from sitting all day long). That’s why I continue doing what I do. No one forces me to do it. If it wouldn’t be the case, I would just not be doing this. If after the fact I recognize that things could be done better, I appreciate the experience and try adding it to my future plans.

Do you feel that the case is different with you?

if you do not feel that your benefit of using Magento covers your investment of time, may I suggest using less extensive and complex system until the Magento community and people that do see the value and are interested in making this product the best out there, will make it consumable for you.

Complaining and blaming someone else for your own investment decisions are, mildly put, counterproductive.

Well said Moshe.  Well said.

There’s no question that Magento will get easier as time passes and it’s functions and processes are documented in the most effective way by Varien and the community.  If a handful of people are accustomed to being spoonfed with their applications, then go somewhere else.

Open sourcers take for granted that the Varien team are working their asses off to reinvent the e-commerce game and not paying a single cent for Magento.  With a couple weeks away from a production release, bitching in the comments is exactly what Moshe said, “counterproductive”, so stop it.

I appreciate my comments may seem petulant and to be honest they are intended to be provocative to put the cat amongst the pidgeons and get some energy going. But there is an essential truth in what I say.
I have spent many hours configuring open source systems over the years with very mixed results and have found the single greatest barrier to getting them working is the lack of clear and thoughtful explanations. That is why I offered to help the magento team with the task of providing those explanations for this open source project. I would like to get magento working because it seems very impressive and useful but I can’t for the life of me get the frontend working even though I have succeeded in getting the backend working. No-one mentioned that this is beta software when I was downloading it, I’ve only become aware of that when looking over the forums. I presume a production release is nearly due and I look forward to it.

Nonetheless you must listen to what non-programmers say and allow yourself to agree with them, not throw it back in their faces. They have a right to criticise, for even though you are freely giving of your time so too are they. This is a collaborative project and including non-programmers will greatly enhance the accessibility and range of the product. After years of fiddling about in the dark with poorly commented open source code I’m sure many, including me, wish to blow off a bit of steam about what is the single greatest barrier to use of such code.

@Liam - Your comments are appreciated and we welcome the community’s feedback. So much so in fact, that Magento’s latest releases and features have incorporated much of what has been discussed by the community (and more to come). We’d love have your assistance and welcome any contribution made to the wiki in terms of documentation, explanations and anything you see as missing. The community site provide numerous ways to contribute back.

@Moshe, I am new to Magento too, and I have sign up as a silver partner with Magento.
I did ask question in the Magento Community Translation blog. But It’s been more than two days, and nobody answer my question.  I am confused and frustrated too.

Adam,

I am sorry to hear that, did you not receive our welcome email with the links to logos and the partner information?

If you can direct me to the blog comment I will definitely make sure someone looks at it, but the Partner email should be able to direct you to the location of the partner response system where you will have a better chance of being answered.

I have sent you an email and pm as well, please let me know from either there, or here, if you need me to re-send the partner email.

Chris

I know I shouldn’t feed the trolls but what the heck it’s Monday anyways…

@Liam

You must be joking. You come charging into a thread wielding half-baked aphorisms and insulting religious stereotypes and then in another post declare yourself a clever provocateur. Uh. Right. How droll.

Moshe, who I know for a fact has poured countless hours into the construction of this app, granted you a gift of even-temperedness in his response.

Your missives are such a rich vein of petulant illogic but I’ll constrain myself to gingerly picking a few road-apples:

You say that “an hour” is supposed to be the cap on what it takes to learn something. Really? What kind of touchy-feely esteem factory were you educated in? Reward tends to be commensurate with effort. A download of Magento is not an iPhone. I.e. it is not a finished product tuned for the end user. It is more the set of tools so that a *dedicated professional* can construct a meaningful end-user experience. If your schedule is so busy that you can’t invest the time in learning new tools then fine. No harm. That’s your call but don’t start-up some kind of soft-headed “work is hard” whinging that it’s Magento’s fault.

You say you need to blow off steam about the “open source movement”. Ironic then that you chose to come to one of the most atypically well-organized, documented, and quality-oriented projects out there to commit your confession.

And by the way, open-source is only a loose description of a licensing model. It’s as much a “movement” as the “wearing shirts with collars” movement. It just doesn’t tell you much about what’s going on inside so don’t pretend it does. Do you even know anything about the actual license Magento will be released under?

Didn’t know it was beta? Ummm.. the words “beta’ on the front page are a good hint. Also, if the version # is not 1.0 or greater: It’s beta (or less).

In all honesty, I just don’t think that open-source is really the right fit for you.

Enough fun. Back to my regularly-scheduled Monday.

Thanks for the giggles,
Chris

Just a note - I’ve been working with HTML for several years, and quite a few with PHP.  For the last 5 years, my web stores have ran off open source ecommerce software.  And I’m STILL learning. 

For anyone to put a time constraint on learning new things is ridiculous.  Most people continue to learn and grown their knowledge over years and years.  I am that way and I am enjoying it.  I also can not wait for Magento to get out here in production.  I plan to switch both my webstores to Magento after the import tool for my current software is completed. 

I am so excited about it!  I just hope that the Magento team gets the ball rolling quickly on the OSCommerce Creloaded import tool.  Thanks too all of the Magento team for a wonderful product and all the excitement leading up to it’s release! 

Julie

@Chris,

I post the question in the Magento Community Translation blog.  Here is the question:

I noticed that there is a Taiwan locale select item in the localization installation process .
But the translation list above only has Chinese locale not Taiwan locale.  Does the Chinese translation files has anything to do with the selection of localization installation?  I add the Chinese translation into the app/locale folder, but I also did not see the Chinese select item at the store front end.  What is the relation of this translation files with the language selection at front end?

@Liam: Nice random dig at the Catholic church… very classy.

@ifoundthetao: Read the *full* manual… I’ve never heard it exactly like that before.

Hope the ‘Under the Radar’ conference goes well.  Will be good to hear a report.

@Ross - We’ll certainly try to do a wrap up post after the conference.

@Adam: We posted a response to your original question. In the future, please contact us in the ways we provided for you with your partner sign-up, as we do not always monitor blog posts for technical questions, and as such, can make no guarantee they will receive a response, unlike the options provided to you which will always ensure a response.

Like I said, the open source movement or at least many of its techie adherents don’t like criticism whatsoever. My description of their reactions was accurate, as evidenced by the subsequent reactions.

If you can’t explain the basics of a system in a hour then its your explanations that are at fault, not the people using them. This should be self-evident. This is not the quantum-mechanical effects of the Large Hadron Collider we’re discussing here, it’s a bloody shopping cart. I had been avoiding virtuemart since I had read such bad reviews about it and was searching for a more simple solution for creating a catalogue on my client’s site. Eventually I had to download and install virtuemart since no better solution seemed to be available. (A version of virtuemart that is compatible with joomla 1.5 has only become available over the last 5 days or so). What I found is that it installed easily and I was all over it within 15 minutes. Comprehensible and logical. In a word, accessible.

Nevertheless I have found the magento team politie and personally helpful. I hope they understand where I’m coming from and take on board what I say to make the product usable for the web design community and public at large alike. I look forward to the production version.

P.S., I find the backend of magento relatively understandable and flexible. It’s just getting the damn thing to work on my server that is proving to be very difficult.

Liam,

First off, I believe the open source community certainly welcomes criticism, otherwise they would not be involved in open source, but I do not want to begin an argument on this as people are welcome to their opinions and they are difficult things to change. I did want to respond to you though on a more substantive level though, so I’ll get to it.

As far as what seems to be the crux of your situation, I think there are a few things at play here.

One, from the pm’s we exchanged it seems your server does not meet the system requirements, and while Magento can run on servers which do not meet them, it involves work-arounds and this will always involve time and some frustration, unfortunately.

Were any of the 2 commonly found problems with the cgi I sent you in that pm the source of the problem? If not please let me know and we will certainly take a look. (responding to the pm is the best way to accomplish this as I will be notified sooner, and i or you can then post the resolution in the forum to help others who might come across the same problem).

As far as the software and its complexity, we make no bones about the fact that the Magento code is a bit complex when first looked at. We will be releasing a User Guide, and the training program (details to be announced soon) should help you understand faster how to develop using Magento.

We set out to make an eCommerce platform which is the best of the breed, open source or not, and as such it needs to be more complex than the current offerings, which might be simple to customize, but have shortcomings in their functionality. The tradeoff of more functionality will always be more complexity, but we feel we have accomplished an agreeable trade-off between the two, and while we certainly have leaned towards more functionality as opposed to simpler architecture, it is a balance we feel is perfect.

Further, we think that Magento is more than just a shopping cart, but an integral piece of software that fits into an integrated business model, and as such needs to do more than just be a simple shopping cart.

Anyway, let me know on the problem you were having with the installation and we should be able to help you out.

Chris

@Liam and Chris,
English is not my mother language, so I need to look into dictionary to understand what is the fuss between you.  Liam, please look into my website http://www.epacificweb.com , I developed the shopping cart from open source code. You can get the shopping cart knowledge from http://www.javapassion.com/j2ee/ online course. It’s free.  Chris, I still think for 173 tables database is a big database, it’s not easy to totally understand it. I hope in the future there will have two versions of Magento: one is basic with small database (less than half size of the current one), and professional with the current database. BTW, I have more than 15 years programming experience, and I am still learning.