We’re all suffering from a sugar rush at the moment having just launched the web site for the Sweet Treat Company, a retro sweet shop which launched on-line and off-line last week in Winchester, UK.
When it comes to choosing an e-commerce platform the choices are almost endless – buy off-the-shelf, develop it from scratch, plug-in a Paypal or Google payment system?
For Sweet Treats we chose Magento Commerce, an free and open-source, pure-bred shopping solution. It comes complete with a wide range of e-commerce features you’d expect from the likes of Amazon and can be extended via an on-line portal of free (and paid-for) add-ons.
We looked into several e-commerce solutions before picking Magento including our own but ultimately it was Magento that fitted the clients brief and budget and gave us maximum design flexibility.
The result was we spent less time developing shopping baskets and product listings and more time focusing on design and usability which ultimately led to an easier testing process and higher quality control.
Having said all that Magento isn’t for the faint hearted and is a beast that needs to be tamed in order to get the most out of it however we’ve been so impressed with it we’re already working on three other e-commerce projects which we’ll be launching over the next few weeks.
Magento comes in two flavours, a community edition which is free and a paid for enterprise edition which adds more security features but for most solutions the community edition is perfect. The underlying platform is based on PHP and MySQL and runs on Linux or Microsoft servers.
So whether it’s packets of Dib Dabs or Rhubarb and Custard by the pound, pop along to www.sweettreatco.co.uk and prepare to be taken back in time (and spend a few quid)
Yum Yum!
Loddon Business Centre, Roentgen Road, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG24 8NG UK | T +44 (0)1256 334567 | E
Having seen @jasonkneen mention it frequently, it’s certainly something that impresses me. I would previously have gone for osCommerce, as this was what I’d played with before. However, I’m looking for an excuse to go set up an eCommerce site with Magento powering it.
Comment by - Gary Date Posted - August 19, 2009
Thanks for the comment. Magento is feature-rich and the first thing you should do is disable about 80% of the back-end features! It’s pretty straight forward to set-up, there’s plenty of guides on-line.
Have fun!
Comment by - Jason Date Posted - August 19, 2009
Great Post!
Im about to do my first Magento site for a client, what really interested me about your post is that Magento will run on Microsoft IIS? Is that what you have managed to run it all, I haven’t tried it yet as we have a Microsoft server but I wasn’t sure it would run ok, would love to hear your experience of this?
Cheers
Comment by - Brett White Date Posted - August 19, 2009
Hi Brett,
Thanks for the comment. Basically IIS and Apache don’t mix well unless you start messing with ports so the best set-up on Windows is to remove IIS completely then install WAMPServer from http://www.wampserver.org.
You should install WAMPServer 2.0h as this is the best version for Magento right now.
There’s a really good video at http://tinyurl.com/l5wylu which goes through the install process from installing WAMP through to getting a base Magento shop up and running.
Jason
Comment by - Jason Date Posted - August 19, 2009
Hi Just interested, in your opinion, is Magento better than third party shop add-ons for Joomla?
Comment by - Mark Date Posted - September 22, 2009
Hi Mark,
Magento is a beast to work with but is very functional. If you’re looking for a simple shopping system definately use something else that’s easier to implement, even a Paypal basket system. Magento should be considered for more specific solutions where you need rich e-commerce features and definately needs to be hosted on a solid and fast platform!
Jason
Comment by - Jason Date Posted - September 23, 2009