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Since discovering Magento, I’ve stopped developing with Cubecart. The first thing that attracted me to Magento was that it was free and it didn’t require each page to have “I’m a tight-ass using the free version of some cheapo shopping cart” in it’s title …and it was template driven.

After looking into it more deeply I’ve found that Magento is much more sophicated than Cubecart, supporting product options, grouped and related products, multiple stores, discount codes, “seo friendly urls”, and customer whishlists, all “out of the zip archive”. However after working with it for a few weeks now, it’s becoming more and more obvious that Magento is still only a baby. While it’s seemingly bursting with amazing features, some of them seem incomplete and most seem to have been designed from the viewpoint of the programmer rather than the end user, resulting in Magento being more complicated than sophisticated.

Here’s a few problems I’ve had with Magento already:

• There’s no way of viewing all the products in the store by manufacturer
• The urls aren’t all seo friendly, in fact filtering/layered-navigation makes very seo unfriendly urls
• New administrators are given no role by default and so can’t log in to the admin panel
• The CMS system is bollocks. There’s no parent-child relatinships for a start
• Themes/skins are far too over complicated to make and edit
• The documentation is nowhere near complete, for end users or developers

A couple of final thoughts:
There is definitely something to be said for the simplicity of Cubecart.

I think part of the major problem with these open source but commercial web applications is exactly that:- while they are open source so the community can edit and modify the source code to meet their needs, they are commercial. I think this results in much less contribution from the community and most of the contributions that are made are commercial.

So it’s been a while since I did any work on it. Development on the whole project was put on hold as the client decided she didn’t want an online store just yet, so the mod lay unfinished on my hard drive for a few months. This week I’ve started working for the client again and so the mod is coming along nicely. In fact, I think it’s just about finished. It needs some testing before actual release, but it’s pretty much there.

So since the last update:

• I’ve finished the stock check facility for before an item is placed in the basket, if the item is out of stock, instead of being placed in the basket the quantity is set to 0. In addition a notice is displayed upon selected an option combination which is out of stock (before the item is placed into the basket).
• I’ve done some work on the admin user interface, changed the colours and layout a bit. I’m still not completely happy with the colours but it’s hard to get enough contrast to show the different levels and sublevels (eg products, option combos, options, values).
• Tidied up the mod’s deletion behaviour so that all the necessary records are deleted when they should, eg when deleting a product off the products admin panel all that products options and combos need deleting too.
• Improved security over and above the level of the original options admin panel – so that users can really only do as their permissions allow.
• Finished the installation script and included it into the new options admin panel so you don’t have to mess around with sql files or statements to update the database – just click a button.
• Written installation instructions – simple (over-right old files) and advanced (step by step changes in code).
• Various other fixes and improvements

So all in all, the mod is looking pretty finished and almost professional (on the exterior, the code isn’t pretty in parts!). Once I’ve done some more testing, got the client using it (scheduled for a weeks time), and set up a Cubecart store to sell it with, well that’s when it will be on sale.

On the subject of updates. If I bought a mod, I would hope to get bug fixes for free, but at present I can’t see an easy way of controlling this except for maybe just making bug fixes publicly accessible, and putting any updates which include new features for sale. If you have any ideas or know of a good mod that will allow customers to download updates for free then I’d be interested in your opinion.

…are complete! Take a look:
  

…well, pretty much – I may make a few minor changes before release – ie the colour scheme.

On that note I’d be interested to hear what people think about the colour scheme I’m using at the moment

As you can see green and red are used for alternate groups of items – in this case products, then various shades of green and red are used for sub items.

(Like I said, I’d be interested to hear peoples’ opinions – ccmod [at] dynamictangentconceptions.dtcnet.co.uk or reply to this post)

Finally here’s a preview of the “finished” combo admin panel

So… on the things left to do list:

• Modify product options page so that new stock counts are displayed
• Create notification system to notify customers whether and item or a particular combination of options for an item are in stock …before it is placed into the basket!
  • With an option to display current stock level for selection or a simple “out of stock” notice if applicable

On a different note, it’s taking up quite a lot of time to get it to the level of “user friendliness” I want and would expect for such a mod, so I was wondering whether people would be willing to pay for this mod or not, and if so how much. I know there is a similar mod out there going for around ¬£12 a piece, which at first I thought was expensive, but I guess is pretty reasonable for a business to pay and especially if it’s good and they use it on a regular basis. …So any thoughts on the matter? (same contact details as above)

Just a quick update, I’m sorry to say that I’ve not been able to put much time into the mod since returning to uni – I’ve got a few exams coming up so everything else has been put on hold. The good news is I’m going to start work on the mod again next week, and hopefully get it finished within a few weeks after that