Magento

Ok, please done come down hard on me.  I just want to place my experience with Magento.

The first time I saw what it could do, I said WOW!  I MUST SWITCH NOW!

I am currently running CRELoaded 6.3.3 B2B - works wonderfully, but it’s limited, especially once you’ve hit that ceiling.  Plus the code is so full of bugs, and it’s just scattered and messy.  But, I’ve used it religiously for 4 years now, starting off with OSCommerce, and eventually moving over to CRELoaded.  But now, seeing Magento, I must have it.  Which leads me to this post.

I have been working on trying to get Magento properly set up on one of our sites for the past 4 months now to no avail.  It’s one thing after the other.  The issues aren’t the code or any specific errors or issues.  The issues are more… HOW THE HECK DOES THIS THING WORK?

My main gripe is that you are not informed that you need above average knowledge of XML, PHP, as well as other coding languages to get Magento to do what you want it to do.  Magento was NOT developed for novices or beginners in this world, but more for developers and coders.  Which is fine, but I wish I would have been warned, before spending 4 months of precious time on this only to get nowhere closer to launching the new Magento commerce site.  Which sucks, because it’s such a great product.  I have an above average knowledge of PHP, and minimal knowledge of XML.  Thanks to OSCommerce & CRE, I’ve had to educate myself on PHP to get the software to do what I want it to do, as well as to fix the various bugs.  But for Magento… I can’t even begin to crack the surface of what goes where, and does what.  The file structure is insanely complicated, with folder after folder after folder for nothing.  I have to travel 8 directories down to find a simple image file.

Perhaps this is done on purpose in order to purchase their varied support options, which I would gladly do, but it is probably cheaper to just hire someone to install, customize, and then show me how it all works.

Lastly, I know this is open-source, but even the minimal support that one does receive from other members is full of unanswered questions.  Many end similar to this.... “....i think that’s what you do.  It worked for me, but I don’t know how I got it to work.” So that doesn’t help much.

Although it’s a fantastic product, with TONS of options.  All of these features come at a price, and unfortunately for me, that price is time spent learning the Magento way, which I do not have.

Tasks such as a simple product import are made complicated for no reason.  Forget about mass adding categories, or mass image import.  I can’t even update our inventory on hand via an XML feed - there is just no easy way to do this, other than to modify core files - which is what I don’t want to do.

So, I have decided to abandon our Magento project until it is more simplified, or at least until I have a better working knowledge of it’s coding structure.  I’m looking at this as a business owner, end-user… and not as a programmer/designer.  And that’s where the issues lies.  I just don’t have the time nor resources to master this system just yet.

Thank you for a wonderful product, and I wish Magento and every user the best of success.  It’s just too much for me right now.

Regards,

- Gary.

I couldn’t agree more. To me it seems that all the unfinished modules and bugs are left in in an attempt to get people to pay for Magento’s pricey help solutions. Every day there seems to be some new error with our site to track down and squash. It’s maddening.

Yes, there is definitely a learning curve with Magento. I’ve recently been pointed to the MVC (model-view-controller) model to understand what the Magento framework is based on. Even after a quick glance at the concepts, I’ve immediately found it easier to navigate through the layers of Magento. But I’m a developer and it’s more than worthwhile for me to take the time to learn the ins and outs of this stuff.

If you can’t find your answers in the community forum or wiki and you’re willing to pay even a little bit, you don’t have to pay for the ‘pricey help solutions’ from Magento to get answers to your issues. Try posting on the job board or look around the boards to find an active community member who seems to really know what they’re talking about and ask them if they’d be willing to do some simple consulting.