Magento is a steaming pile of turd.
I’ve developed for WordPress, Drupal, Magento, and Joomla so feel I can provide a reasonably educated opinion on opensource php cms.
Magento is good in theory but in action its bloatware.
Magento is unnecessarily complicated with far too many files, like Joomla. It’s even slower than Joomla. It’s pitifully slow despite claims that it has been optimized. For clients there is more hand holding. The learning curve is too much for your clients, like Joomla.
WordPress easily has the most elegant and practical code and its easy for clients to manage their content. Next is Drupal. After that there’s daylight and then there’s Magento and Joomla.
The WordPress object design, database structure, and database api are refined to a level of efficiency the others could only dream of at the moment. WordPress is a framework that can be used for the majority of content serving tasks. (With Facebook and Twitter API’s in-house social media modules are not so important)
Out of the mainstream Opensource PHP Carts I currently like Ubercart which is a Drupal module. But even that has its downsides. That’s why I’m going to build a cart which uses WordPress as the framework and makes no manipulations to the WordPress database table structure.
WordPress Classes and API’s are all there
If you look at WordPress carefully all the api’s and classes are mostly there to build a far more efficient cart. Despite this, no one has done it yet with a plugin. They haven’t looked at the code closely enough to realize that the way the database, and objects/classes work… well everything is already there for the core requirements to create an easy to use and install cart.
WordPress is Scalable
WordPress.com is a Mu WordPress install which is one of the top 20 biggest sites on the internet at the moment. WordPress.com, built on the core of WordPress servers visitors that any of the alternatives could only dream of. Why?
Because WordPress is efficient in both its code, it’s database structure, and it has the best built-in caching.
I bet there are a few frustrated designer/part-time coders that are already frustrated enough to be looking for an easy alternative to Magento. Plenty agree that Magento is bloatware.
I’ve bought a domain and I’m going to start work on Api Cart. The WordPress Cart plugin which is going to bring the smack down on all other PHP Opensource carts!
11 Comments
I look forward to trying API cart. Do you have a Twitter feed or will you add a “tell me when you launch” form to http://apicart.org/?
Hi,
what do you think about OXID eShop?
Thanks
Marco
I agree with you to some extent but there are some shops that Magento is perfect for and when run on a high powered vps or dedicated server it can run very fast but it all comes down to money. Magento is the BIG budget site.
There are several WordPress plugins as highligthed on Speckboy
http://speckyboy.com/2008/10/23/10-powerful-shoppingecommerce-plugin-solutions-for-wordpress/
I’ve played around with most but they are lacking in varying areas.
WP E-commerce works well for very basic shop selling via PayPal http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-e-commerce/
I hear what you’re saying about WordPress being scalable. It totally is and it’s the best system to build anything on the web from a home page to a bustling news station or community.
Over the past year I have built up my own ecommerce platform for my clients but in hindsight I would have been far better off starting my build with WordPress.
I wish you luck with your project and I think you are on the right track but what a job… a BIG JOB you have set yourself.
Really looking forward to having a play with Api Cart.
Looking forward to your WordPress Cart plugin. I’m sure you’ll have a lot of beta-tester volunteers at the WPMU forums
Good luck!
just fyi – before you go writing this cart, if you haven’t already, you should check out http://shopplugin.net
It is a pretty complete package.
Interesting, but shopplugin is not opensource. It costs money so its not worthy.
Magento is not meant to be a CMS only. Its powerful e-commerce features that cost 4 – 10 times more to implement at the enterprise level make it a very good contender. As far as resource-hungriness, that is something you have to decide whether you wish to pay high-end server costs or high-end platform costs. There is no open source e-commerce platform as conversion-oriented out-of-the-box as Magento.
If Magento was genuinely conversion-oriented it would be a lot faster. Visitors leave sites when they have to wait around for them to load. Even on a basic dedicated server it performs like a pig and is difficult to install.
Wow, you have no idea what you’re talking about. Have you even looked out how WordPress is written? It’s a sloppy mess. Scalable? Are you kidding? WordPress’ scalability is a joke compared to Joomla or Magento. It use, like, ten tables! It’s a complete embarrassment as far as database normalization goes. Best “built-in caching”? That’s a painfully inaccurate statement.
Most die-hard users of WordPress use it because it’s easy for them to grasp.
Joomla 1.5.x is VERY cleanly written and extremely flexible. Magento’s structure is even more impressive. It’s very sophisticated and not something a junior developer is likely to swallow easily, but once you get the gist of the auto includes and how and where the classes are located, Magneto is incredibly well designed.
You sound like more of a site administrator than a developer.
Additionally, the reason you don’t see a lot of cart plugins for WordPress is because you don’t use Corvette to haul a load of bricks and you don’t get a pickup truck to race. WordPress is a blog, not an eCommerce platform. No amount of plugins will transform it into a powerful eCommerce system. Sure, you can stretch it beyond it’s intended use and make it a cart system, but anyone who understands and wants a good system for eCommerce will start with a system that’s been specifically built FOR eCommerce.
The only reason you actually will find eCommerce plugins for WordPress is because of its high popularity as a platform, which is a result of its idiot-proof simplicity. People demand it, not because it’s a good idea, but because they don’t know any better, so people will create eCommerce plugins. It’s the same reason cigarets are heavily produced: people want them, even if they’re a bad idea.
@Nicholas you are wrong on both counts about wordpress.
1. The object framework exists in wordpress to create any kind of content type for say order pages, product pages etc. It’s object framework lays the foundation to create a comprehensive ecommerce solution.
2. Your suggestion that wordpress can’t scale is ludicrous. WordPress.com is one of the top 30 most visited websites on the internet and had 222 million uniques in November 2009. Sure there have been some tweaks to WordPress.com compared to the out of the box wordpress like hyberdb and batcache but its main core is wordpress. There is no Magento site or Joomla site that comes close to this in visitor numbers. There are plenty of wordpress sites doing millions of uniques per month.
I’ve developed with Magento, Joomla, Drupal, and WordPress and I know many developed who have also done the same. They always complain about Magento’s speed, scalability, and cost of implementation. On another note I’ve had customers practically begging me to salvage their painfully slow and complicated to use Joomla 1.5+ website. Now I simply convert them to WordPress and they’re always super happy with the dramatic speed improvement of page delivery as well as the ease of use for updating their site.