magecamp London day 1

magecamp is an event around the ecommerce platform magento, organized by On Tap Creative. It is a part of Internet World 2009 and the first European english based magento camp!

Unfortunately, Internet World 2009 has no possibility to go online for free via WIFI :-) It’s always the same. Why isn’t it possible to provide a free or low cost wireless access at these kind of exhibitons? In the magecamp presentation room is enough space for around 60-80 people. The room is full and the listeners come from 16 different countries. Dan Garner, the founder of On Tap Creative gaves a first welcome. On Tap Creative decided to organize this magecamp after they have seen successful camps in USA, Germany and France.

State of Magento – Roy Rubin

Roy is the founder of Varien. In the past the company worked in the way: "you name it, we do it" .
When they work more and more together with bigger companies, they realized that often the existing ecommerce open source solutions came to an end. They started talking about the idea of magento in 2006. 2007 they started to work with a small team, in August, 2007 they released the first public preview. The feedback was overwhelming and in March 2008 they released the production release 1.0. Today, magento is the fastest growing ecommerce platform in the world. It is multicurrency and multilingual. look at Google Trend and compare it with oscommerce.

Few numbers about magento

750,000+ downloads on their own website magentoecommerce.com. They are working together with Plesk. Plesk allows a single click installation for magento.
90,000 community members.
675+ magento connect extensions. Open source licensing and commercial extensions are possible. The growth is around 5-10 extensions a day. Magento Connect has most of the website traffic.
60+ language translations. They love to see the product in as much languages as possible.
125+ payment gateways are available.
135,000 forum posts
210.313 lines of code – Magento 1.2. It will take a single person 55 years :-)

What is Magento?

Varien tried focussing on building the best ecommerce platform on the world (no CRM, no accounting, …).They are very good in the smb & entreprise market.
They have 2 open source products:

Magento community version
Enterprise version (since 3 weeks)

In 2009 they want to:

setup a SaaS service.
try to make the community tools more effective (Documentation, Wiki, Video/Tutorials, Community Support, Advisory board)
build the best eCommerce API
work on better performance
release Magento Connect 2.0 with an appstore

The biggest magento website has between 300-400,000 SKUs

Magento Site Administration – Dan Garner

He showed a store, based on example date and zen server.

Setting up products:
– possible are simple-, grouped-, configurable-, virtual-, bundle- and downloadable products.
– there are different tax classes for products (rules based f.e. on products or on the customer)
– the appearance of the product can be nowhere, in the catalog, in the search or in both
– you can setup gift messages and the manufacturer
– prices are highly configurable (f.e. tier prices depends on quantity, customer group and/or website). There are very granular pricing rules (also in the promotion sections)
– A custom design based on the product ist possible with feature like "active from – to"
– in an inventory, you can setup (min, max allowed in shopping car, stock management)
– on which website (English, German, French?)
– There is a hierarchical view in which categories the product will appear.
– define related products (up-sells, cross-sells)
Custom options: configure your product by asking questions! (lettering on a t-Shirt)
1.1. Import possibilities for people who are not used to web interfaces,
its possible to export and import from a spreadsheet.
1.2. Attribute is a custom field, for example a brand (Apple, Acer, Dell, …), size, color on multiple language sites. These Attributes can be assign and unassign to attribute sets. A camera has different attributes compared to a mobile.
Setting up categories:
Its good to define your categories before you create your product.
Its possible to decide, which categories are in which site (English, French store)
It’s possible to define CMS Blocks for categories.
You have anchors (counting of the products in a category)
Every category could have entirely different design if you want.
The category product tab allows to define products, which will put instantly in this category.
managing customers
sales statistics, recent orders, shoppng cart, adresses.
Its possible to create orders from the backend. That is a really important tool for phone services.
shopping car price rules (conditions, actions, trigger)
If the subtotel ist > 250 we can offer a discount on certain products on different customer groups.
Newsletter
Its a very good feature, but there a better tools outside. But, it works well and there are extensions to integrate it in other tools.
CMS
A basic CMS, which can create pages, blocks and polls on different sites. Each element can have its own design.
You can embedd magento spezific variables.
Reports
System
Import and export Data (csv, xml)
Payment Methods
– You enter some kinds of API and the magento modules does the rest for you.

Magento Enterprise edition –

based on the community edition 1.3
it is an annual subscription version (license per server) with support, warranty, indemnification
the possibility of time sensitive private sales and member specials (f.e. if you shop for more then x $ per month, we will not calculate shipping costs). The private sales can be configured as an event (from – to). Invitations are possible from the backend and the frontend. People can be allowed to register on the website or via a special link in the received email.
its possible to restrict the catalog (buyvip, hootlook) based on website and customer group
there is an advanced admin ACL and an admin action logging
with content staging it is f.e possible to have a summer catalog and a winter catalog
– there is a separate staging directory. To create a staging website, select the default website, configure access, select content to copy and with one click of the button … the staging website is created
– it is possible to merge the sites immediately or on a scheduled time
– a rollback is possible in the same module version
gift certificates / cards (virtual, physical) (a similar extension is available in the magento connect directory)
customer store credits (payment option)
improved data encryption and administrator security.
– After n failed login attempts the account is blocked
– After n days the admin has to create a new password
PA-DSS standards (PCI compliant software)

The roadmaps for community and enterprise editions will be published in the next weeks.
Remark from the audience :-): IT’S A LONG WAY UP FROM ZERO!

Case Studies – Dan Garner

Furniture retailer from Ireland http://instore.ie
Why Magento?
– open source
– lower cost of ownership
– customisation
– open framework to enable integration with legacy ERP Systems
on tap did an integration
– real time stock management an ordering
– check stock in real time from ERP System
    – During Add to cart
    – on the cart page
    – during checkout
– ability to take deposits
– ERP System order numbers additionally to the magento id
– staging environment
Fashion retailer – http://www.pilotclothing.com/
Why Magento
– open source
– lower cost of ownership
– flecibility to change design
– ease of
special in this case
– google maps storefinder
– outfit builder
http://meluba.com (not yet launched)
design your own t-shirts, mugs, basecaps, … in a magento store with an integrated flash application for configuring the items