Learning Magento

Maybe you've heard of Magento. Maybe not. Magento is an Open Source eCommerce framework made by the fine folks at Varien. At the time of this post, Magento is in version 1.3.1.1 and is growing every day. While it's community is not quite the size of an older framework like osCommerce, it still has a fairly active community of developers. I've been using Magento for about a year now, and I though I'd share my experience and some tips.

Magento is slick. Often, when you ask someone to describe Magento, that's the first word out of their mouth. The default layout is impressive, and the administration section makes osCommerce look like it was drawn with crayons.

I'll be frank. Developing for Magento confused the hell out of me for a while. Magento is based on the Zend Framework. Anyone who has used Magento or Zend can tell you that once you're used to the file structure and OOP PHP, it makes perfect sense and is easy to use. Until you've got the hang of it, though, it will rock your world. It rocked mine for quite a while, until one day I had a eureka moment, and it just made sense.

The documentation for Magento is dismal. This is widely acknowledged as one of Magento's biggest flaws. Searching for information on classes and functions will most certainly lead you to the wiki, which is about as organized as a dumpster, or the forums, which are fairly active, although I've had a number of posts go unanswered. The developers are rarely seen, but there are some fantastic developers which spend hours a day in the forums helping out newbies.

If you haven't has a eureka moment yourself, or have no experience with Magento at all, these resources have helped me out a lot, and still do:

• http://t.wits.sg/category/howto/

The 8 step tutorial on this page has helped me more than any other tutorial. It walks you through the creation of a custom module with all the trimmings. A must read for all new Magento developers.

• http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/

If you can find what you are looking for, most posts in the wiki have been scrutinized by multiple developers and most have accompanying threads in the forum to answer questions.

• http://inchoo.net

Inchoo is an ecommerce development company with tutorials on many frameworks, including Magento. They are definitely worth a look when trying to figure out a problem.

• http://www.exploremagento.com/

This blog, maintained by Digital Surgeons, is young, but is adding new content all the time. Check it out to pick up some useful tidbits, as well as some great posts about the basics of Magento.

• php|architect's Guide to Programming with Magento
  

I bought this book shortly after it came out. Though it is a bit lacking in detail, it does a pretty good job of explaining the basics of Magento, as well as walking you through the creation of a new Module.

There are a couple of other books either out now or on the horizon. William Rice's Magento: Beginner's Guide is currently available. O'Reilly has also released a Magento book, entitled Online Shops mit Magento (Gebundene Ausgabe). Unless you speak German, it won't be of much use.

If you are just getting started with Magento, good luck, and don't get disheartened if it takes a bit to understand the framework. Magento is a powerful platform for eCommerce, and it's worth the time to learn the ins and outs.