Magento is a content manager for creating e-commerce stores easily and with many features. This CMS is one of the most used in the world of e-commerce thanks to its functions, ease of site design and the possibility of synchronizing the store with desktop applications.
How Magento works
Like all CMSs (Joomla, WordPress, etc.), Magento is installed on the server and connects to the hosting through a MySQL database. The system is built with the PHP programming language and elements in Zend Framework. The architecture applies the conventions “object-oriented programming” and “model-view-controller”. For storing data, Magento uses “entity–attribute–value model”.
The history of Magento
On August 31, 2007 the first beta version of Magento was released (programming had begun seven months earlier). But already in 2008 the company Varien launched version 1.0. Before creating Magento, Varien had been working with osCommerce and decided to write a new e-commerce platform under the name “Bento”, but due to legal problems with the company FileMaker Inc. it was decided to rename it as Magento, a blend of Bento and Mage (magician in English).
In 2011 eBay bought all of Magento (months before it had bought 49% of the company), but the founders of the CMS, Roy Rubin and Yoav Kutner, continued leading the company. Due to the new policies adopted by the company, Yoav Kutner left the Magento project.
The platforms of Magento
Currently Magento offers three platforms: Magento Enterprise Edition, Magento Go and the most popular Magento Community Edition.
Magento Community Edition
Magento Community Edition is an open content management system that anyone can modify at the core level. Its functions can be expanded by installing extensions.
Magento Enterprise Edition
Magento Enterprise Edition has the same main files as Magento Community Edition, but its big difference is that the platform is commercial. This edition is much more complete and is designed for large companies that need technical support and personalized attention.
Magento Go
Magento Go is a cloud-based e-commerce solution (it includes web hosting) and although it has many functions oriented to small and medium businesses, this platform is the least customizable.
The characteristics of Magento
Magento is designed to create a web template system and generate several pages similar in design. But both the features for the electronic store (stock control, inventory, customizing taxes and shipping among other functions) and the web design can be expanded by installing extensions through Magento Connect. The extensions we can install are Themes (web templates), Modules (plugins) and Integration (manage more than one store at the same time from the same admin panel).
If you are going to create an electronic store, without a doubt you will have to take into account the options that Magento offers.
