I created my first Magento shop as a freelancer for a small business client back when version 1 had come out. Oy. I even just rel="nofollow"'d that link to avoid boosting their Pagerank any further. The software showed SO much promise and was SO much better than anything else out there that I was eager to try the new technology.
I designed the shop and got the client up and running, moving their inventory over from their old e-commerce solution.
A few months later, some updates started to trickle in. So I patched the site with the upgrade packages. Fail. The file permissions got messed up, the template system had changed entirely, and the database didn't migrate properly. I rolled the software back. Waiting a few months I tried upgrading again, got it marginally further, and was able to get the site up and running with some important security updates.
The "easy" upgrade solution they provide, Magento Connect, is a disaster. The thing will absolutely break your site.
Their forums are riddled with developers, designers, and proprietors for whom every upgrade destroys their hard work. Varien, the corporate sponsor of the project, is typically silent. And now that they've released their $12,000 Magento Enterprise Edition you can expect the 'community edition' to continue to be supported by people digging through the forums and exchanging cut-and-paste hacks to get the shit to work right. Looking under the hood reveals a labyrinth of directories and PHP files that will make your head spin. The database schema is insane. Any features that a client would actually want, such as WYSIWYG product editing require hacking the core files - hacks that will be lost when the software upgrades itself in place.
I have never had this much strife with a well-adopted open-source project before.
So do yourself a favor and stay far, far away from Magento. I feel pretty bad for subjecting a client to Magento, although admittedly it's a powerful piece of software that can really expand a business. It's too bad the support structure for it is a non-starter. At this point the best we can hope for is to keep the security bugs at bay and let businesses do what they do best.
Drop a comment and suggest the open-source e-commerce software that you like and why.
Comments (1)
Default Admin User:
Jul 11, 2011 at 04:02 AM
This entry sparked quite a bit of discussion but, unfortunately, I migrated CMSes and the comments did not make it over. So here are the comments in condensed form:
"MAGENTO IS UTTER TOSH! PREFER CUBECART. LESS FEATURES, BUT SIMPLE TO EDIT AND SIMPLE TO USE! THEY HAVE OVER COMPLICATED SO SO MUCH. TAKES SO LONG TO DO TA TINY TASK. SORRY FOR CAPS!"
"I agree with you. It's an absolute nightmare. Ive started using simpler wordpress based solutions for my cleints. Not as powerful but there a lack of headaches :)"
"They gave very bad support and their enterprise version is not that much affordable for everyone ,
I also wrote post on this it may help others
http://www.dacoders.com/2011/04/24/magento-thier-support-good-bad/
-S
www.dacoders.com"
"you r right fuck magento im going to back to joomla for cms solution."
"Magento can be a right pain in the a*s. I've been programming for over 5 years with some pretty advanced PHP, mySQL, XHTML, CSS, Drupal, Umbraco, yada yada... and Magento, well, that takes the biscuit. It may very well be for extremely advanced programmers but the learning curve is like trying to claw your way up a brick wall but simply falling on your arse every time. Stay away for your own sanity or go and buy yourself a straight jacket right now because you'll be needing one; unless you really want to give yourself a hernia."
"I reluctantly took a magento project from a client knowing the nightmare it already was, i will make very little per hour on this project cuz magento is in fact A FUCKING NIGHTMARE."
"Magento for middle developer, skilled developer? my ass... I have been doing a lot of different CMS/ecommerce so far Magento has the most complicated structure, confusing documentations with very little help or example provided"
"yeah ive been with magento for 2 years now... comparing the two ecommerce im using... prestahop and magento ill go for prestashop... magento updates so really a nightmare..."
"Wow, Magento is not this bad everyone! Sounds to me like the 4 people posting here and the author are just not expert PHP programmers. Magento is aimed at middle-market, skilled developers. Get over it."
"While I disagree with wording, the end result I totally agree with. Magento is probably wrong system for most of us. Once installed, you start customize and customize and customize without chance to ever upgrade it. Out of the box solution missed some key points (e.g. where is RMA system?) Tons of extensions out there, but you have to pay and they do not work they way you expect them to work, so then you start customizing paid extensions. And how is it different from osCommerce? There at least mess was understandable and could be sorted out. DAtabase was pretty simple and messy code manageable. Arhitecture of Magento is absolutely silly one."
"magento is only dream...
very hard .............slow...
fuck....ing..system...
never can customize...
BIG bug system.....fucking...magento.!!!!!!!"
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