John Hok dot Com

Magento is an open source eCommerce solution built on the Zend Framework. I came across Magento when a client wanted to create an eCommerce solution to his brick and mortar herbal store that he had here in Toronto.

I knew that building an eCommerce website from scratch was not a real viable solution as eCommerce websites are complicated things. You have to take into account security, transaction processing, admin usability, and a slew of other things related to the storage and retrieval of information in databases. osCommerce was the first open source solution that came to mind but I’ve heard many things about osCommerce. Many not so good things about osCommerce that basically eliminated it as a solution for this client. This was when someone from the SitePoint forums referred me to Magento.

When I went to look at Magento, I was blown away. The beautiful, yet simplistic design of the Magento homepage was the first thing that caught my eye. Delving deeper into the application itself, I find myself confronted with a feature rich- yet clean eCommerce package. The admin control panel is also quite a thing of beauty as well! It doesn’t present you with a million of options, instead there is a nice navigation system at the top that breaks down the management of your eCommerce website into small and manageable bits. You can have a look at the demo of the admin backend right over here: http://demo-admin.magentocommerce.com/index.php/admin/

I had to ask myself, this thing can’t really be free can it? Open-source free? This will probably confirm it. Indeed Magento is free as in open-source free!

PS. I must’ve had a freudian slip writing this, as after proof-reading this entry, I noticed I spelt Magento as Magneto the entire time. But again that might just happen when your name is too close to a famous Marvel comic villain.

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