Attackr.com

Magento was only released last March, but already has been downloaded over 425,000 times. In that short time, Magento has become the preferred choice for ecommerce development for many web designers working with Open Source solutions. Why are so many flocking to Magento, and is the hype really justified by the functionality? We put Magento through a demo install and development process to test the software. Magento has the professional, Web 2.0 look many designers are looking for, and that is surely one of the main reasons for its popularity. In comparison to other ecommerce platforms like OScommerce, Zen Cart, etc. there is a definite improvement in both theme and display out of the box. Magento uses custom themes and block positioning like most popular CMS software for design. The templates are clean and dynamic, and it is easy to set up your catalog display. Magento includes a shopping cart, a large number of payment gateways, product comparisons, tags, polls, internationalization support, advanced reports, analytics, and SEO optimized URLs. There is support for coupons, discount codes, catalog management, wishlists, cross-sells, and related items. You can create orders from the admin section for offline or call center sales, and managing shipping is easy with built in calculation for USPS, UPS, DHL, Fed Ex, and other delivery services. Magento will also automatically calculate sales tax on orders and supports multiple currencies on the same site. The user account stores existing order information, shipping and billing addresses, as well as a user’s wishlist, recently viewed, and recently compared products. Users can submit reviews, edit and manage them from their account pages. They can also submit tags for products, subscribe to newsletters, and send recommendations and wishlists to friends.

The closest approximation to the Magento user experience that I can site as an example is amazon.com, which is really quite amazing coming from an Open Source, freely available software. To see our full review of the Magento Ecommerce Platform, please visit webdevnews.net.

CommentsMagento+-+Best+for+Open+Source+eCommerce%3F2008-10-06+10%3A00%3A15Web+Developer+News

At the end of August this year right before I was to move, I got a very rude awakening. I was searching for an mp3 for a personal project and I accidently clicked on an attack site containing nasty malware. At the time, I was using ZoneAlarm and an alert popped up to allow svchost.exe access.

Now, normally I deny all ZoneAlarm program alerts I don’t recognize as something I want to give access to, but I was really tired that night, and my hand actually twitched and I clicked accept! Honestly, I did not want to click that but it happened! And the next thing you know, my desktop was hijacked, my browsers were hijacked, and it took me almost a week to get rid of this malicious trojan - the AntiVirus XP 2008 trojan, a rogue anti-spyware program. This trojan takes over your hosts file, your desktop, your browsers, and who knows what else. It was nasty!

Now, if a web-savy techie, geeky, internet consultant/marketer like me - who’s been online making a living since 1997 - can get infected accidently by malware or viruses, etc., can you imagine what’s happening to most people who aren’t so savy and have no idea they even have spyware or malware on their computers? They are mostly using Intenet Explorer and if they are not getting regular Windows updates on patch Tuesdays and if they are not using a proper firewall with proper browser settings and tools, or updated antivirus software, then they are very vulnerable and at risk. Read the rest of How Secure Are You Really? »

CommentsHow+Secure+Are+You+Really%3F2008-09-23+17%3A28%3A33Karen

Acquia, a start-up headed by Drupal founder Dries Buytaert is scheduled to release the first commercially supported version of Drupal, code named “Carbon” within a couple of months. The release is generating a lot of buzz in the development community, and many people are wondering what effect it will have on this popular Open Source Content Management System. According to Dries, there is no need to worry - Carbon will be released to the public under the same GPL license as Drupal and be freely available for everyone to use. Acquia will be providing paid technical support and development consultation to corporations who contract their services. They will also empower other design and development firms to do this by offering Acquia certification in Carbon / Drupal development. This will be similar to a Brainbench certification, and should become popular with those working professionally with Drupal.

While not all the details are known about Carbon, the release is essentially an “installation profile” that combines the core Drupal code base with a set of popular and reliable contributed modules. Views 2, CCK, a WYSISYG editor named Kupu, Voting API & Fivestar, Tagadelic, PathAuto, and Organic Groups are just some of the popular modules that will be included in the release package. Other new features will include Mollom, an anti-spam module developed by Acquia, and Spokes, an auto-update module. There is also a “to be determined” social bookmarking integration slated. Carbon is sure to breathe a new inspiration into the Drupal development and design community. Some worry that it could threaten its Open Source development model, but that has been actively dismissed by Dries himself. Following this example, other design firms may move to build and release installation profiles with paid support that combine upon the core Drupal system and contributed modules with new themes and customizations.

A good discussion on this issue is found on webdevnews.net, and there are also some interesting posts on the Drupal site, such as:

http://drupal.org/node/282254

More information on the release of Carbon can be found on the Acquia website.

CommentsFirst+Release+of+Drupal+Carbon+Upcoming2008-09-03+21%3A30%3A07Web+Developer+News