magentocommerce views

[WebSquare]

Hi

just looking to see if any of you guys have started using magento yet and how you have found it, we have been requested to use it and so far so good.

let me know you experiences!

thanks

[business123]

I've looked at it but it seems painfully slow, I've seen a website called Usefully Green http://www.usefullygreen.co.uk which uses it here in the UK.

[WebSquare]

slow speed could be due to hosting??

the one you have shown doesnt look bad!

[business123]

Yes, I don't think it looks bad in fact the design is nice and crisp. Usability wise though, it took about 10 secs to add something to the cart though! I've looked on the Magento forum for example sites and they all seem to be the same speed, let me know if you find a quick one.

[WebSquare]

very interesting that.. will definately keep a note of that, what forums are you looking at

ta

[business123]

http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards - there's a section called 'Showoff' which is quite interesting.

[WebSquare]

lol at show off :cool:!

thanks i will look at that and keep you posted on our magentocommerce work, we have upto now been using oscommerce and have been able to change functionality of it so much and totally changing the layout of the page, i hope that we can do the same with magento

have a look at the one we did recently in oscommerce www fish4fones com

ta

[business123]

This one seems quicker - http://www.yogimall.com/shop/yogawarehouse/

[NuBlue]

Hi All,

Usefully green website is hosted with us. Magento is getting quicker with each update, we have set a up a specific Magento server which is optimised for the application so it is running as quick as it possibly can!

A few other Magento sites we host, so people can have a look at what's possible with Magento are:

www.gotmojo.co.uk
www.cxarena.com
www.mattress.co.uk
www.civilsafetyengineering.co.uk

Personally I think it's the best open source E-commerce on the net in terms of functionality and quality of code.

[TheHorse]

I really like the usefully green store, its quite interactive and informative and if I was a Guardian reader then I'd definately shop there. Although the basket took 10 seconds to load up for me too.

[speedy_s]

[/URL]
[URL="http://www.cxarena.com"]www.cxarena.com (http://www.gotmojo.co.uk)
www.mattress.co.uk (http://www.mattress.co.uk)
www.civilsafetyengineering.co.uk (http://www.civilsafetyengineering.co.uk)


Are these 3 on your normal shared account or dedicated since they were considerably quicker then the others that you host.

We will be jumping on magento bandwagon in a week as it looks very promising, but still looking for a fast and affordable host (pm me if you can offer fast hosting for less than £50/year:)) !

Just wondering if anyone has tried, how easy is it to change the layout and the front end?

[NuBlue]

All the Magento stores are on a shared hosting platform. Performance wise, obviously a lot of it is down to the individuals design choices. Image heavy sites with lots of additional scripts etc.. will obviously run slower.

£83.88 is the cheapest package we do. I think you will be quite lucky to find a host that can offer decent Magento hosting for less than £50 per year!

[mke]

NuBlue, one point of agreement, Don't give your servers away. Free software is bad enough. I let the customers know we are charging partly to make a developer contribution. Compared to 'doze ripoffs, it's still a gift. We certainly wouldn't go lower than what you are offering, even if the customer could show web savvy credentials, which most can't. These are complex applications and your staff time is required. Still better than a 'doze ripoff.

One point of disagreement. I'll back Zen Cart. It's a great application and does not drag its feet. It has the support network, both professional and community, and has an enviable range of additionals for almost every conceivable purpose. The code is neat.

I hope you will disagree, because one of the great things about Open Source is choice. :)

[speedy_s]

All the Magento stores are on a shared hosting platform. Performance wise, obviously a lot of it is down to the individuals design choices. Image heavy sites with lots of additional scripts etc.. will obviously run slower.

Do you have any of these enhancements on your magento servers?



DYI (Do it Yourself) Performance Enhancements

While we continue to improve Magento's core performance, there are additional improvements that Magento users can implement to yield performance gains in a single-server environment:


Install a PHP opcode cache such as APC (http://pecl.php.net/package/APC) or XCache (http://xcache.lighttpd.net/). These can deliver significant improvements to PHP's responsiveness by caching PHP code in an intermediate bytecode format, which saves the interpreter from recompiling the PHP code for each and every request.
Make sure your Apache configuration has KeepAlives enabled. KeepAlives are a trick where multiple HTTP requests can be funneled through a single TCP connection. Since the setup of each TCP connection incurs additional time, this can significantly reduce the time it takes to download all the files (HTML, JavaScript, images) for a website.
Use a memory-based filesystem for Magento's var directory. Magento makes extensive use of file-based storage for caching and session storage. The slowest component in a server is the hard drive, so if you use a memory-based filesystem such as tmpfs, you can save all those extra disk IO cycles by storing these temporary files in memory instead of storing them on your slow hard drive.
Modify the configuration for your MySQL server to take better advantage of your server's RAM. Most Linux distributions provide a conservative MySQL package out of the box to ensure it will run on a wide array of hardware configurations. If you have ample RAM (eg, 1gb or more), then you may want to try tweaking the configuration. An example my.cnf is below, though you will want to consult the MySQL documentation for a complete list of configuration directives and recommended settings.

http://www.magentocommerce.com/blog/comments/performance-is-key-notes-on-magentos-performance/

[tempus fugit]

I'm running my uk site on Magento.

Skinning it to get a distinctive look is pretty challenging.

I don't think mine is running slowly, let me know if you find otherwise ...

[business123]

I'm running my uk site on Magento.

Skinning it to get a distinctive look is pretty challenging.

I don't think mine is running slowly, let me know if you find otherwise ...
Hello Tempus, your site seems fine about 3 secs to add something to the cart - who's your host?

[tempus fugit]

I don't know.

I hired expert web designers to do all the clever stuff whilst I got on with my bits; products, words, images, suppliers, etc.:)

I'm sure somebody clever will be able to tell us?

[speedy_s]

Hello Tempus, your site seems fine about 3 secs to add something to the cart - who's your host?

The server his site is hosted on, only has 18 other websites.

No wonder his shop is so quick!

[ratso]

We have used Magneto and like the way it is moving, though the new version of OS Commerce is due very soon and what we have seen so far will see it still retaining its position as the market favourite.
Hosting is always a problem for many sites with many novice site designers thinking they can just pust a site live on any hosting platform. We have had to change or servers twice in a year to stay upto date with the latest versions and with ecommerce have found that Linux servers do out perform Windows based options.
Magneto offers a grest range of options and my designers do like the feel of what they have seen so far though do say it has a long long way to go in relation to OS.

[mke]

still retaining its position as the market favourite I'd very much like to see the source of that information, especially if it makes any mention of where it gets its data from and includes an ordered list.

[ratso]

Just look it up for yourself, the fact is that Oscommerce is the most widly used open source on the market it is also the largest open source ecommerce community in the world.
Just try GOOGLE

[tempus fugit]

Can I just chip back in and let you know that the hosting of my quick UK Magento site is by Interactive Red (http://www.interactivered.com/).

They are Kent-based designers, they skinned my site and host it on their own server.

Apologies for not declaring this as an immediate response to the question asked - I just wanted to check that they were happy for me to do so.

Check out their portfolio (http://www.interactivered.com/portfolio/web-sites/).

You will see that they designed the logo (http://www.interactivered.com/portfolio/logos/) for my business too.

Great original and contemporary design work, reasonable pricing, and they have loooked after me well too!

Ask for Villy, she'll be pleased to help you.

End of shameless plug - which I am happy to give to them.:)

BTW a new Magento release (http://www.magentocommerce.com/blog/comments/sneak-peek-magento-version-11-features/) is due at the end of this month (V1.1) with more features and a few UK localisation wrinkles hopefully sorted.

[Stampy]

Tempus Fugit

I really like the site, congratulations. Speed is very good also.

I'm interested in Magento - how do you find the admin side of the store (the adding of products, taking and processing orders etc)?

Just wondering if the good looks are matched by the usability?

[tempus fugit]

I'll insert a caveat right at the beginning for fear of upsetting fans of other ecommerce solutions:
I only know Magento
I did my research and found that it ticked all my boxes, and went with Magento
I am now a typical small business running one webshop

Admin side of Magento works very well.

Easy to add products; lots of options.
Product images can be a bit tricky. Magento presents them really well. The zoom image and gallery functions are the default standard options in Magento. However, it likes to start with a square image, and I've spent more time than would be ideal in Paint.Net re-sizing and squaring-up images. There may be plug-ins to resolve this.

Also easy to add content pages; all the web pages were built by me, the end-user. [NB I had to use html - a WYSIWYG editor for content and product descriptions is promised]

I have done very little trade through the site yet.
I have chosen to allow Google Checkout only!
One customer has struggled to get this to work for him and his cards.
There are plug-ins for all sorts of payment methods.

Some UK users have talked of problems with VAT calculations, mine are fine. More UK localisation and Tax options coming at the end of June.

I am happy with my choice of Magento.
I believe that any minor wrinkles will be ironed-out soon - their pace of progress is very quick, and (in my opinion) what they have developed gives a high quality appearance to a small business site.

I would recommend that before anybody opts for it they find themselves a website developer who is comfortable with it, and either already has some experience in skinning it or is willing to commit the effort to learn same and deliver you a good-looking result. Of course, others would argue looks aren't that important in ecommerce .....

I'll stop there, if you have any specific queries please feel free to ask.

[Stampy]

Thanks a lot for your detailed response, much appreciated.

[Derr1ck]

Just installed magento to test it out, but in the backend I can't seem to change any settings, click on save button and nothing happens, any ideas from those that are using it successfully?.

[Stampy]

Hi

You're probably better going on the magentocommerce forums. It's split into particular issues and even has a UK thread.

I installed my magento through a "one click" installation host, and it seems to be working fine.

[speedy_s]

Has anyone here running magento managed to enable currency switcher?
We ship to various countries, and I have enabled all relevant currencies and countries but I still can't get the currency switcher to show up :(

[WebSquare]

we are going to make our first magentocommerce website so will keep you all posted :)

can i show you one of our recent work to see what you think

www mahmoods biz

thanks

[WebSquare]

www.websquare.co.uk (http://www.websquare.co.uk)

[Future Freak]

I've looked at it but it seems painfully slow, I've seen a website called Usefully Green http://www.usefullygreen.co.uk which uses it here in the UK.

Main section of site seems quick enough
Just tried 3 'add to cart' tests - it took 20, 12 and 17 seconds respectively.

I looked into magento to transfer over to after they initially launched, but found the way that they do attributes such as size, colour etc. to be painfully over complicated/long winded.

[Delicious Webdesign]

yes i done a similar test and took 18, 19, 15 seconds for three items - as a comparison and to check my connection wasnt slow I dont the same on amazon and all items took 1 second

[Delicious Webdesign]

what payment providers are people using with magento ? im looking at protx at the moment are there any pros / cons with using others ?

[NuBlue]

We have a copy of the 1.1 beta in the office for Magento and it looks to be a lot quicker. The add to cart function in particular has been vastly improved

[Delicious Webdesign]

need the php5 cgi binary but the site isnt letting me download it, anyone got an idea about this ? where else can I get this from ?

cant download it from here for some reason
http://www.magentocommerce.com/support/php5cgi/php5-cgi

[Delicious Webdesign]

need the php5 cgi binary but the site isnt letting me download it, anyone got an idea about this ? where else can I get this from ?

cant download it from here for some reason
http://www.magentocommerce.com/support/php5cgi/php5-cgi

This seems to be just my system ! dont know what it can be but just wouldnt let me download it on IE or Firefox

[tempus fugit]

Hi Delicious, not a great deal of technical help to you, but I clicked the link that you provided and downloaded it without any problem.

Did you get it yet?

It's 17MB, but I guess we can work out a way of passing it on to you if you're still stuck?

[Delicious Webdesign]

Hi Delicious, not a great deal of technical help to you, but I clicked the link that you provided and downloaded it without any problem.

Did you get it yet?

It's 17MB, but I guess we can work out a way of passing it on to you if you're still stuck?

Thanks very much my colleague got if for me, just very strange how my system would allow me to download it

But thanks very very much for the offer anyway I was starting to get a bit annoyed

[CougarD]

We have Magento store running on a dedicated server with all the recommended tweaks.

Mysql optimised
APC cache installed
PHP optimised
Apache optimised

The install is the latest release v1.1. Take a look at www.karmatradingco.com to see how it runs.

Matt

[consultant]

it's 1.1.1 now!

[CougarD]

That's the one :)

[birches]

Hi,

I developed Usefully Green, I've still quite a bit of design work to do on it before I start marketing it, but appreciate the comments on here. I used it as a protype really to see if Magento was suitable for use.

Re performance, I've got another site (search for Raw Components on Google ) which has literally just gone live with 1.1.2 Magento on NuBlue. I think it's significantly faster than the 1.0... version Usefully Green is running on. The guys at NuBlue are also very helpful - which counts for a lot IMO.

Raw Components still needs some further work, and some of my images need scaling down, but it's up and running and a lot better than the previous e-commerce software we were using. Plus I have a lot of functionality switched off at present, so there is quite a bit of potential to enhance the site.

How do I rate Magento - it's great, but it does require some technical knowledge to use it - unless you get someone else to design you a site that is. I wouldn't use anything else now though. I think it's a really exciting time for small/medium businesses as suddenly they have the ability to create feature rich websites with potentially a low outlay. Once people start producing themes for Magento in quantities it will really take off.

Rgds

Karen

[lite_ws]

I finally used Magento as well for my own website to sell online service for my customers, and it works fine now, I have just maybe some few thing to change to make it better.
website1service.com

[business123]

Well, I've finally got my 'Magento' based website up and running! Based on version 1.1.3 it seems to work quickly now, order processing and adding to the cart etc.

I've not done much customisation to the templates as the default templates seemed to fit my requirements quite well.

You can view the new website here - Inkjet Cartridges, Laser and Copier Toner Cartridges (http://www.inkworldgroup.com).

[speedy_s]

Well, I've finally got my 'Magento' based website up and running! Based on version 1.1.3 it seems to work quickly now, order processing and adding to the cart etc.


I've not done much customisation to the templates as the default templates seemed to fit my requirements quite well.

You can view the new website here - Inkjet Cartridges, Laser and Copier Toner Cartridges (http://www.inkworldgroup.com).

How did you make the 'shop by brand' callout?

[business123]

How did you make the 'shop by brand' callout?
It's not dynamic, I followed this post http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/720/P60/#t36832 and amended it with my own links rather than the code which is on the post.