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Among open source e-commerce platforms, Magento has emerged in a relatively short period of time as the most popular, advanced e-commerce platform on the market. Since 2008, Magento has evolved to claim its own place as an advanced, extendable system.
Magento Inc. claims that people have downloaded the Magento software package over 2.5 million times and that it is used by over 80,000 merchants around the world. Undoubtedly, most of these downloads are of the Community version of the platform. The Professional and Enterprise versions are premium priced, while Community remains free to use as it is—or as you can modify it to meet your needs.
Unfortunately, many find Magento to be more complex and unwieldy than they might prefer. It's understandable given that a basic, initial install of Magento Community includes more than 28,000 files. The Model-View-Controller architecture of Magento as well as the sheer depth of included features contributes to the complexity of the system.
While millions may have downloaded Magento, far fewer have succeeded in mastering the installation, configuration, management, and extendibility of the system. Magento Inc. doesn't provide direct support or substantial online documentation for the Magento Community. Newcomers generally find they are investing a huge amount of time navigating the labyrinth of files, testing possible configurations offered in online forums (many of which are not necessarily correct), and learning by making lots of mistakes. It's not uncommon to find new Magento users—designers and developers, especially—deleting an entire installation and re-installing from scratch, sometimes more than once. |
