Ecommerce

A few years ago, I had developed an online store for a buddy of mine using osCommerce. I had hoped to use Joomla! or Drupal for the site but at the time wasn't satisfied with the shopping cart extensions or modules that were available for either CMS. Shortly after developing that site a new eCommerce module for Drupal became available called Ubercart. I've never had taken on the task of building another online store (it was a lot of work) but I've always kept my eye on Ubercart just to stay informed.

There are very few shopping carts or ecommerce platforms that I'm willing to talk about on a blog for content management systems. For whatever reason, I have always had interest in the Magento Ecommerce platform. The following is a video on the features included in the Magento Enterprise Edition 1.6.

Not sure if I'm early or late to the party, but I just discovered Mixergy.com. Mixergy is a place where 20ish Andrew Warner wants to help ambitious people who love business as much as he does to learn from a mix of experienced mentors. Somebody on the Internet wanting to help you make money, imagine that.

Last week, Varien and Magento announced an alternative to the community open source Magento ecommerce platform.  That alternative is Magento Enterprise Edition.

osCommerce announced that their osCommerce Online Merchant v3.0 Alpha 5 will be made available on March 11th.  They've also retooled the schedule for additional releases of this well known shopping cart.

osCommerce Online Merchant v3.0 Alpha 5 was scheduled for release by the end of February and has been postponed to ensure the quality of the release. It will now be released on Wednesday the 11th of March. This release also brings in a new roadmap and release strategy for the v3.x series.

Not long ago, I expressed doubts whether osCommerce has a future.  While osCommerce is widely used by thousands of sites, and incidentally the only shopping cart I've ever put into production, its development cycle has been painfully slow for many of its open source contributors and users.  As I've said before, when the 3.0 version of osCommerce is released I find it unlikely that the new osCommerce will have many of the Web 2.0 features that the new breed of
shopping carts currently have now.  I have personal doubts that osCommerce's future is as bright as its past has been.

There are so many great websites out there, but so little time to discover them.  I came across a great site that discusses eCommerce and shopping platforms called Practical eCommerce.

Real folks are behind this company. We are a small business ourselves, and we take seriously the notion of helping other businesses decipher the complexities of migrating online or improving their online operations.

There it was in front of my eyes.  The headline in osCommerce's forum read, "Is OsC Dead?, Discussion of the Progress of OsC" [link removed by osCommerce folks?].  Despite how some may read the title, the thread isn't about bashing osCommerce.  Instead, it is about users and community members concerned and even fearful of the slow pace of new development for osCommerce.  Despite all the talk about osCommerce 3.0, it has been a year and a half since OsC 3 Alpha 4 was released with the roadmap showing that Alpha 5 and 6 are still under development.  How can one not ask if the future of osCommerce is in jeopardy?

As mentioned at the osCommerce forum, Kerry Watson also has an article out about the new breed of open source shopping carts.  The article starts off with a that was then, this is now statement regarding shopping carts.

While the Big Three of the old guard — osCommerce, Zen Cart, and CRE Loaded — continue to duke it out among themselves, new-generation open source commerce projects have begun to spring up with new ideas and new ways of thinking. Most noteworthy of the new crop are France-based Prestashop and US-based programs Ubercart and Magento.

These fresh Web 2.0-style carts are mature and production-ready contenders, and all are at or beyond version 1.0 in their production cycle. These carts are equal or superior to many commercial e-commerce programs, and are available for free under the GNU or OSL 3.0 Public License. We've previously reviewed Magento, so this column will focus on the other two next-generation carts: PrestaShop and Ubercart.

Personally, I've been working on recommending a friend to upgrade his osCommerce site to either Magento or Drupal's Ubercart.  Even when the 3.0 version of osCommerce is released, it will likely still not have many of the Web 2.0 features that the new breed of shopping carts currently have now.  It's not that I think osCommerce is dead, but I do think that osCommerce has stopped evolving.  Good open source projects never die, they just fade away.

A new version of my favorite shopping cart has been released.  Magento, an open source ecommerce platform, is now available under version 1.1.5.

This version includes many bug fixes for Magento 1.1.x that are listed in the release notes section.

This version also comes with new features:

• New category management tool that will allow store owners to manage a large number of categories, which can be tested on our demo admin site.
• New skin to the Magento Default theme which can be seen here

Roy Rubin over at Magento discussed what we can expect in the upcoming Magento 1.1.  On top of that list are performance improvements with as much as a 40% improvement in the catalog and sales modules.  Enhancements and new to Magento 1.1 will also include: