Got fed up with people posting dev versions of Magento where they’ve just changed the images and added their own cateogries whilst leaving the rest of the site as it comes so I’ve posted a link to my staging version http://ocbutcher.igentics.com/. Hopefully this shows what can really be acheived with Magento.
The 12840 release made some changes to the way the designs were handled so I’m just finishing porting this to the new release on my dev machine and then I’ll update this version.
I gues most people are like me, I want to make templates but I don’t know about the future structure of the software so I’m not willing to put any time into it at this stage.
Yes, I know. The reason that I’ve removed some functionality is that the client for whom we are working has a detailed spec of what they want and I only need to provide that required functionality. I’ve got lots of e-commerce and web development experience and can see real value in a solution that can be sold to clients ‘off the shelf’ without having to write lots of custom code. This will save lots of time in the development cycle and will also allow us to generate future revenue from the client when they ask to turn some of the other functionality on in the future.
The other important point is, I think, something that is freqently over looked when people develop any type of website. The amount of time and money required to develop a visually appealing, simple to use, but still effective admin area can easily be enough to double the project spec. All to often I’ve seen sites where the admin area is difficult to use, counter intuative and often a complete pain requiring a degree in programming to be able to use it correctly. Therefore Magento sets itself apart from so many other solution by having an amazing UI for the admin area. Ater all the client/site owner will want the front of the site to look good, allow customers to find the products they want quickly and simply BUT they will spend 90% of their time using the back-end functionality rather than the front-end.
I would have loved to produce a demo site that contained all the functionality from the Magento demo site but with a different template but I am working to a design and spec provided to me for this client. The purpose of writing this demo site was to prove to myself that Magento was really as flexible as yuo wanted it to be....there are plenty of examples on this forum that show you can simply take the header and footer, change the images and modify the CSS slightly and you have a fairly unique and feature rich site. That’s excellent, and I’m not knocking that work, it will appeal to Joe Bloggs who wants a simple E-Commerce site, wants it live and setup in a week and is happy to have it looking similar to other Magento sites. However the real value of Magento to e-commerce developers would be if it could be picked appart and used to create something a bit different, extending the code base and producing something that looks different to the standard stuff, follows the design and specification guidelines set down by the client and still has all the functionality in the background that Magento offers!
I think that this demo site proves what could be possible and I hope will motivate more and more people to start experimenting and feeding back their experiences to this forum and the the Magento team. You can see from my other posts in the ‘How to’ section that I’ve posted updates on how I have achieved certain things (i.e. putting the category details on the homepage and putting sub category images into the page as a menu) and I will post the complete site and database to this thread once I have finished so that everyone else can benefit.
Hope this explains things and I do value any comments/suggestions
this is definitely the best re-do yet! this is the type of shop i want to shop at. simple and extremely clean. THANK GOD you removed a ton of the superfluous ‘features’ normally visible through a default magento store setup. in fact, this template alone is helping to keep my faith in magento as i’ve begun to think its just trying to do way too much. honestly, all the other attempts i’ve seen where the header/footer gets switched around a little were actually driving me away.
thank you for your work here. i only hope i can follow/understand the procedure to reach this feat on my own.
THANK GOD you removed a ton of the superfluous ‘features’ normally visible through a default magento store setup. in fact, this template alone is helping to keep my faith in magento as i’ve begun to think its just trying to do way too much.
Do you think you’ve said this enough times yet?
It’s getting rather annoying to hear you whine over and over again about the same thing.
THANK GOD you removed a ton of the superfluous ‘features’ normally visible through a default magento store setup. in fact, this template alone is helping to keep my faith in magento as i’ve begun to think its just trying to do way too much.
Do you think you’ve said this enough times yet?
It’s getting rather annoying to hear you whine over and over again about the same thing.
actually do you know whats more annoying? losers trying to pick online fights! grats on that!
The default package was made as a demo, to show the possible functionality and usage.
We are aware of the fact the most of the stores won’t be using all of it at the same time.
Magento was made with flexibility as a primary goal in mind, and to create vast range of different designs and layouts so each store can be special and match it’s own concept.
Let’s keep this forum positive and constructive, so we all can benefit from it
The files I’ev posted are for the new release and I’ve updated this URL http://ocbutcher.igentics.com/ with the new version too.
Any questions/comments let me know.
, right now,
!
