If you think your Website development task which includes online shopping cart then magento feet well for your needs and requirement. Magento is open source ecommerce web application development software which is very helpful for your online shopping store website development solution. Ecommerce is wonderful web application software for your online shopping website development needs with which you can add strength in your website development project to buy or sell product or services online and run you e-business. Ecommerce provides various web application solution with which you can add document automation in supply chain and logistics, domestic and international payment systems, enterprise content management, Group buying, automated online assistants, instant messaging, newsgroups, Online shopping and order tracking, online banking, Online office suites, Shopping cart software, Teleconferencing and electronic tickets in your website development work.

Magento is an object-oriented PHP Framework that can be used for modern, dynamic website development that combine into Magento’s powerful eCommerce features for your one stop ecommerce solution. Magento organize its website development code into individual Modules. In a typical PHP Model-View-Controller (MVC) application, all the Controllers for website development will be in one folder, all the Models in another, etc. In Magento, files are grouped together based on functionality, which are called modules in Magento. When you want to customize or extend website development code into Magento you can able to create your own Modules in package which is a unique name that identifies your company or organization. When you create a new Module, you need to add an XML file to the website development folder.

Magento is a configuration-based MVC system which is totally different than your convention-based MVC system for website development. In convention-based MVC system when you want to add new controller or model then it will pick it up automatically. In convention-based MVC system when you want to add your website development new controller or maybe a new Model, you’d just create the file/class, and the system would pick it up automatically. In a configuration-based system, like Magento, in addition to adding the new file/class to the codebase, you must tell explicitly to the system about the new class, or new group of classes. In Magento, each Module has a file named config.xml. This file contains the entire relevant configuration for a Magento website development module. At runtime, all these files are loaded into one large configuration tree.

In magento your website development URL describes your basket properties very clearly which helps you to customize its code. In magento the first portion of website development URL determines where the controller is or modules is located. Second portion define controller or modules category. It tells magento which controller for website development it should use. Each Module with Controllers has a special folder name and has same properties for your website development. Third portion of website development URL recognize action for that web page. Some magento users take action as view to tell magento to perform action which views the particular ID page. ID is a parameter value which tells which load your website development product with that assigned ID.

Magento also provides multiple routers for your website development shopping cart solutions. Above described method is a magento’s frontend method. If magento doesn’t find valid controller/action for a assigned URL then it follow with another website development admin application rule. It magento doesn’t find valid website development admin Controller/Action, it uses Mage_Cms_IndexController. This time website development CMS Controller checks Magento’s website development content management system to see if there’s any website development content that should be loaded. If it finds some, it loads it, otherwise the user will be presented with a custom 404 page.

Website development with magento ecommerce software is not as easy as you think about. It requires great exposure to PHP website development as well as good database skills. If you want to learn magento website development very quickly then you can contact at www.attuneinfocom.com. Our expert magento website developers provides magento training which help you tom learn store configurations, shipping methods configurations, payment Methods configuration and creating and Managing CMS pages/Blocks in magento.

When we talk about website development – how we can forget open source software like Magento? Nowadays open source is used widely in web development. Especially for Ecommerce website development -  open source software is KING. Magento, an open source ecommerce software, is now the most popular ecommerce platform  Both businesses and web developers go for open source software for Ecommerce website development. Open source software like Magento, Zen Cart, Joomla are built as fully functional Ecommerce website development. The ease of using open source software attracts web developers.

Main features like payment gateways and shipping modules for Ecommerce website are mainly developed using open source software. Web developers also use open source software for Ecommerce shopping cart website development. To develop an Ecommerce shopping cart website from a scratch is not easy and some what risky and time consuming, generally with lots of bugs.

With open source software the task of Ecommerce shopping cart web development is easier. Open source application solutions are widely acceptable these days because they provide hassle free programming and debugging. The source code can be accessed without paying a dime. Source codes are also open for editing. As a result, web developers have a wide array of choices to edit codes and upload pages in real time. There are several open source development tools including LAMP, Joomla that are widely used for free of cost. LAMP is one such tool. Further, application software like Joomla has certainly brought a welcoming change in the web development arena. Open source application solution such as Joomla is a stylish, simple and professional solution for web development. It is a content management system that has an infinite number of open source codes and templates for web developers. These tools can be easily customized by web developers in the web development process. Since it is a content management system, it keeps track of every piece of content including widgets, music, videos, text, images and documents. Joomla assists a web development company to build websites with the most advanced online applications.

In short, open source systems are economical, easier than building from scratch, and have a community of developers who will willingfly provide product support and advice.  These are some of the reasons we like to use open source software like Magento.  Long live Open Source!

Magento is an open source ecommerce platform which offers long range of features to the users. Today every merchant wants to migrate his/her online store to Magento. Magento offers many options along with one page checkout. The Magento drop-down menus for prices, product and color gives an opportunity to potential customers to save their time and choosing the right products. You do not have to wonder from side to side to find these details.

Why Magento is Better eCommerce Software than others?

Today there are many ecommerce platforms which are FREE such as OS Commerce, Zen Cart, Prestashop, Opencart, Ubercart, VirtueMart, Batavi. However Magento is the best option in today’s time which provides you Good Website Design along with the feature of SEO Friendliness.

10 reasons why Magento is better ecommerce software?

1. Open Source (FREE):

Since it is Open Source software, it is absolutely FREE. Apart from being Free, it is easily customizable.

2. Multi Store Capability:

Magento offers Multi Store Capability i.e. it allows you to run more than one store. So even if you currently have 2, 5 or 20 stores, they can be managed from the same admin panel. So in this way you can manage orders and customers at one place without switching to any other website. This makes it easier for you to manage things easily. This is one the major reason for choosing Magento over other ecommerce softwares.
Ads by Google

3. SEO Friendliness

Search engine friendliness is Magento’s core feature. This feature of Magento allows you various option such as SEO friendly Rewrites, auto generated sitemaps (both HTML & XML). These options help in getting good search engine rankings and improve website visibility.

Please review this great video by SEOMOZ!!

4. Guest Check Out

With Magento, you will get guest checkout alternative. In this alternative, you can apart yourself from the crowd. In many online stores, the customer must sign before buying, but this method can save time and also help in retaining customers who may not like to register at first. This feature also improves conversion rates.

5. Integrated Google analytics

Magento offers Google analytics integration.

6. Integrated sales and store tracking

Magento gives an option of integrated sales and store tracking. You can manage all your sales & customers from single page which result in saving of time.

7. No limits on number of product or purchases

There is no limit as far as number of products is concerned. You can upload “N” number of products.

8. Catalog

The Catalog is excellent and has facilities which none other shopping cart has in the market.

9. Product Categorization

Magento has features which enable to hold 1000s of product categorized by their classes and categories without making the shopping cart slow.

10. Payment Gateway

Magento gives easy integration of payment gateway.

The growth and success of your internet business surely depends on the possibilities of the eCommerce software you are using. Magento software is the right choice for the purpose of building your business the most effective. However, you will find it fairly bit of a tedious to migrate all your data to this system manually. Cart2Cart shopping cart migration service will be able to copy all the data from your already active web store, so the data is going to be added easily and quickly. This kind of service makes you definitely sure that all the data is moved safely and with no errors.
Magento is an eCommerce software platform for the web store of the future. Your business is no longer constrained by your software platform. Magento offers you a lot of features, significantly increases your income and markets the good image of your online business. The platform gives its users better control over their online stores and a lot of customization abilities. It has one web page checkout and also Google checkout pre-installed. The great number of advantages is also offered to the shoppers: fast and easy order making, wish list, ability to calculate the charges for shipping and handling even if they are not log on to accounts. Magento is becoming better and better every day completing all your requirements for good, fast and efficient work.
It is perfect time to migrate your web store to Magento.The application platform fairly helps and automates your work. Not sure that it is a viable task for you? The procedure will not really need specific programming skills. Everything is done immediately and with little effort. Furthermore, before migrating you can calculate its cost utilising the Migration Estimator. Migration cost is dependent on the number of items you need to migrate. Cart2Cart shopping cart migration service allows you to send the wide range of entities: products, their images, extra fields, attributes and models, categories as well as category images. Would like to move customers and orders? Just add them to the migration procedure. Furthermore transfer currencies, vendors and taxes with the help of couple of clicks.
The process is done with no errors, quickly and safely. Its not necessary to do everything manually wasting a lot of time, nerves and energy. Let the software do the migration suitable for you. Cart2Cart migration service is a great solution for migrating your web store to an effective Magento software platform – the platform that takes care of its users.

San Diego Magento developers love Magento. Magento and osCommerce both allows store owners to maintain their online stores with minimum effort. Magento & osCommerce are eCommerce open-source shopping cart applications and both are packed with all the features needed to create a successful web store. We have composed this article to help you to know the advantages and disadvantages of each platform. So checkout the comparison of these two eCommerce applications to see which one is better for your online stores, because it is important to know when selecting your shopping cart what features you need.
osCommerce is a free open source online store-management software which is powered by very well established and responsive osCommerce community. To run any osCommerce website the web server should support the powerful PHP web scripting language and fast MySQL database. osCommerce offers a wide range of features that allows online stores to be setup fairly quickly with ease.
Magento is a highly efficient open source eCommerce platform. It offers you an extensive suite of powerful tools for creating and managing an online store. Magento runs on the Apache/MySQL/PHP platform and to create an online store with it you need reliable web hosting services. Support for Magento shopping cart is provided free by an active open source community, professional support by subscription to Varien, the company behind Magento, is cost charging. The large array of the rich features is one of the main benefits of Magento. Magento comes with enterprise-level features and quality of build. It lets you control every facet of your store, from merchandising to promotions, and there are no limits to creativity with Magento which allows us to create stunningly beautiful eCommerce themes for Magento that will improve your brand’s visibility adding trust to your e-business and improving sales with SEO effort put into developing them.
Advantages and disadvantages of Magento over osCommerce:
Magento needs dedicated servers from particular hosting providers in order to run fast shops while shared web hosting account will be enough for osCommerce.
Magento has many add-on modules within the rest of new and important capabilities. The feature set for Magento includes not only all of the features of osCommerce, but also many of the add-on modules. For instance, it includes coupons, order editing, SEO urls and meta tags, abandoned shopping cart reporting, product comparisons, editable order emails, shipping estimator in shopping cart without the need to login, and much more.
Magento shopping cart is built to be easy to update.
Magento runs fairly slow, heavily layered and overly complicated coding style and thousands of files requires a lot of time to learn and do customizations.
Magento offers well organized backend along with cleaner site structure. Its backend is well organized and most items of concern are thoroughly covered. Talking about osCommerce, some people admit that its code is a real mess and the back-end is really pitiful.
Magento is a new solution which is regularly improved. Web developers and store owners look forward the new releases of Magento. OsCommerce is rather old and it doesn’t surprise its owners with new updates.
All in all, osCommerce is known to be easy to install but a real pain to configure and customize. Magento project has revolutionized eCommerce with its flexibility and power. It takes the best things from osCommerce such as being open source, easy to modify, and having a strong community, but then takes these to the next level of sophistication. Magento developers practiced all the advantages of the last time to shape web application incorporating the richer user interface and better ergonomics.

Magento is essentially a PHP based open source resolution to all the existing queries and dilemmas of e commerce web site owners who can find comprehensive solution in this technology. Not only for customers, but magento templates also assist the online store owners in more ways.
The rate of advancement in technologies is so swift that populaces from all across the globe witness the advent of state of the art technology virtually on a day to day basis. The sheer number of new fangled gadgets and avant-garde applications invading our lives will surely sweep you of your feet.

What happens with these technologies is that, most of them are not accepted at a global scale and only those which save time, resources and helps in cutting costs are acknowledged and put to use on a large scale. Amid other stuffs, the World Wide Web has emerged as the most pertaining and relevant technology which is increasingly invading our personal and professional lives.

In today”s epochs, folks tend to depend on the internet for any minuscule piece of information, they might require. What has emerged as a hot trend is to chip in for online shopping and buying stuffs, right from the comfort of your home, that too with a few clicks of the mouse. Business entities from all round the world comprehend this trend and are taking every stride feasible to make certain that they attract online shoppers and in the mean time earn huge revenues by making their experience hassle free and straight forward.

In such milieus, Magento Templates holds immense promises for online business stores pertaining to huge customization of their stores to make it a nice experience for web visitors. Some of the benefits of Magento templates are: – a customer”s web experience will be simpler as he/ she can now browse through thousands of products that too categorically. Populace now doesn”t have to visit stores personally to shop for their favorite stuffs and with magento templates, the buying process is hugely simplified with options for shipping and chopping carts.

Magento is essentially a PHP based open source resolution to all the existing queries and dilemmas of e commerce web site owners who can find comprehensive solution in this technology. Not only for customers, but magento templates also assist the online store owners in more ways than one. It keeps all the information associated with customers at one place, which helps the owners in comprehending buying patterns and not having to worry about collecting data manually.

Magento templates are not alone as there are other magento stuffs such as magento extentions, magento plug-ins and magento themes which look after the comprehensive aspect of total customer satisfaction. Some of the key features of maegnto are: – mobile commerce, SEO, Customer Service & Accounts, Marketing Promotions and Tools, International Support, Checkout, Shipping & Payment, multi currency support, etc.

The best part of using magento templates is that you do not have to have prior programming experience in order to change its appearance or add or remove vital features. Magento templates assist online store owners by proffering a unique look and feel to the store which attracts many a prospective customers. The sheer number of magento templates accessible in the internet market will certainly sweep you off your feet.

We’ll just have to wait and see if Google+ lives up to the hype and hopefully it won’t disappoint.
So, what is Google+? Google+ sounds like the prettier, younger sister of Facebook, but with similar user characteristics and a sleek, clean, barely touched by annoying advertisements interface (so far). What’s the big deal with using Google+, besides gaining social media geek street cred? It’s what Google learned from other social media platforms that makes all the difference in how you interact with your friends, family, and co-workers.

With the failure of Wave and Buzz it’s no wonder that Google was anxious in the release of Google+. The issue with the previous features was perhaps that it wasn’t given enough of a chance to generate a solid user base, especially with the excessive popularity of Facebook and Twitter. Google limiting the amount of new users accepted during the field testing trial is annoying when you want to instantly connect with your friends and family when the invite process is on hold until further notice. One of the appeals of using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social networking sites, is that there’s already a massive user base instead of a small group of fortunate techies. So much potential is being harnessed due to limited access to invitations.

Limited access isn’t the only frustrating aspect of Google+. New are providing feedback, hopefully being used to further better the new social networking site. In an article written by Ben Parr, users discussed areas where Google+ can be improved, such as being able to connect with Google Apps. Another was to add a stream search, a Facebook feature that allows you to search your friends’ content for specific information. As with all beta testing there isn’t much use in complaining too much about annoyances as its being constantly being updated.

Now for the fun part, what’s awesome about Google+. The biggest talked about feature is creating Circles. Now you don’t have to worry about your Aunt Susan seeing your party pictures from the weekend nor do your friends need to see baby pictures of your second cousin, whom they’ve never met. The creation of circles allows you to share what you want to share with specifically those who actually care about what you’re sharing, especially with the instant upload of photos from your mobile device. You can share what you find searching through Sparks, which is similar to Stumbleupon. Websites are generated in a newsfeed that are related to your key word interests that you can save.

Facebook has group chat ability but the majority of the groups created are based on a general interest or subject with thousands of members. Google+ has a feature called Huddle which allows you to create group chats via text messaging with your friends only. It’s reminiscent of a group chat on AIM but more accessible because it’s on your phone. The Hangout aspect allows you to basically do a Huddle but with the addition of video. It’s an alternative option to Skype and you can have up to 10 users in a Hangout without having to pay a premium price for that feature.

The simply designed interface is easy enough to navigate even for the most basic internet user. You’re able to use Google+ along with other Google tabs, like Gmail and Reader. It’s just another extension (get it, Google plus) of the toolbar. You can connect with friends and family and surf the web without ever having to leave Google. Facebook and Twitter can’t do that. We see what you did there Google and it was clever.

Lastly, there are some well appreciated privacy elements to Google+. You can disable comments on your posts and you can disable other users sharing your posts to their friends, a big added bonus. Also, you can “defriend” someone without offending them by simply removing them from your circles. They no longer can see what you share but avoid that awkward moment where they find out that they can’t see your page anymore. Of course, if blocking is necessary that option is available as well.

All in all, what is Google+? It provides competition for other social networking sites that shouldn’t be taken lightly. However, once you get your hands on an invite, established sites will have the leg up until Google+ is open to anyone and everyone. The fact that it’s new and unavailable will also generate interest but people aren’t just going to drop their Facebook or Twitter accounts just yet. We’ll just have to wait and see if Google+ lives up to the hype and hopefully it won’t disappoint.

There are so many shopping carts out there, and it is hard to know which one to use for your website. That is a common question for a web community which currently contemplates in eCommerce field truly impressive shift from stable and proven osCommerce to relatively new Magento eCommerce platform.

The interesting tendency we’ve traced

In fact osCommerce is now faced with a serious challenger which certainly has no difficulties to penetrate the market of eCommerce open source. The new Magento package is set to take the eCommerce community by storm. It is one of the most promising of the moment having already attracted a large following, and osCommerce the inevitable is going to have to leave its place. Google Trends, in particular, graphically shows this tendency reflecting the situation where the new Magento just beats the hell out of the traditional osCommerce. Magento is now officially the most searched-for eCommerce solution.

Let’s face it – before Magento’s release osCommerce was the most popular eCommerce platform. The situation has surely changed since then, and the greater amount of customers is going now exceptionally with a Magento based shopping cart. osCommerce in its turn enjoys less popularity, though remains being around with a very well established and responsive community to offer support and the majority of followers to prefer using it.

Magento and osCommerce – what’s behind each of them?

It is important to know when selecting your shopping cart what features you need, which is partially why we’ve composed this article to help you know the advantages and disadvantages of each platform. So let’s get it on comparing these two eCommerce applications and see which one is better to choose while launching online shops.

Magento eCommerce platform is a highly efficient open source eCommerce engine. It offers you an extensive suite of powerful tools for creating and managing an online store. Magento runs on the Apache/MySQL/PHP platform and to create an online store with it you need reliable web hosting services. Support for Magento shopping cart is provided free by an active open source community, professional support by subscription to Varien, the company behind Magento, is cost charging. The large array of the rich features is one of the main benefits of Magento. Let’s now review the key features of Magento that will help you get your store up and running:

• Analytics and Reporting – the script is integrated with Google Analytics (page view tracking, e-commerce tracking) and offers many different reports.
  Product Browsing – multiple images for products, options for extensive reviews, wishlists and much more.
• Catalog Browsing – easy navigation, advanced product filtering system, product comparison.
• Catalog Management – inventory management, batch import and export of products, different tax rates per location, additional product attributes.
• Customer Accounts – order status and history, e-mail and RSS feeds for products in the wishlist, newsletter subscription, default billing and shipping address.
• Customer Service – enhanced features for customers’ accounts, Contact Us form, comprehensive order tracking and history, customizable order e-mails.
• Order Management – create orders through admin area, create multiple invoices shipments and credit memos, call center order creation option.
• Payment – different payment methods: credit cards, PayPal, Authorize.net, Google Checkout, checks, money orders, support of external payment modules like Cybersource, ePay, eWAY, regular credit cards like Visa, Master Card, American Express, Discover, and many more.
• Shipping – shipping to multiple addresses, flat rating shipping, supports UPS, UPS XML (account rates), FedEx (account rates), USPS and DHL.
• Checkout – one page checkout, SSL support, checkout without having an account.
• Search Engine Optimization – the most search engine friendly e-commerce application, Google SiteMap support.
• International Support – multiple languages and currencies, list of allowed countries for registration, purchasing and shipping, localization.
• Marketing Promotions and Tools – coupons, discounts and different promotion options.
• Site Management – control of multiple web sites, multiple languages, tax rate with support for US and International markets, customizable outlook through templates.
• Encryption Key – security storage of the sensitive data in the script’s database.

osCommerce is a free open source online store-management software which is powered by very well established and responsive osCommerce community. To run any osCommerce website the web server should support the powerful PHP web scripting language and fast MySQL database. osCommerce offers a wide range of features that allows online stores to be setup fairly quickly with ease. This basic set of functionalities that meet the common needs of online businesses is:

• Administration / Backend Functionality

- supports unlimited products and categories;
– add/Edit/Remove categories, products, manufacturers, customers, and reviews;
– contact customers directly via email or newsletters;
– multilingual support;
– multicurrency support;

• Customer / Frontend Functionality

- all orders stored in the database for fast and efficient retrieval;
– customers can maintain their accounts;







- address book for multiple shipping and billing addresses;
– fast and friendly quick search and advanced search features;
– product reviews for an interactive shopping experience;
– foreseen checkout procedure;
– secure transactions with SSL;

• Product Functionality

- dynamic product attributes relationship;
– HTML based product descriptions;







- control if out of stock products can still be shown and are available for purchase;
– customers can subscribe to products to receive related emails/newsletters;

• Payment Functionality

- accept numerous offline payment processing (cheque, money orders, etc);
– accept numerous online payment processing (PayPal, 2CheckOut, Authorize.net, iPayment, etc);
– disable certain payment services based on a zone basis;

• Shipping Functionality

- weight, price, and destination based shipping modules;
– real-time quotes available (UPS, USPS, FedEx, etc);

• Tax Functionality

- flexible tax implementation on a state and country basis;
– set different tax rates for different products;
– charge tax on shipping on a per shipping service basis.

Why exactly Magento beats osCommerce – key advantages

• Magento shopping cart is built to be easy to update (+)

The issues why so many people opt for Magento shopping cart are rather diverse. The thing is that Magento is a new eCommerce solution which is being regularly improved. Varien, the company who backs the cart, is very active in updating the code and fixing bugs. At the same time osCommerce is rather outdated and it doesn’t surprise web developers and store owners with the new updates. Magento is superior to osCommerce in the useful features it has, programming structure, and frequency of project code updates.

• Magento has many add-on modules within the rest of new and important capabilities (+)

The feature set for Magento includes not only all of the features of osCommerce, but also many of the add-on modules. For instance, it includes coupons, order editing, SEO urls and meta tags, abandoned shopping cart reporting, product comparisons, editable order emails, shipping estimator in shopping cart without the need to login, and much more. Magento also has ‘store view’ which allows online shop keepers the ability to set up multiple stores – with the same products, at different prices, and even in different languages – from a single admin area.

• Magento runs fairly slow, heavily layered and overly complicated coding style and thousands of files requires a lot of time to learn and do customizations (-)

Some people insist that OsCommerce is easier to edit and Magento is better for web developers rather than shop owners. Other people argue this statement proving that Magento is also easy-editable software. It seems Magento is really easy to install and manage if you know how to do it properly. However, getting started with Magento can be difficult without the right guidance. For some Magento is way overly complicated to customize efficiently. It is rather inconvenient to manually add a large number of products at once to a Magento installation. Plus it needs dedicated servers from particular hosting providers in order to run fast shops while shared web hosting account will be enough for osCommerce.

• another appeal of Magento is in its nice default template (+)

Magento templates and themes enable the owners to customize the look and feel of the store, even optimize it for mobile phones. Modular code enables them to upgrade the Magento installation while retaining their customizations. At the same time installing an osCommerce template is not an easy task. osCommerce does not support a template installer option. Installing a new template for osCommerce is actually a new installation of the osCommerce files. So, there is no graphic template system meaning it is harder to modify the design to adjust the style and layout. Additionally, it can take a lot of time and money to install all the add-ons you want. osCommerce, by the way, has the most available number of contributions and modifications which is a way beneficial.

• And finally Magento offers well organized back-end along with cleaner site structure (+)

People prefer using Magento for the cleaner admin, code, and much more. Magento system scores highly for its look and sensible overall features. Its back-end is well organized and most items of concern are thoroughly covered. Talking about osCommerce, some people admit that its code is a real mess and the back-end is really pitiful. Others mention that the structure of the site, written in PHP and using clear definitions, is rather sensible with all the text seen on an osCommerce store being handily stored in reference files which contain only plain text for translation. All in all, osCommerce is known to be easy to install but a real pain to configure and customize.

What this means for us as an eCommerce community?

Magento project has revolutionized eCommerce with its flexibility and power. It takes the best things from osCommerce such as being open source, easy to modify, and having a strong community, but then takes these to the next level of sophistication. Magento developers practiced all the advantages of the last time to shape web application incorporating the richer user interface and better ergonomics.

This comparison of Magento and osCommerce shopping cart does not claim to be anyway exhaustive. So, if you had experience with either Magento or osCommerce, please share your perspective in the comments to mention particularly what others should consider before switching from one application to another.

Do you love Magento shopping cart as much as we do? Well then feel free to check out the collection of free Magento themes that our friends from Templates.com blog have compiled!

Improvements

• Added ability to use static URLs for media in WYSIWYG or image browser. Added ability to enable parsing store, skin and media directives on catalog frontend.
• URL rewrites history: ability to auto-generate custom rewrite with redirect from old to new URL when changing product URL-key
• Added ability to exclude a category from navigation menu
• Various improvements in system configuration UI. Introduced ability to make actual configuration structure to be independent on the system.xml structure
• Added “Only X left” inventory feature
• Implemented Centinel functionality in iphone theme
• Upgraded TinyMCE to v.3.3.2
• Improved PayPal integration, includes:

  * Recurring payment profiles entity and purchasing of “subscription” products. In checkout they are treated as “nominal” items.

  * Billing agreements

  * “Pending Review” order state, “Pending Review” and “Suspected Fraud” order statuses and logic related with this. Triggers by PayPal IPR, FMF and Unilateral payments.

  * Functionality of transactions listing/searching and fetching from gateway

  * Fetching PayPal settlement reports via SFTP

  * Various improvements of PayPal integration on the frontend and admin UI

• Added notice about creating offline creditmemo from order view page.
• Added getter for recurring payment methods in payment helper.
• Implemented abstract block ability to have arbitrary groups of child blocks and a method that returns such a group. Implemented a method that fetches data from child block by specified alias.
• Implemented ability to specify “sort_order” instead of “before” and “after” in the totals declaration. All nominal totals declaration utilize “sort_order”
• Added getter for specified object data by key in core/template block: method getObjectData()
• Defined payment methods grouping, implemented getter for payment method list (with option to group them). Added ability to render grouped options in the “select” grid filter.
• Moneybookers: utilized the payment methods grouping for all its methods; removed redundant “translate” attribute in the methods definition in config.
• Utilized payment methods grouping for PayPal peyment methods.
• Added more verbosity to PayPal NVP and IPN debugging

Changes

• Sales module database structure changed from EAV into flat tables
• Product custom URL rewrites redirect to SEF URL, rather than to catalog/product/view/id/
• Reimplemented frontend top menu rendering logic (cross-browser and usability improvements)
• Reviewed logic of the sales reports: Orders, Tax, Invoiced, Shipping, Refunds, Coupons
• Reimplemented bestsellers report
• Implemented 3D Secure validation for Maestro International and JCB cards
• Changed Shopping cart methods output (top + bottom): removed
• Moved the Payflow Pro payment method to PayPal module
• Refactored sales/service_quote model: instead of submit() method the submitAll() should be used. It can submit nominal items separately from the order. The methods for submitting nominal items and order separately – are available as well.
• Refactored onepage checkout model to use the new method sales/service_quote::submitAll(), added recurring profiles and billing agreements passing through the process until the success page
• Utilized child blocks grouping to improve flexibility of rendering additional information in catalog/product/view template. The group is called “detailed_info”; any block from layout may insert itself to this group.

Removed redundant wrappers hard-coded into some catalog templates. Template of parent block is responsible for wrapping.

• Refactored onepage checkout success block and template: simplified fetching related checkout information, added ability to render billing agreement and recurring profiles that might be created with the payment placement.
Tweet