Magento Cart review by frumpyhausfrau.com blog

[David M. Graham]

I wouldn't be surprised if this was mostly a matter of familiarity with the software, which is going to take some time to develop for all of us.  

We will shortly be offering Kerry Watson's magento users guide, and have some work done on a technical manual.  

David

[ThatRonGuy]

I have been a longtime CRE user and so when a client asked to use Magento, I thought it looked clean and might be nice to learn a new cart... BIG mistake! I found that even the littlest code change broke the whole cart and required a reinstall at several points. Magento looks nice and has some nice features, but it NOT user friendly, so I convinced the client to go with CRE and things have been SMOOTH ever since!

[David M. Graham]

They look pretty good.  Should for $1795 each for the most expensive options, but still - a good target to shoot for

David

[CypherUK]

I must admit - One of the best template systems i have seen in a while comes with http://www.interspire.com/shoppingcart/

[David M. Graham]

Yes, Magento has its downsides.  But, on the upside, their template system is in SOME ways more straightforward and easier to use than either STS , BTS or ATS.

There would seem to be cleaner separation of business and display logic in most cases and the scattered nature of the file locations seems to be the worst aspect of the system - other than perhaps its terminology.  But, on the bright side --  at least they TRY to explain it.

David

[inetbiz]

Frumpy Haus Frau eCommerce consultant wrote a very informative article about the challenges of templating and designing a magento cart store.

teaser:

If you’ve wandered around in the cart world, Magento is getting rave reviews. At least, it sounds like it. But most people who choose not to use it just wander off, and never say a thing, because they somehow think maybe they were the cause, perhaps not smart enough.

It fails our tests on three critical points:

Design, Function, and Sustainability.

1. Templating is a nightmare. I kid you not. They not only scattered the template bits through about 200 files, they threw XML into the mix for no other reason than just because someone could, I guess. It feels very much like they happened to have someone who was all happy for XML, who just wanted something to do, so they let him work it into the templates. Unfortunately, for most designers learning how to template a cart, in a hurry, learning to apply yet another coding language, with proprietary usages, is not only inefficient, it vastly complicates things. Think I’m exaggerating? Look around. Algozone, Template Monster, and a number of other sites have Magento template areas with not ONE THING in them. All of the freely available templates for Magento are merely a variation on the default theme - many have just changed a graphic or two, no real significant changes are made. That says loudly that it is so difficult that even template gurus are avoiding it.

Read more about magento's turn from frumpyhausfrau.com blog