OS Commerce Watch: New Magento 1.1 Released

This is one in a series of columns on the open-source commerce (OSC) industry.

Those Magento boys and girls are at it again, kicking butt and taking names by releasing a brand-new, expanded 1.1 release of their already feature-rich open source e-commerce program. The company claims to already be the fastest growing e-commerce platform on the market – and not just open source e-commerce — with over 400,000 production downloads in only 16 weeks. This latest release will boost the world’s acceptance curve sharply with new features that will pique international interest.

The team's marketing messages, already good from the start, have become laser-focused and clearer than any open source e-commerce team I've seen. They have positioned themselves as the competitive solution for shops ranging from the mom-and-pop-type shop, through the medium-size shop selling up to $150 million per year, and their features make them ideal for an enterprise shop. The company is aiming this latest release squarely at world expansion.

Summary of New Features
This new release includes hundreds of bug fixes and performance improvements including SEO-related fixes, improvements in the Admin components, and also adds support for Canadian and European taxes. Expanded product options will win over the hearts of those who sell customized products, with custom product options, personalized products, and virtual or downloadable products. And an exciting new feature is a Web services API, which opens the door for Magento to be integrated with any application via a Web Services API.

Performance Issues Addressed
The company says one of the main goals for Magento 1.1 was to examine bottlenecks in the platform and improve performance. This new release addresses the key concerns of many 1.0 users, including many bug fixes and slow page-loading times. Changes have been made to the Admin so that data are loaded only when necessary, improving the responsiveness of the Admin significantly.

The company claims a 40-percent performance improvement. Some 1.1 alpha users reported performance improvements of 70 percent in their tests, while others complained that while the new version is much faster, it remains relatively slow. Many factors can influence the speed of the program, including server and caching settings, so if a store remains slow after upgrading, the store owner should seek out additional measures to improve the store's performance.

International Support Increased
Magento Version 1.0 was a US-centric product. Version 1.1 will see the expansion of Magento into many additional new countries where it was previously impossible to use the program due to tax law limitations. Complex laws in Europe and elsewhere for Value Added Taxation (VAT) formerly required programmers to extend the code. According to Varien's Chief Technology Officer, Yoav Kutner, the team has redesigned the tax module so it is more flexible for international use, as well as for changing taxation laws in the US. Already there are active user forums in nearly 50 languages. Translations of over 60 languages and dialects have been initiated by volunteers with varying degrees of completion, and 23 locales are 85 to 100 percent complete. As a result of these activities and changes, the number of version 1.1 product downloads should spike sharply with significant world-wide interest.

Additional “Wow” Product Features
The new version allows customers to create custom products, also known as bundled products or "kitting" (making kits). For example, a customer can create and purchase a computer with user-selectable options such as case, hard drive, RAM and monitors with pricing dynamically generated. Unfortunately, store owners who have already created simple products cannot convert the existing products to bundled products; they must go back in and recreate the product as a new, bundled product. But, this is a small price to pay for such an expansive feature.

Another welcomed product feature in this release is “customer-defined product options” such as specifying text or images for monograms, engraving, and custom printing.

Most exciting is that the company unexpectedly tucked into this release support for virtual or downloadable products. Roy Rubin, President of Varien Inc., the company that developed the program, said he Initially expected to release downloadable product support "right behind 1.1." It is rare indeed to move the launch of a planned feature up, and this new feature alone will create many new converts to the program.

Other New Features
Rounding out the gaggle of new additions to the program are a couple of small but nice new features; new customer attributes such as prefix/suffix (Dr., Jr.) and date of birth.

The “One-Click Upgrade” from 1.0
Rubin says the heavily-touted Magento "One-Click Upgrade" is now in place for this release, and that it will work with the public release of 1.1 as long as the relevant 1.0 code has not been modified. It is always wise, however, to make a copy of the site and install the upgrade on the copy. The company strongly recommends against installing on a live or production site, but how many store owners will listen only to the words "One-Click Upgrade"?

Industry Wait-and-See
Template companies that offer templates for many other open source e-commerce programs have taken a wait-and-see attitude towards releasing templates or skins for Magento. Likewise, many experienced open source programmers are unfamiliar with the object-oriented programming used by Magento. Slow release of programmer documentation to get programmers on board, and unfamiliarity with the Zend Framework on which the program is based, have all slowed the program's acceptance into the industry by Web developers. The company would be well-advised to speed the release of developer documentation even if it is not pretty or absolutely fleshed-out yet.

Enthusiastic Community
Still, the company has been responsive to the concerns of its users with the product it has released today, and that responsiveness to end users is refreshing in the techno-centric world of open source e-commerce. With this release, it's time for the industry biggies — osCommerce, Zen Cart and CRE Loaded — to sit up and take notice if they haven't already.

In its short four-month existence, Magento has already been nominated for a number of prestigious awards, including the O'Reilly 2008 Open Source Awards and SourceForge.net's Community Choice Awards. Magento was a finalist in SourceForge’s categories for Best Project for the Enterprise, Best New Project, Most Likely to Change the World and Most Likely to Be the Next $1B Acquisition. How many eCommerce programs can claim that, open source or not?

The bottom line: Magento is already loved and accepted by end users and the community. This new release will just create more, worldwide converts. It’s a real winner.


source:- ecommerce-guide.com/