Magento Ecommerce For Joomla!

[bts_11]

So how is the integration coming?

[bigodines]

updating this thread:

I would like technical help for testing of my integration plugin to make sure there aren't any potential security holes before releasing a public alfa-version.

I've created a JFusion plugin for integrating Joomla! and magento this morning. Will test during this week and plan to release a public version soon (I hope you understand I'm doing this in my spare time...)


if you would like to help, send me a PM.

-bigo

[newart]

sorry but i'm not sure or understand if the plug-in is for the 1.5 joomla stable version  (or for legacy  )

[bigodines]

@newart - jfusion is a Joomla! 1.5 only extension. Thus, the magento plugin for jfusion is also for j!1.5.

Additionally, it requires PHP 5 and cURL enabled.

[newart]

well, it's a good news so! 

[palamike]

Is this joomla extension? or it is separate but have bridge?
but this is new breath

[geekette]

This is seriously cool!  I'd love to help test when you're ready!

[bts_11]

Hey bigodines,

First of all thank you very much for your hard work. I tried to install your magento plugin for jfusion but after I extract it to /administrator/components/com_jfusion/magento/ I don't see magento in the jfusion component back-end. Am I missing something? Has anyone else got this to work?

[unleash.it]

Bigodines, thanks for what you've done. I've tried your Magento bridge but can't fully get it to work yet. When I log from the JFusion login, I'm getting an error about permission to read a Magento cookie:

500 - Don't have permission to read the magento cookie. Won't be able to login.

Like the last person, I also didn't see magento listed in Jfusion at first. To make it available I added the magento files to com_jfusion.xml:

Code: Select all

<filename>magento/admin_forum.php</filename>
<filename>magento/jfusion.xml</filename>

Then I had to manually add a new row for Magento in the jfusion table of theJoomla DB. I simply copied one of the existing (forum) rows and changed the names to magento.

So I'm pretty sure it's set up right, but not completely... When I click on the links to register, forgot your password or username, it takes me to my magento site, but log in gives the 500.

Any ideas?

[bigodines]

@unleash.it :

it looks like your apache doesn't have permission to either create, write or read a magento.txt file in your DocumentRoot directory.

BTW: Thanks for warning me about the aditional needed changes. I'll update the "tutorial".


-bigo

[unleash.it]

Bigo- I'm using Windows and Apache on local host, so (as far as I know) all of my permissions in my webs folder are pretty much read/write/execute. I can log into magneto itself just fine, but just not from jfusion in Joomla. Do you think it might be something in php/apache config file?

There are a couple of things I was a little unsure of when setting up the Jfusion parameters. Here's what I used:

Table Prefix: blank. (I'm assuming they mean in the Magneto DB where there is no prefix)
Full URL to Integrated Software: http://localhost/magento/
Full Path to Integrated Software: http://localhost/magento/

Side note: Selecting no for "Are forum links shown in a Joomla wrapper?" keeps resetting to yes even though I save it as no. This is probably a Jfusion bug.

[bigodines]

Full Path to Integrated Software: http://localhost/magento/

this should be something more like c:\www\mySite\magento although I think it has nothing to do with your problem.

Do you have cURL enabled? can you confirm that there is a magento.txt file in your documentroot?

its nice to have people testing on windows as well. :P

cheers,
bigo

[unleash.it]

Sorry I'm a little slow, it's the weekend...

To answer your questions, yes curl is enabled. But no, there is no magneto.txt file in the magento directory. Since stock magento doesn't have one, is that a file Jfusion makes?

My first guess was that maybe it didn't like magento being in a separate folder. I'm in the middle of troubleshooting this but things just got more complicated because I uninstalled and tried reinstalling magento in its own folder inside my Joomla site...but now installing magento is giving me a hard time. I'm sure it's minor, but at this point it's going to take me a couple of days to get around to doing it.

Yes I use Windows... and will until they think of something else Photoshop/illustrator/Indesign can run on that doesn't cost a mint.

[CirTap]

Hi y'all,

I can't believe I missed this thread :-) and yes: Magento rocks! thanks to the great flexibility of the Zend Framework and the skills of Varien. Roy, if you read this: kudos to you and your staff!
I'm officially impressed.

Well, I was facing the "problem" from the other side of the mirror: make Joomla! a (virtual) part of Magento by replacing / enhancing their not-so-impressive "CMS" module. There was a similar post/note on one of the former pages but it seemed to be ignored.
Extending Magento is even easier (techically) then extending Joomla, imho. The ZF, which -- among other things -- is the MVC core behind the Shop's core, is exceptionally well documented (<grudge>), and if one can write an extension for Joomla! 1.5, s/he can write a "module" for Magento. I confess I'm not very familiar with the "Mage" API, but with it's backbone, the Zend Framework.

Unlike most of you, I don't see the point of sharing or synchronizing accounts between the CMS and the Shop. Frankly, none of my clients (most of them SoHo) would ever want their customers to have an account for their website. I woudn't. What for? Customers are supposed to buy goods in the shop, to have a good "shopping experience", and not to mess around with the website At best they'd need to have access to the support forum or a wiki. Does this require an account in Joomla!? No.

There is a need, however, to make both applications aware of each other, imho, and let them share their contents: display shop items on the website, and display CMS contents in the Shop. Joomla! is the "better CMS" among both, but it has nothing even close to the granular access control feature of Magento (or Zend_Acl for that matter). A Web-Content Management System is supposed to manage web content, not shop customers, read: why hand over control to an application that's not (yet) capable to do that job?
(Does anyone who has an account in this forum having a problem with the restrictions to edit help pages, the blogs, JED, the shop! or any other site? And those who can edit contents @ joomla.org: do you bother to log in to the forum using a separate account? RokBridge isn't here yet, is it?)

Actually, for those who care: why not have "native" authentication and authorization plugins for Joomla! to run against Magento's user base? Wasn't this new type of plugins added to do this? (No offense to JFusion, which appears to be a pretty neat component.) And what's so utterly bad in using one's email address to login? -- I'm sure Varien could implement a "nickname" login in no time if both communities insist <g>

I'm currently investigating the "Mage" core to see if I can "hook" into its CMS (event system) in order to fetch content from Joomla! and to have the usual suspects of J! modules render products on the site.
If anyone's convinced that this might be a good idea and is able to help or provide me with elightning insight, please PM me :-)


Have fun,
CirTap

[CirTap]

Ok, me again...

There was one thing I didn't like in this thread: the bashing of Virtuemart and therefor Soeren, it's lead developer.
You really ought to respect his work and the time he invested in porting an existing software, phpShop, to your favorite CMS, and to maintain it.
For free!
If some of you donated a buck, great. Thank you in the name of Open Source.

The original VM code dates back to the PHP3 days and it's been one of the early free shopping carts available. Like Joomla! 1.5, VirtueMart still suffers from its own legacy; even worse: it suffers from its host's legacy as well. VM existed when Mambo was hip and trendy, it's doomed to run in a host, Mambo/Joomla, using a crappy + limited codebase incapable to actually host such a complex application. As a result, very little of that "API" could be used and in some ways it wasn't used for good.
The same bad-tailored Mambo codebase led to an offspring and the new development of Joomla! 1.5 and its framework -- a framework that unfortunately does not provide the backwards compatibility to allow VM to run.,
After all, both sides are to blame.

Keep in mind, that VM has a large userbase but by no means an equally large staff of developers like Joomla!
All of you got this application for free to make money with it -- I bet many had more income by using VM than the developers by making it.
VM is certainly not as sexy as J! or -- god forbid -- the hyper-modern Magento, you shouldn't even dare to campare them. VM/phpShop's codebase is a pain in the neck to maintain. It gets a face-lift now and then to keep up with the evolving features of PHP, making the code - imho - even less maintainable, less extensible.
I built one website with VM, and never did again for the very same reasons mentioned here. I "hacked" it to use Smarty for the front-end templates, and I repent. I once hacked Joomla 1.0x to have "better" HTML output -- and I shoudn't have done that either.

I hope any future combination of J! 1.5+ and the "new kids on the block" (Freeway, Magento, whatever) will eventually sentence VM to death. For Soeren's sake, I do hope.
Amen?

CirTap

[newart]

@ CirTap - you have good reasons for saying that... surely it's important not to bash anything and anybody! All efforts by somebody else is always a good thing.

About this thread it's difficult to decide what is the "best" as personnally I've NOT tested all products available out there! For me it's extremely important to read more experiences for understanding in every single product its pro & cons.

[unleash.it]

Well I'm certainly not a PHP genius, but I have designed a website or two over the last 10+ years. My interest in the Joomla/Megento bridge was mainly to consider the possibility. In my opinion, just having a shared log-in or even syncing users is probably not going to be worth it for me, although I'm still considering it for down the road. It's a lot of extra work to match the themes up and without module or plugin integration, you're almost talking about two separate sites.

It's kind of a tough decision for e-commerce at the moment. There's no question that Magento has great features and is the new kid on the block to be reckoned with. However, it isn't even CLOSE to the CMS that Joomla is. If you are only selling products then Magneto is your choice if you're willing to learn its theming system (which I hear is a bit difficult). But if you need the features that Joomla has for yourself and your clients (Magento doesn't even have a WYSIWYG editor), I think Virtuemart is still the way.

VM, while it has it's quirks can be hammered into submission if you have the time to learn it once. I've just finished my first site with VM 1.1 beta, and it took me nearly two months between the buggy beta code and trying to format it to my liking, which is very particular! But now I'm more familiar with it, and hopefully the stable version will fix some of the problems. Magento is decidedly way more sexy, has some cool gadgets, but with a bit of work VM can do what you want. CirTap, have you tried the beta? It doesn't add a ton of features, but it does give you pretty much full control over theming once you figure out where all the nested <style> and <br /> tags are to nuke (some are stubbornly buried in the bowels of VM...). As far as the coding, I can't speak much beyond theming...but I was able to install various hacks to add the features I needed. Supposedly it's now MVC, but again I don't want to get laughed at too hard...

So we agree Virtuemart isn't perfect, but at least we have something that does really integrate with Joomla. I say we try to give some more love to VM, because it's going to be a while (IF EVER) that we have a true Joomla/Magento (Magento/Joomla?) integration to the same degree as VM. I can personally say that most people who gripe about Virtuemart are mainly reflecting what they hear a couple of other people say, and haven't given it enough of a chance.

[unleash.it]

Forgot to mention... I think giving accounts to shop customers is hugely important. It gives repeat customers a way to simply log in and save the time of reentering their details. It also lets them check the status of their orders on their own. This saves customer service time for the company and brings your site on par with the competition. Of course not everyone will ever use their log in, but can you think of a major site that DOESN"T provide one? With VM (and I believe Magento as well), you can have a silent registration so the user doesn't have to log in when they place their first order.

[CirTap]

@unleash.it: let me answer your last post first: sure, customers should have a login for the shop, and they'll get one anyway if they proceed to checkout (yes, there is some sort of "silent registration" for the temporary cart). I just don't see the point to "promote" them to a user of the CMS :-)

VM uses Joomla!´s user management so this sort of "single-sign-on" is implied, and it was bothering me in the very beginning in regards of front-end editing. I don't want shop-customers to be able to edit content of the website

It's a lot of extra work to match the themes up and without module or plugin integration, you're almost talking about two separate sites.

That's right, indeed, but the same holds true if you want to seamlessly integrate a forum -- or a shop! What about the time you spent to make VM look-and-feel the way you wanted?
With all the various bits and pieces that make up a full-fledged forum or shop page, it's a lot of work anyway. I'd rather modify 20 template files and make copies of some .css, than struggle with some fat pieces of markup-cluttered application code that I need to "reverse engineer" in order to find out if I'm tweaking the right spot.
No, thanks. I'm too old for this game I've been there for +10yrs and I'm sick of it. Frankly, if there wasn't the "light at the end of the tunnel", J! 1.5, I would have wiped J! from my harddrive right after the first site.

Magento has a very complex templating system, because each store element (or "blocks" as they call it) can have it's own (set of) of templates. The equivalent in J! would having a separate template for headlines and paragraphs in com_content. Varien calls this "fallback", Joomla! calls it "override" -- the concepts are basically the same: change what you need to change, and you're done.
The amount of template files in J! 1.5 grew as well, to become more flexible and to satisfy designer's needs. Template overrides in J! 1.5 can become equally complex (or complicated.)
Magento just adds more files to it :-)

However, it isn't even CLOSE to the CMS that Joomla is. [...] (Magento doesn't even have a WYSIWYG editor)

I don't know if Varien has plans to enhance their "CMS module", but I don't worry about having a WYSIWYG editor for my clients to edit product descriptions The TinyMCE files are already present in the distribution, it's just not integrated yet -- it probably lacks a bunch of plugins to make usage of this block-stuff and to access the media files.
Remember that we're talking about a 0.8.x beta release, although it already has a lot to offer. At this point, however, it's more a shiny new toy for developers and designers, imho, and not really suited for the final mouse-phobic shop owners.
And isn't it "us" web-developers and web-designers who will finally recommend applications to our customers? A CMS, a forum, a shop?
As far as I'm concerned, some don't even wanna be bothered at all with editing their precious sites for they have a business to run, a "real" store and clients. They give me a call or send me mails with things they want to have changed, thus I choose whatever application I like to use to do the job. Frankly, some sites are still a pile of static html files, and it'd be much more work for me to install and use a CMS for that, than to fire up a texteditor :-)
Clients (my clients) coudn't care less about what kind of template system exists. They care about the final look and the features of their site. They want their site fast, well and cheap... ;-)

As of VM 1.1 -- I have a SVN working copy sitting on my harddrive for months, but didn't make it yet to test-drive it. There's no need. I heard about the better templating, but that won't make any difference for me to pick somethings else for any future site. Like I woudn't use J! 1.0.x again.
I'd rather take the challenge to write some code and "visually connect" two distinct applications from the outside than to fight against their scary internals in order to integrate them for the sake of integration.
All I'd need is to display shop items at some parts of the website, read: modules, and maybe --maybe-- the other way round: bits of content somewhere in the shop. Each of my clients accepts that the CMS and the Shop are (now) two separate application, and they need to log in twice. So what? That's two tabs for easy side-by-side editing, rather than a dozend tiresome clicks in one back-end, jumping back and forth between component screens, menus, etc. VM's admin screen appears inside Joomla's back-end (or front-end), and they share the user table, but that's about it: it has it's own menus, it's own file storage, image uploader, it doesn't use contact or banners, requires it's own "disclaimer" screen, and has no access to the articles, categories, and sections of Joomla! It even comes with it's own JS files for the tooltips ...
Integration? ;-)

We'll see whatever will come out of this new "joint venture"

Have fun,
CirTap

[unleash.it]

CirTap, first of all we are agreeing that Magento is a great piece of software. As I said, if it were to somehow integrate on the level that Virtuemart does, I would right now switch to Magento and never look back. Aside from how good it already is, the future looks bright and you can tell they have a lot of energy and cutting edge ideas.

VM uses Joomla!´s user management so this sort of "single-sign-on" is implied, and it was bothering me in the very beginning in regards of front-end editing. I don't want shop-customers to be able to edit content of the website

Nor do I. I can't wait for better ACL like anyone else, but you make shop accounts "registered" and only authorize "special" users to edit content in Joomla's Global config. That's what I do. While not needed on every site, I personally like the flexibility of integrating users for other purposes when needed (forums, newsletters, community builder, etc.)

That's right, indeed, but the same holds true if you want to seamlessly integrate a forum -- or a shop! What about the time you spent to make VM look-and-feel the way you wanted?

Of course, and that's always true with any component (including an article). Yet I only have to style the main body area...not the rest of the site w/good integration. Modules, banners, headers, footers, menus, etc. are themed only once. I suppose you can use an iframe, but there are accessibility issues with that. The time will always need to be spent, but I can't easily charge extra to do it twice...

Magento has a very complex templating system

Uh oh, not looking forward to this aspect in my foray w/Magneto! Yes Joomla template overrides and VM themes have their complexities, but I've figured them out pretty well and they do work. I'd prefer less files myself, but which system provides for faster site building would be an interesting comparison...

I don't worry about having a WYSIWYG editor for my clients to edit product descriptions

Thought you might mention this . My work around to this ugly potential problem is to include an editor.css file and a cheat sheet with style instructions to clients. I find simple things like bulleted lists or adding a class much easier for them if they have a WYSIWYG...with limitations.

They give me a call or send me mails with things they want to have changed

Not my customers, no thanks! My goal with a CMS is to lower this as much as possible and I offer training when needed. Of course layout changes and feature addons are another story.

Clients (my clients) coudn't care less about what kind of template system exists. They care about the final look and the features of their site. They want their site fast, well and cheap... ;-)

We totally agree here...this is just us trying to figure out what works best for us.

As of VM 1.1 -- I have a SVN working copy sitting on my harddrive for months, but didn't make it yet to test-drive it. There's no need. I heard about the better templating, but that won't make any difference for me to pick somethings else for any future site. Like I woudn't use J! 1.0.x again.

That's cool, but please don't knock until you've tried. I don't mean to be a VM evangelist, but I think it's really not a bad way to go. I'd like to see it improved which is why I'm writing and hoping others will get a bit less grumpy on it and go give them some energy . By the way, not sure if you realize this but VM 1.1 now works with J1.5 NATIVE. I'd never go back to Joomla 1 again either...

VM's admin screen appears inside Joomla's back-end (or front-end), and they share the user table, but that's about it: it has it's own menus, it's own file storage, image uploader, it doesn't use contact or banners, requires it's own "disclaimer" screen, and has no access to the articles, categories, and sections of Joomla! It even comes with it's own JS files for the tooltips ...

Some things are separate you're right, but you can get it to store images in J's media manager. Banners are possible, just enable on shop pages. VM does have its own categories system, which is better than Joomla's. You can however use Joomla categories/articles for VM products if you like (productsnapshot). A new feature added to 1.1 allows for creating menu items to specific VM categories and products (you can even pick a theme). With this, you should be able to do custom module placements although I haven't tested yet. Of course, with Joomla/VM you get the bazillion plugins that Joomla offers as VM now has an option to allow content plugins on shop pages. This evidentaly means you should be able to load module positions in your browse/flypages, but I haven't tried that yet either...

Anyways, not trying to disagree with you, I think this is a good discussion and it's making me think about all the options (which is why we're each writing a book about it here, no?).

Right now even though there are definitely missing features (some make me cringe a bit), I like the integration I'm getting with Joomla/VM. But if you or anyone can figure out a way to get Joomla/Magento talking better...I would be very curious to check it out. Good luck!

Cheers,

Jason

[hanlylim]

Hi Everyone and Good Day to You All,

I am subscribing to this post because I am really interested to see Meganta fully integrated with Joomla 1.5 stable.

So when anyone of you have finished with the integration, I love to test it out.

Cheers.

Hanly Lim

[Hils]

Interesting posts...

Just one note on customers being able to edit stores. The level of access is set in the Virtuemart configuration:

With this setting you can enable the Frontend Administration for users who are storeadmins, but can't access the Joomla! Backend (e.g. Registered / Editor).

It's 'horses for courses' isn't it? If I wanted a complex store at the moment I would go for something like CRELoaded standalone with all the bells and whistles it provides. For a small simple store, Virtuemart and Joomla are my choice. Both of those are not easy solutions for reasons given by others above. An integrated Magento with Joomla! might cover both of those.

Soeren - I know coders are supposed to be cool, analytical, logical but some of the Virtuemart comments around the boards must be like a slap in the face with a wet fish for someone who has donated hours of time to Virtuemart and who will be more aware than us of its limitations.

[one7media]

Here's my two cents

There's a difference between bashing someone and giving constructive criticism. Pointing out flaws or areas that are lacking is simply constructive. If I work on a project and it's lacking, I want to know so I can make it better. Of course we (most of us anyway) can appreciate the countless hours put into Virtuemart and commend them for their efforts. But the fact remains, VM is lacking, plain and simple.

It's good to see some healthy competition. I hope this inspires Soeren to do great things with VM, as I'm confident he can. I'd be willing to pay for a completed version of VM as opposed to using a bridge with Magento (for example). Likewise, if Magento was developed as a native Joomla component and was more appealing than VM, I'd pay for it (I'd probably pay for both anyway, but you get my point).

The bottom line - you guys are so talented and have ability I dream about as I'm staring at pages of code like a deer in headlights. Get creative and listen to your critics. It's not personal. As weird as it might sound, they're actually helping you.

[unleash.it]

Hils, you're right. I was meaning to make that correction in case I confused anyone. By default, you shouldn't have to do anything. Virtuemart users can only manage content if you specifically assign them within VM.

As for getting personal, at least to me it doesn't seem like anyone's doing that... I'm certainly not. I happen to disagree that some of the criticism issued here is somehow going to help the VM project, but that's just my opinion. I agree there's nothing wrong with criticism and an intelligent debate makes people think. I'm open minded enough to change my mind if someone is convincing enough. If I'm wrong, I'm actually very happy to be proven wrong as then I won't be wrong anymore! That said...

I hope any future combination of J! 1.5+ and the "new kids on the block" (Freeway, Magento, whatever) will eventually sentence VM to death. For Soeren's sake, I do hope.

Considering Virtuemart is software that has worked for many 1000's of people, this seems a bit harsh. I certainly agree that there isn't one perfect solution and if you need a complicated store, VM is probably not for you. It is true, there are sometimes hairy problems with it form time to time. For instance, they have a live UPS shipping quotes feature, but go over 75 lbs. and it goes TILT! There is a hack to make it go to 150 lbs., but it has no multiple box support to keep UPS from thinking you're send them one 500 lb. box. This is something so basic, you'd think they'd jump right on it. I've posted half a dozen times about it, there are many threads, and they agree... but still it's not in the core, at least yet.

Still, in my opinion at least, I think there's hope. For many of the sites I do, it's (right now) better than the alternatives that I know of which work with Joomla. You can tell they're working towards getting it right, and they do answer your questions if you ask in the right place. Making money in some way is a probably good idea. I'd also be willing to pay, as long as they had an unlimited site license (unlike many Joomla extensions). But instead of condemning them to doom, tell them what they're doing wrong and help in what way you can (this is the beauty of open source)...or just ignore them and shop elsewhere if you're not happy. I know how frustrating it can be to waste a lot of your time on something that's so called "free", and agree that "free" can end up costing quite a bit. However, when we get ourselves into any open source projects we know we're taking a risk. We also shouldn't forget that our experiences are subjective and different people have different needs. I think this is especially important for experienced users to keep in mind, because many people might be listening to their opinions.

[dvanwijk]

I too am interested to see the outcome of this.

Thanks,
Dan

[CirTap]

I hope [...] the "new kids on the block" [...] will eventually sentence VM to death. For Soeren's sake, I do hope.

Considering Virtuemart is software that has worked for many 1000's of people, this seems a bit harsh.

You're right that my statement sounds harsh, but it wasn't against VM or even Soeren -- God forbid! I'd hire him instantly as a developer if I could afford him :-)
Soeren, falls du das liest: mach mir mal ein Angebot <g>

I wrote "For Soeren's sake" 'cos I believe the very same 1000's of people you refer to add an tremendous pressure on him and the dev group (which isn't particulary large) to keep up with the pace of feature requests, bug fixes, and demand for compatibility with the host system; Joomla!
Some people (probably) made their business success depend on VirtueMart; geez, what a responsibility!
IMHO he's doomed to maintain it, otherwise he must be a big philanthropist and/or seriously love coding VM. If that's the case then VM will be with us for much longer (and so be it), despite all the fuzz that was going on (and the VM team was going through) with J! 1.5, legacy mode, and other trifles.
Nonetheless the VM team has to face some very serious competition. Varien will offer a VM migration tool. Varien and Zend do work hand in hand. In case Varien (themselves) seriously intend to integrate Mage as tight into Joomla! as Soeren integrated VM ...

For many of the sites I do, it's (right now) better than the alternatives that I know of which work with Joomla.

Agreed. This lack of alternatives made me choose VM "back then". I never complained about the shop-features especially since it's one of the very few shops that meets the requirements of a European shop owner.

I certainly agree that there isn't one perfect solution and if you need a complicated store, VM is probably not for you.

I doubt there'll ever be a perfect solution given the countless business models and thus requirements of store owners. I'm sure nobody wants a complicated shop. My clients need software that adopts to their business model and their workflow, read: the application must be flexible, not the shop owner, and it must be easy to customize (easy = fast = inexpensive.)

If one starts from scratch running a new "virtual business" this probably isn't an issue at all: register a domain, install the CMS, forum and shop, and go with whatever workflow these apps require or the features they offer. This has been the case for one of my clients and he's happy with it.
Some people can not afford this if they already have a business running for, let's say, 5 or 10 years, and just want to "expand" to the web. If there's a real store (with walls) for their goods, with customers comming in; wholesalers and retailers, several manufacturers, an established billing and accounting. They don't want to change any of this (much) just to satisfy the needs of a piece of software -- whether it's free or not. They don't want a web-app (or any app) dictate how they should do billing and accounting from now on, if they already use an application (for years) that does this much better, safer, faster, and according to the laws or their jurisdication. Sure, this very app once did the same: tell 'em how to do invoicing, inventory management, order processing ... from now on.
Why would they wanna go thrugh this again.

The major requirement for me: integration of a web-shop must be seamless to the existing business workflow and infrastructure. It's not a fancy admin interface or the integration into some CMS' back-end. At the end it is rock solid and flexible data exchange that matters, for a web-shop is nothing but another branch, an "outlet store" of an existing and established company. This of course may involve some changes to be made (presuming their small and painless to implement.) The outlet might possibly lead to improvements, optimization and inspiration, but it definitely must not dictate how the company has to function
Any why mess around with some web-app if all that's really needed is to display and process the many existing data one already has on a web page? A web-shop is supposed to create quick sales. If my clients have to spend more time maintaining the shop application than they'd spend with any single customer standing in their store, the system failed. ROI does matter ;-)
At most the additional work should be limited to a few daily button clicks from the store owner to sync the existing inventory, accounting and billing data safely with the new web application -- and I'm not talking about using dumb, error prone, and limited .csv files for import or export.
Businesses are different and what works well for one is inacceptable for someone else.

Magento provides high flexibility due to it's application design and architecture, one major feature is called DataFlow, the other is MVC.

The new architecture of Joomla! 1.5 will take us where Magento (thanks to the Zend Framework) already is. It is not there yet due to the limitations of PHP4. Close but no cigar <g> -- but also close enough to allow both apps to play well together.

Ok, 'nuff said about VM. This thread is about Magento and Joomla!, right? <g>

Have fun,
CirTap

[one7media]

Just my opinion, but I think there is way too much thought being put into a simple problem. Not that there is anything wrong with thinking things out, but seriously. 90% of end users can't navigate through an e-commerce site like we can, understanding everything that is going on. They are there to buy a product. The easier an app makes this process for the them, the more sales the store owner will have. Isn't this the universal goal of all e-commerce sites...to sell s**t?

So, I propose that the most important aspect of an e-commerce extension for Joomla is...THAT IT WORKS. Without a doubt, Virtuemart works. I've seen it first hand (aside from the shipping nightmare which definitely needs to be worked out).

The problem lies (IMO) in the second most important aspect...SIMPLICITY. If a customer arrives at your store and cannot figure out how to buy the s**t you're selling, or doesn't have the time to carry out a thousand different steps to buy it, the app fails miserably.

I think this is where VM needs to focus further development, whereas Magento has an edge. Make it easy for a customer to buy our products (or our clients' products).

Bottom line - I'm not giving up on VM, but I can't ignore Magento either. As I've said before, I think competition is good and inspiring, and myself and others would be more than willing to PAY a reasonable price for a functional, user-friendly e-commerce solution for Joomla.

[Frankd4]

Jeez, don't these folks have jobs? So much typing.

VM has a 1.1 beta that works just fine with Joomla 1.5.1. I worry about VM's 4-person development team. The installed base appears to be large enough to support the program. However, one good car crash and a very large number of businesses would be injured.

I am giving Freeway a try now. Working is a key feature that is not included in the current release of Freeway, either stand-alone or with Joomla. Nor is their installed base large enough to support the product via forum. Herein lies the main trouble with these new products that open their source but are there primarily to charge for support. I have seen this business model on the street corner; 'Try this kid, the first one's free.' God help anyone who installs these products in a production environment without having purchased support.

This being said, I am too dumb to know that it cannot be done, and I like the look of Magento, so I'll give it a try.

[CirTap]

@Frank: good car crash, hum? -- and I was called harsh
You made good points throughout, especially abut the front-ends simplicity. Magento's interface, and Im not talking about the "looks", is well designed with easy-to-use features you can also find on VM's own todo list.

Herein lies the main trouble with these new products that open their source but are there primarily to charge for support. [...] God help anyone who installs these products in a production environment without having purchased support.

I don't worry about getting support from either Varien (purchased) or the Magento community (free); +10k members in ~12 months, numbers growing. Their forum software suxx, but I was able to find my answers.
Varien's new "partner programm" is a serious (professional + commercial) approach to support shop owners (my clients) and implementors (that's me). They definitely Think Big <g>.
The Magento site is becoming pretty busy recently -- and slow; the production release is expected by the end of this month -- unless there's a bus crash.
Let's see if their staff manages to iron out the ~300 "high/normal" severity issues in their bug-tracker <g>

CirTap

[rapt0r2]

I agree its a really interesting project!