I appreciate the opinions in this thread regarding no-CMS integration as it will take valuable development time away from the core directives of the project. There has yet to be, IMHO, an open-source eCommerce solution that kicks ass right out of the box (cms integration or not). I am here, though, to grovel for Joomla integration. So, another way to look at the problem could be this:
1) We all want integration: from the shopping-list-ordering fridge to the web-surfing handheld converged device that doubles as the TV remote. We want to be able to modify content on one page of the site and change the price of an item for sale on another page using the same interface.
2) Popularity always wins the longevity contest in the technology sphere. We have all witnessed (many over and over) a far superior application falling out of favor with the masses simply because it can’t attract long-term users.
Combine these two factors, add major CMS integration and shake.
2) Popularity always wins the longevity contest in the technology sphere. We have all witnessed (many over and over) a far superior application falling out of favor with the masses simply because it can’t attract long-term users.
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Nice to see this post. Was a little surprised at the views against Joomla integration. Not that those folks aren’t fully entitled to their views. I just think the whole point of CMS is getting misunderstood.
Content Management System. It’s all about content and content is important. The enourmous growth in popularity of CMS shows that this is the future. Users wil want more than ‘just’ an e-commerce system, however good that system is. Zen Cart, in my opinion, missed the chance of being an integrated system and needed to create a complex (to use) paging system for non-shop pages. It seems the trends are that most people do want forums, blogs, a variety of articles as part of their online shopping site. If Virtuemart had the shopping functionality of Zen Cart, I wouldn’t be here!!
Where Virtuemart has an enourmous advantage over OsCommerce (and related) sites is that it can look like anything you want. Not just about Joomla templating, but the shop can be a large of small part of any page. Other content can take a priority if that is what a seller wants. I really do think the days of full-on shopping sites, with an about us and contact page, and various modules telling us the best sellers, are coming to an end. I see people wanting to be more involved than that. I see CMS becoming the base of most websites.
That’s right. I think that the CMS functionality is an essential part of the whole site. One example comes from our company. We are a telecom products wholesaler and need a good looking and functional site where we present product information, provide downloadable files (e.g. datasheets, software updates, manuals etc.), provide user specific content (available only upon login, such as pricelists), gallery of product pictures that can be downloaded and put on a partner’s site, a blog for annoucements and news, and more features that only a robust CMS system can provide. And yes, I’m not even talking about those new tools such as forums, wikis. And we also need an e-shop where our partners can place their orders (and we need advanced functionality for that).
As you can see the complexity of features, an integration of advanced CMS (such as Joomla) and shopping cart (such as Magento) is a must for us.
The clever point I see in the posts against CMS/Magento integration is that this probably should not be a thing that Varien should be working on. Because the CMSs have their own lives and Varien really can not devote their resources to work on completely different products. Indeed, Magento is open source so many features depend on the community. So if there are enough people (incl. developers) interested in such integration, I suppose someone will do the programming needed for integration. I’m waiting for that too.
From my point of view I think it IS something Magento / Varien should do (and by ‘should’ I mean for their beneift, not my expectations). I say this simpy because the changes needed are within Magento. The CMS, say Joomla, does what it does. It already allows integration. It is Magento that does not.
And to answer the next post, I think the last thing we want is Varien creating a CMS system. We have enough of those. And the ones we have are very good. My question to the Magento community is: Is there still a large market for pure e-commerce sites? I would say there is not. I think OsCommerce did everything that could be done (although lacking in some refinement). Magento doesn’t just want to be a better OsCommerce. Look how much ground ZenCart has lost to Virtuemart and Ubercart. Those system are not better, they just have CMS integration.
I see the future being CMS based sites. I think the real future champions in e-commerce will be the sites that integrate with CMS. Just take a look at some of the better Joomla/Virtuemart sites out there with the diversification, integrated customer involvement (forums, blogs, articles), and the options for Joomla templating, compared to the better ZenCart / OsCommerce sites, which in general still have a similar look, with many sites having the same templates.
If the JFusion Joomla itegration really does the job, it could do more good for Magento than 100 new ecommerce features.
For those of us whose content is of a highly structured nature, integration with something like phpmaker would be useful in terms of its flexibility and speed of development.
I would certainly second a vote for Digitalus not just because it is based on Zend Framework but it is also unencumbered by years of unsuitable addons
Add me to this list. Then it is Drupal over Joomla in my book (for its flexibility and output’s control).
Speaking of Drupal, I think that the Magento team should implement some feature similar to the one that will merge and “minify” the multiples JS and CSS files whenever you go live, among others.
If you really wanted to integrate an awesome CMS, ExpressionEngine would be the one, especially with EE 2.0 coming out and the fact that it would be built and integrated entirely with the CodeIgniter MVC framework.
We’re currently working on a Drupal / Magento integration which is at the early stages. Here are the 3 main areas we’re covering at this stage:
1. Sharing a session between Drupal and Magento (Done)
2. Passing the Magento product structure back through to Drupal to create a common menu structure (50% there)
3. Utilising the member / user database of one to enable the other (to do, but based on the Magento PHP Architect book which has a chapter on doing this).
It’s all to make Magento sit within Drupal, not the other way around and we’re pretty much ignoring the Magento templates as so much can be done with the Magento API.
Don’t ask me about Drupal module specifics at the moment as we’re not ready to publish anything, but it would be good to hear from people who (a) have got further than we have and actually have Drupal and Magento running together, particularly where users are concerned or (b) would benefit from implementing this themselves.
This isn’t likely to be published as a Magento module as it will be a way of pulling Magento data into Drupal, but when we get it to work (not an if, but when) we’ll publish it here and also through the Drupal community.
