I was just wondering if anyone actually had the 1.0 version of Magento deployed and what their thoughts were on it.
John

I'm about to have this installed and running on my server. I will try to remember to give you my most unbiased opinion and evaluation of Magento as I learn how to use it and make it functional.

I've heard a lot about it, but know of few that actually use it. I would be interested in this topic as well.

Still learning the system, dev. etc. So far i love it.

We have the demo store installed in our server (shared hosting platform).
So far so good. ;)

Instead of the headaches of trying to install it myself on my server, I opted to pay the Magento team to install it on my server. They claim to have a 48 hour turn-around time but so far, it's almost 24 hours in and I wonder if they work on Saturdays. Either way, I really like how this cart works after looking at the demo cart. I can't wait to mess around with it for myself.

As there seems to be more and more responses to Magento and the fact that it is open source I decided to see what its really like. I will also make a module for Quantum and if they do not have ones for the other gateways I am familiar with I will be making modules for this as well.

Still learning the system, dev. etc. So far i love it.

The same I do.

I have magento installed on a test site - in general I like it, however I am struggling with the way product images are handled. I know I can edit the css & code to do whatever I want, but I was really hoping magento would be a product that could handle some simple look and feel changes without needing to directly edit files. After spending the last 5 years hacking x-cart and then not being able to apply patches and upgrades, I would prefer to minimize customizations. The product images are critical to my site and I'm not sure Magento is going to do it for me.

BillyBob, that's the same problem I experienced when I played with Magento. I think it's capable of a lot, but there's not a sufficient/easy enough means to access those capabilities.

This may fine for a hard-core coder whose idea of nirvana is being up to their neck in code, but from what I've seen in the industry, they're shutting out a ton of people who have neither the skills nor desire to dick around with things at that level.

(And then we have the regular working class and business people who simply are not going to invest hundreds of hours learning how to do everything ... the law of diminishing returns is at play here. At a certain point, when it takes too much work, it's just not worth it anymore.)



I wanted Magento to work ....... it's just not quite "there" yet, for my and my clients' use.

:D Bailey

Have played a bit around with Magento and its a sleek piece of works with an easy install, but as its stands now the major problem is that its very ressource demanding and with a slow loading time.

So if you are looking to use it, you should preferably have your own dedicated server to run it off.

At their websites forum you can find live shops examples under the forum chanel: Showcases

*nods* VERY resource intensive.

They are working on it as complaints come in, however, it's a slow process.

I had a fellow who couldn't update his categories without the process using less than 32 MB of RAM. You've got to be kidding me. :eek: Heck no, we're not upping the limits on PHP for something like that... If simply modifying categories snarfs up that much RAM, what kind of resources does something major require?!?! Eeeesh.....


Again -- lots of potential, but still falling terribly short in practice.


:D Bailey

we get a lot of similar feedback from clients, slow loading times, heavy to use etc...

we get a lot of similar feedback from clients, slow loading times, heavy to use etc...

correct, on dedicated server without any other services/websites working very slow.

The magento cart it self takes 46.2 MB of webspace/hard drive, compare to oscommerce it is nearly 6 times more (oscommerce = 8.14 MB).

oscommerce is nothing compared to magento. Considering its Magentos first release it blows oscommerce out of the water and the load time and SEO problems should be fixed relatively soon.

*nods* VERY resource intensive.

They are working on it as complaints come in, however, it's a slow process.

I had a fellow who couldn't update his categories without the process using less than 32 MB of RAM. You've got to be kidding me. :eek: Heck no, we're not upping the limits on PHP for something like that... If simply modifying categories snarfs up that much RAM, what kind of resources does something major require?!?! Eeeesh.....


Again -- lots of potential, but still falling terribly short in practice.


:D Bailey
Could be a result of bad coding. I've looked at this software, but I haven't downloaded or installed it anywhere yet, so I have yet to see any of the code.

Well I have Magento installed. It is a big program for sure. However it will not let me login. If I enter the right password I just get the same login to admin panel screen. If I enter a wrong password then it tells me. I checked all the other sites on my devel site and they are working. go figure

Well I have Magento installed. It is a big program for sure. However it will not let me login. If I enter the right password I just get the same login to admin panel screen. If I enter a wrong password then it tells me. I checked all the other sites on my devel site and they are working. go figure
Sounds like a session problem.... What browser?

Well, IMO, OSCommerce is not even a remotely fair comparison. I mean, let's be fair.

If I was going to suggest an alternative, I think I'd say ZenCart... at least it handles plug-ins, like SEO and reporting, much more gracefully and easily, than OSC.

Comparing Magento to stock OSC is like comparing a dump truck to a bicycle... I mean, they both have wheels, but ... ???

:D Bailey

I really like Magento's site and docs.

However, it doesn't seem to want to play nice with electronically-delivered products. It's also a bit annoying to try and add custom options to products (like a text input box).

Those things have been holding us back from deploying it. I'm sure it'll catch up as it matures.

I've been looking at X-Cart (http://www.x-cart.com/) in the meantime.

Oh its not a session issue as far as the server goes. There are several other development sites and carts on it and they all work. I have used IE 6, 7 and firefox. All do the same thing. When you use the correct credentials you just get taken back to the login page.

Sounds like a session problem.... What browser?

Oh its not a session issue as far as the server goes. There are several other development sites and carts on it and they all work. I have used IE 6, 7 and firefox. All do the same thing. When you use the correct credentials you just get taken back to the login page.
Session problem with Magento, is what I was referring to...

We're about to launch a large production site for a client. We've been heavily involved with implementing Magento since around Oct of last year. Love the feature set, but the app is truly a dog performance wise.

Lots of blow-back/denial from the Varien team, but it's just grandstanding to buy time. Magento is meant to be used for larger stores, no doubt about it. I'm sure significant performance improvements are in the works, but even with those improvements I'd be surprised if Magento will ever be appropriate for small stores on a shared hosting account.

If you go look at their showcase site list on their wiki, most of those 'showcase' sites take 8-10 seconds to add a product to the cart. We're planning on standing this first site up with a fairly heavy box, dual CPU 4GB of RAM. And it's not a big store, maybe 500-600 products, it's just going to take that much horsepower to slog through all the queries Magento tries to run. It's really kind of silly when you consider just how much work we've put into getting performance to anywhere near acceptable. Hopefully they'll make some strides soon... but until then... I'd probably give it 6-12 months before it becomes truly viable.

Brandon

...and this is why I was cautioning people last year, Magento is beta, and it's going to be essentially beta (in a practical sense) for a long time to come.

And look at that. It is basically still beta! ... This was no great prediction, it is simply the reality of software development.

It takes more than grandiose promises and a pretty website to pull off great things. I realize people wanted this to work on the time-table initially presented, but it wasn't realistic. And in the meantime, we still don't know when, if ever, the resource-usage problems are really going to be resolved.

:D Bailey

Disagree with the above statement, the features built in alone are enough reason to use it now and develop it further. Several developers have already made it a smoother system.

I just deployed an online furniture site using Magento as the bankend. It has its flaws, but the client wanted something affordable and Magento offered that.