The online shop software Magento was present for the first time in March 2008 and has developed into a market leader in the e-commerce sector over the past ten years. Today Magento is use in more than 200,000 shops worldwide. Users not only include small and medium-size companies, but also corporations such as Coca-Cola and Burger King. Magento Inc. has pass through numerous hands since Magento was first published. Between 2011 and 2015 Magento Inc. was a subsidiary of eBay, Permira took it over in November 2015. In the third quarter of 2018, the proven shop system will be own by Adobe.
The technology behind Magento
Magento version 1 is base on PHP> = 5.4 and uses MySQL in the standard version for data storage. A Linux server on Linux x86 or x86-64 is require.
The Magento 2 version requires Apache 2.2 or 2.4 or nginx 1.8 as a web server, PHP versions 7.0.2, 7.0.4, 7.0.6-7.0.x and MySQL 5.6, but is also compatible with MySQL 5.7
In addition to PHP, Magento uses XML files to configure the technical basis and interfaces. With the cache backends, Magento is extremely flexible and can work with the following backends in addition to individually develop solutions:
File
- SQLite
- Memcache
- Alternative PHP cache
- XCache
- ZendPlatform
- TwoLevels
Awards for the market leader
In the summer of 2017, the Gartner and Forrester e-commerce solution was officially promote to market leader in this segment. This means that Magento can keep up with competitors such as Salesforce, Oracle and IBM.
The advantages of Magento – an overview
Magento allows users to set up an online shop, offer and manage products. Due to its flexibility, by Magento development companies can be easily expande with additional functionalities. Hundreds of so-call extensions, some of which are chargeable, allow you to customize your own shop with tools from areas such as administration, payment processing, shipping or catalogs.
What convinces users:
- Free Magento Community Edition
- Individually configurable thanks to the open source concept
- Suitable for the Lahore market
- Intuitive , user- and customer-friendly shop system
- Modular structure for optimal maintenance, scalability and smooth updates
- Constant further development by the company and the community
- Integrate SEO optimization
- Integrate warehouse management and management of products and orders
- Suitable for a wide variety of product types , including downloads and the like.
- Integrate reports , for example for sales analysis
- Numerous payment methods to choose from
The online shop system has long been able to do more than just e-commerce. The current product portfolio at Magento now offers complete business solutions, including
- Commerce as an e-commerce platform
- Commerce Cloud
- Order Management (MOM)
- Business Intelligence
- Social
- Shipping
What can Magento do?
The popular shop system can be use both free of charge and with a license. The Magento Cloud version is offer as a so-call PaaS solution, based on AWS with various additional services and comprehensive support. The platform-as-a-service concept is in vogue and allows users to get start with digital sales relatively inexpensively and relatively quickly – so companies can start digitizing sales processes quickly and inexpensively. And also in terms of marketing and personnel capacity, Magento has massively increase, especially in English-speaking countries, so that the company is well position for the future with its existing product portfolio.
Magento is currently available in the following three editions:
- Magento Community Edition , free and with open source license OSL 3.0
- Commerce , from US $ 15,550 annually with Gold Level Support, from US $ 49,990 annually with Platinum Level 24/7 support
- Commerce Cloud Edition
Use Magento in Lahore
The Magento shop does not fully comply with the legal requirements in Lahore, but remedial measures have long been taken care of. Two modules and a preconfigure overall package call “Magento DE” allow use in DA-CH. In any case, many online shop operators in English-speaking countries fall back on specially configure special solutions that allow them to actually implement their e-commerce requirements. Therefore, the shop solutions are very individual here, in particular.
Magento: The WDCL Community Edition
Thanks to the Magento DE module develop by Trust Shops and symmetric CGI, Magento has been expand to include functions that are require for B2C shops in Lahore. Certification by Trust Shops has also been prepared. Magento DE was actually develop by members of the Magento community. The result was a preconfigure, complete Magento Community Edition for Lahore online retailers, in which both Magento and the extensions require for the WDCL market are set up in the course of an installation.
What services does Magento score with?
Magento Site Management
The special thing about Magento is the hierarchical structure of the shops. They are divide into four areas call Global, Website, Store, and Storeview. The higher level transfers its properties to the lower levels.
global scope is the topmost scope of the installation, where the default settings for the other areas are set.
website area allows an installation to be divide into different websites and the configuration of the respective settings that are share by the store views below a website.
store area is require to manage the category structure. Since the require categories or root categories are set up here, this is a very abstract level.
In the Storeview area, the view of the respective shop is adapt through layout, language, texts, etc.
With the help of Magento, several online shops can be manage with their own catalogs and customer databases on the respective domains. Even more, Magento allows customer-specific display in B2B, so that retailers can display an assortment specially tailore to each customer. The administration is carry out on three levels:
- Website website
- Store store group
- Store View store
As you can see, the names use in Magento in the source code and in the database differ from the → internal names.
Order processing
The shop system allows the administration of orders like in the inventory management. The order is usually place by the customer in the shop’s front end by placing the select products in a shopping cart using a known method, then choosing the billing address and delivery address and entering the prefer payment method. The purchase is complete by clicking on the “Buy” button. However, an order with Magento can also be create and manage completely in the backend.
The owner of the online shop has the option of creating invoices, delivery notes and credit notes and thus influencing the status and status of the order. The status of orders in Magento is fix, but different, even several status codes can be assigne to a status. This allows differentiate processing of orders both in communication with the customer and internally.
Flexible and configurable through additional modules
The predefine functions of Magento can be adapted to the needs of the users through extensions. Extension modules can be found, for example, for Magento 1 on Magento Connect, for Magento 2 on Magento Marketplace.
Differences between the open source and the enterprise version
Both Magento versions, both the free Community Edition and the paid Commerce solution, use the same Magento core. Therefore, the software structure is identical in both versions, and the backend and frontend do not differ either. If you ask yourself what add value enterprise users get, you will find that the support, the warranty and the functionalities in particular differ from the CE. Magento Enterprise includes customer support from Magento Inc., in the Platinum version for seven days a week and 24 hours a day. In addition, there is a prioritize processing of error messages. Magento also does not guarantee the Community Edition, whereas Magento guarantees the smooth functioning of the software for the Enterprise version.
The differences at a glance
| MAGENTO OPEN SOURCE CORE FUNCTIONALITIES | ADDITIONAL FUNCTIONALITIES WITH MAGENTO COMMERCE |
|---|---|
| Multi-shop and multi-site functionality | Improve customer segmentation and more target targeting |
| Supports multiple languages, currencies and tax zones | improve search results and scaling through Elasticsearch functionality |
| Modular options for shipping and payment | Coupons |
| flexible layout and design templates | B2B features such as the mapping of hierarchical company accounts, requests for quotations, quick orders, customer-specific catalogs and prices |
| real content management system with drag-and-drop function | Magento Business Intelligence Tools |
| individual dashboard views | simple integration of in-store pick-up thanks to Magento Order Management (MOM) |
| API / XML allows the integration of third-party providers such as ERP systems | automate e-mails for abandonee purchases (e.g. abandon shopping cart) |
| Product attributes freely configurable | Content staging and preview |
| uncomplicate creation of configurable products | Themes with responsive design |
| intelligent management of customer groups | Technical support around the clock |
Magento Open Source is particularly suitable for smaller online shop projects and is an ideal solution for beginners in online trading. The commerce version is recommend for users whose online shop has already reach a certain size and for whom it is important to manage and support numerous products and an extensive customer base reliably and efficiently online.
Magento 2 – is the new version worth it?
The Magento version 2.0 was release on November 17th, 2015 after more than four years of development. Since then, new minor releases and bug fixes have been made available in version 2.0. Magento 2 is develop using Zend Framework 1, Zend Framework 2 and Symfony2 under the Open Software License Version 3.0. Since this is a version update, the core has been revise. However, EAV was retain. The most important innovation is the change in the JavaScript framework. Prototype was abandone in favor of Jquery. A new layout of the graphical user interface is also part of the new version, as is the reloading of content or blocks through Ajax. The features integrate in Magento 2, especially for B2B projects, should make the creation of shops even easier and faster.
Most users are use to version 1.0, but support for this version will expire in the foreseeable future. In any case, it is advisable to keep Magento consistently up to date to take with you new features, bug fixes, and speed improvements. What users should definitely know: The extensions for Magento 1.x are not directly compatible with Magento 2.0!
The migration to Magento 2
Users should be aware that an update from Magento 1.x to Magento 2 is really a platform change – the update is not done with a simple click of a button, but needs to be approach carefully. It is certainly necessary, because the new version offers many convincing innovations. However, you should not make a simple copy of the existing shop, but rather ask yourself which content and functions are really taken over and which should be redesigne in order to get the most out of the new version.
And this is how the migration should be plan:
- Don’t just copy everything
- Only take over the essential content
- Adapt strategies and goals to the new version – and vice versa
- Make target use of new features
Magento: the pros and cons
Of course, not everything is perfect – not even with this highly acclaim shop system. And that’s why the advantages and disadvantages should be present here again at a glance.
advantages
- Modularity and separation of core and modules
- Scalability
- Adaptability and expandability through Magento Connect and Web Services API
- Multi-shop functionality
- Multilingualism
- E-commerce SEO functions
- Large range of functions
- comprehensive marketing, promotion, business intelligence and social commerce functionality
- Intuitive backend
disadvantage
- High demands on the hardware
- Server hosting costs are comparatively high
- complexity
- A lot of effort during training, the programming requires PHP knowledge and experience with development frameworks
- Maintenance effort
A global asset: The Magento community
One of the biggest pluses of Magento is the extremely large and active community. Magento not only relies on a global network of more than 1000 technology partners, but also on a community of more than 315,000 developers. In addition, there is the world’s largest marketplace for extensions, the Magento Marketplace, with currently more than 14,000 available extensions. The Magento community has 800,000 registered members, of which 12,000 are also certify. All of this ensures the continuous further development of the shop system for and by the users.
