Magento Enterprise Edition – the premium version of the open source Magento ecommerce software
Apr 17, 2009 by Mircea Goia MyTestBox News
Yesterday Varien, the makers of Magento, have released the premium version of this increasingly popular (over 750,000 downloads) open source ecommerce software: Magento Enterprise Edition .
The commercially licensed Magento Enterprise Edition it’s geared towards larger companies and includes additional features, including ROI specific features, not available in their open source, Community Edition product. In addition to features, the Enterprise Edition will include Service Level Ageements based support with guaranteed response times, warranties, indemnification and soon, PA-DSS certification.
This doesn’t mean the Magento team will abandon the open source commitments. It will still develop the Community Edition product (which we reviewed here – an early version).
The premium version is based on the core of the Community version so the upgrade is a relatively simple process. Extensions (local, community, commercial) and custom themes will continue to work as they do with a standard upgrade process.
The Enterprise features (not found in the Community Edition):
- * Advanced Administrator Roles and Permission Restriction per Site (Website and Store View)
* Logging of Administrator Actions
* Gift Certificates/Cards (Physical and Virtual)
* Customer Store Credits
* Content Staging and Merging. Support for both on-demand and scheduled merges and rollbacks of content
* Category View and Purchase permissions per on customer group (limited catalog access)
* Private (Club) Sales including Events, Invitations and Category access permissions
* Strong Data Encryption
The price of Magento Enterprise Edition is not pocket money but a larger company can afford $8,900 annually for a single server installation and support. After all, there is a economic nuclear winter out there and Varien needs to become more profitable so going enterprise surely will help.
Take a look and compare the features these two products have (and download the free Community Edition if you like).
Magento ecommerce software is a PHP/MYSQL based ecommerce solution and Varien is a Los Angeles based software company. Find out more about Magento Enterprise Edition on the team’s blog.
If you had experimented with their ecommerce software you are welcomed to tell us your opinion (in the comments).
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Tags: community edition, ecommerce, enterprise edition, magento, mysql, open-source, php, premium version, software, varien
X-Cart shopping cart software is now at version 4.2
Jan 14, 2009 by Mircea Goia MyTestBox News
Qualiteam Software announces the long-awaited release of X-Cart shopping cart software version 4.2.The new release is a result of long-time efforts to research and analyze the requirements from both new and existing store owners in order to deliver all of the most demanded features. The latest branch of X-Cart includes new features and tools making it even more feature-rich and flexible.
This PHP/MySQL shopping cart has major improvements like:
* X-Cart’s layout is CSS-based
* Enhanced SEO tools
* Support for dimensional and per-provider shipping
* Automatic thumbnails generation and sharpening
* Authorize/capture support for payment gateways
* Export of newsletter subscribers
X-Cart’s new features include search-engine friendly CSS-based skin layout and product/category URLs, customizable META tags, support for dimensional shipping, automated thumbnails generation, export of newsletter subscribers, compatibility with all major web browsers (including Microsoft Internet Explorer v6-8, Mozilla Firefox v1.5-3, Opera v9, Safari v2-3 and Google Chrome) and many others.
For further details regarding features of X-Cart, please, refer to the complete feature list or try out the demo to see the latest X-Cart shopping cart release in action.
The team also released the graphic website prototypes which are sets of images ready for quick and easy integration with e-commerce websites.
They are designed specially for online stores in order to reflect their distinctive features. It allows store owners to perform easy design integration and get unique storefront look and feel (the team can also help with the integration into your store).
Prototypes are available both for X-Cart and LiteCommerce, but can be used with almost any e-commerce platform. You can find out more details here.
We haven’t fully reviewed yet this shopping cart software but we will do it soon with the company’s cooperation.
About Qualiteam Software
Qualiteam Software is now one of the worlds leading providers of e-Commerce software solutions. Software created by Qualiteam powers tens of thousands of online stores and e-Commerce websites in 111 countries all over the world.
The company is focused on delivering products that create a solid infrastructure for e-business and have both B2C and B2B value.
Ongoing support, integration services and consultations are provided to make sure customers derive maximum benefit when using Qualiteam products.
Qualiteam Software is headquartered in Limassol, Cyprus, with partner company offices in Ulyanovsk, Russia.
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Tags: ecommerce, mysql, open-source, php, shopping cart, storefront, x-cart
Magento Commerce continues to gain momentum (450,000+ downloads to date)
Sep 20, 2008 by Mircea Goia MyTestBox News
The latest release of Magento, Version 1.1.6, was released this week and contained updates to the admin, a new design Skin and more. To coincide with the availability of 1.1.6, the Magento Team at Varien also released a new Blank Theme to assist designers in creating new custom themes for Magento.Version 1.1.6 is now available for download and includes a few great updates, along with bug fixes which are listed in the release notes. Version 1.1.6 is a continuation of the Version 1.1.5 release.
Version 1.1.6 includes an update to the category management tool which allows store owners to more efficiently manage a large number of categories. This feature can be tested on our demo admin site. The release also comes with a new skin, Blue Skin, which can be seen on the demo frontend site.
As a reminder, they do not recommend upgrading directly on a live environment. For more information on the release please see their blog announcement.
To coincide with the availability of Magento 1.1.6, we have also made a new Blank Theme available via MagentoConnect.
With ‘Blank Theme‘ the Magento team answers the call of numerous community members out there who’s been inquiring about an extra light theme to use as a basis for theme customization. With this theme we’ve removed all the custom CSS formerly used in Default and Modern Theme, and replaced them with minor typography and positioning CSS assignments.
References to the class names were left in the CSS files to provide a solid starting ground for designers/developers. Markups were also revisited and cleaned up in theme-level.
Download, customize, and enjoy the new ultra light Magento theme!
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Tags: ecommerce, magento, open-source, php, platform, software
Magento Commerce strikes again! Winning another prestigious award, and announcing Magento Developer Challenge #1!
Aug 5, 2008 by Mircea Goia MyTestBox News
It seems the Magento e-commerce solution is unstoppable. Besides winning the SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards Best New Project Magento just won another prize: the “Best of Open Source Enterprise Applications (E-Commerce)” at Infoworld’s annual BOSSIE Awards (this award “recognize the best free and open source software the world has to offer to businesses, IT professionals, and productive individuals who rely on computers to get work done”). The 2008 BOSSIE winners include 60 products in eight categories covering business and productivity applications, development tools, middleware, networking, security, and storage.
Other projects selected by InfoWorld’s editorial and test center staff are dotProject (open source project and task manager), Alfresco (open source enterprise content management system), Pentaho (open-source provider of reporting, analysis, dashboard, data mining and workflow capabilities), SugarCRM (open source commercial customer relationship management) and JasperReports (open source report-generating tool).
The company also announced the first of a series of challenges named Magento Developer Challenge (AKA HackGento). The goal is to develop Magento extensions with widespread usage in the community. They will present a challenge to the community every week: the first challenge is integrating Magento with Google Spreadsheet.
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Tags: challenge, ecommerce, Google spreadsheet, magento, open-source, php, platform, software
Magento 1.1.1 production release is here. Any users of the new version?
Jul 29, 2008 by Mircea Goia MyTestBox News
Magento team released the production version 1.1.1 several days ago. This is a major release of this e-commerce software and it is focused on expanding Magento’s product configuration options, increasing the flexibility of the core tax module to allow for Canadian and EU tax rules, streamlining integration between strategic Magento modules and external applications and boosting the overall performance of the Magento platform.
Magento has been downloaded over 400,000 times and this gives it a strong presence on the ecommerce market (it has strong competition though, among them are well known names from the open source world). But as this e-commerce platform matures it will be a very good contender in this space (especially with the Web2.0 features it has on the backend).
What did they add or improve in this new version?
Well, here’s the short list (taken from their blog):
* Create more product-types
Merchandisers can now create a few new product types:
- Bundles (most commonly used in kitting or in the built-to-order product model)
- Virtual Products – products that don’t require shipping information
* More ways to configure products
- Custom Product Options – allow merchants to designate a SKU to a base item and add attributes instead of having to create a unique SKU for every combination of options (simple products).
- Personalized Products – a new product configuration feature in Magento 1.1 that allows customers to personalize products by adding text, such as embroideries, engravings, etc.
* Integrate with any application via Web Services
Magento 1.1 features a new Webservices API with methods for easy integration between Magento’s Catalog, Customer and Sales modules and any third party application. More about the Magento API here.
* Speeding up the process(ing)
One of the main goals for Magento 1.1 was to examine bottlenecks in the platform and improve performance. In the production release of Magento 1.1 performance was improved by as much as 40% in the catalog and sales modules, and by optimizing when and how data loads, responsiveness of the Admin UI was also increased significantly.
View full list of features in Magento 1.1
Upgrading an existing Magento version
(take their advice seriously! Especially regarding using the new version on your live environment.)
It’s now possible to upgrade your existing Magento installation to 1.1 through the Magento Connect Manager extension.
Here’s how to do it:
* Do NOT use your live or production site. We suggest making a copy of your site and upgrading that copy first.
* Log into your Magento Connect Manager.
* Select the ‘Setting’ tab.
* Change the Preferred State to ‘Stable’, and save settings.
* For the Mage_All_Latest package select upgrade.
* Click on the ‘Commit Changes’ button. The upgrade should start.
* After upgrade is complete click on the ‘Refresh’ button.
* You should now have Magento 1.1 installed.
Read also the users’ comments on their blog! You might find useful tips for installation and upgrading from those who already tested the new version.
There is a wiki post available detailing how to upgrade your Magento theme to take advantage of the new release.
Download the latest version here! (registration required)
By the way, congratulations to Magento team for winning the “Best New Open Source Project” at 2008 SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards!
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Tags: ecommerce, magento, open-source, php, platform, software
Magento ecommerce among the finalists on Sourceforget.net
Jul 16, 2008 by Mircea Goia MyTestBox News
Magento e-commerce platform has been selected as a finalist for the 2008 SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards.
It was chosen in the following categories:
* Best Project for the Enterprise
* Most Likely to Be the Next $1B Acquisition
* Most Likely to Change the World
* Best New Project
That’s quite an achievement for a relatively young enterprise ecommerce platform (and young as a company). Congratulations for them! (more here )
Sourceforge will be present also at OSCON 2008 in Portland on July 21-25, where they’ll be hosting their awards party on July 24th at the Jupiter Hotel. Doors open at 6pm.
You can vote for Magento here, if you wish! (you need to register first)
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Tags: ecommerce, finalist, magento, platform, software, sourceforge
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