I have been asked this question a couple of times. With so many options in open-source world for e-commerce stores, clients are often thinking which open-source solution to choose for their online shop. Its crucial what you choose because depending on your project requirements, one system may serve the purpose better then the other. Choosing the wrong system might land you into trouble with huge custom development costs or deciding to build from scratch using another system later. I will try to compare the three to help you get better idea of what each system has to offer. My main comparison would be between drupal + ubercart and magento but i have discussed oscommerce because many stores are still using it for their e-commerce requirements. Complete development from scratch is something that is not discussed because i consider it a waste with so many out of the box solutions available unless you are building something revolutionary.
The first option is odd one out because drupal is a content management system with so many things to offer other then e-commerce and the other two are solutions that have only one focus and that is e-commerce. In drupal, e-commerce is just a plugin but the strong framework has made us use drupal for a number of e-commerce projects and a top choice for any website that requires extensive customization and strong content management features.
When it comes to Drupal, we got two options, e-Commerce Plugin and UberCart plugin. On comparison, ubercart surely stood out between the two as lot of problems in core areas in e-commerce plugin plus bad reviews on the community stopped us from exploring e-commerce plugin further. Ubercart has a solid team of core developers and all the things are simple and easy to use. The updates to community are much frequent and its much easier to setup.
Having said all this, drupal + ubercart is good for anyone looking for a strong content management system and wants features likes blogs, social networking, forums, directories and also wants to sell online with basic e-commerce features. One can also cover advanced e-commerce features as modules are available but would require an expert handling and some custom development work to fix some bugs or make things work your way. The custom development becomes feasible in this scenario because of the other things required in the solution..
Now lets focus on open-source e-commerce giants, magento and oscommerce. Oscommerce was definitely the top choice for many stores for so many years with a large number of modules and strong core framework enhanced and stabilized over a number of year. Mangento is new player in the market and has overtaken oscommerce as a top choice for new online stores. I read this transcript of magento's creator interview here and found out that his agency was using oscommerce for a number of years before they decided to write down their own e-commerce framework. It was the process of evolution of internet that brought online shopping to a stage where it oscommerce couldn't be enhanced more and a new e-commerce framework was needed. Oscommerce was there when SEO, tableless structures were not important and community developed modules with time to fulfill there needs. Having a solid experience with oscommerce and knowing its limitations, magento was developed. You can check a detailed feature list here .
Magento filled in the gap of what was missing from oscommerce and is now the top choice of community developers for creating plugins and shop owners. If you need a a strong and easy to use e-commerce solution with simple content management needs. Magento is definitely the way to go. If you already have an oscommerce site and want to move to magento, you would need to do a feature comparison for all your custom work + add on modules and magento. There is a magento connect module that does the job for importing all the data but you might consider an expert help for smooth transfer. You might consider this magento extension for transferring data here
On a conclusion note, drupal + ubercart is suitable for any system that has either strong content management features required and there is a lot of custom development involved and magento is good for anyone looking for strong e-commerce solution. If you require a strong content management system as well as a strong e-commerce solution like magento, drupal + magento integration might work great but this is something that is still in progress in community. Hopefully, the community will have something on this in near future.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Recession? The economy of Survival
The latest topic of discussion and focal point of financial world news is "recession". Many in the west lost their jobs, many are worried about loosing their jobs, business lost a major chunk of their revenues and some even winded up so all these news are making a pessimistic outlook for the people. There are many lists made by people till now and you can get them on google like "What not to do" and "what to do" in a recession and most revolve around doing more savings and also most important, where to keep your savings as now even the banks and insurance companies are going down around the world.
People are generally very pessimistic about it now and i think are not expecting much from year 2009 and 2010. I am trying to look on what benefits a recession brings,what things easily then before and overall what opportunities it brings so to see the hope of revival of economies and people
First, Lets start with the people who lost their jobs during recession, some of them may have savings and some of them might have not. What these people will try to do depends really but i think many will probably look to start their own business or may be some kind of consultancy work independently of what they were doing at jobs. Some of these guys are going to be very successful, some are going to be average and may be for most its not going to work out. But the one thing common in all of them will be "survival". Most people perform their best not for money, or other goals but for survival, they do the best they have got, because they have no choice overall. So overall if 3 million jobs lost, even if 0.5 million start business and be successful, hopefully they can create jobs for another 0.5 million or may be more. I am not an economists but overall small businesses are best for any economy
Second, I think university business is going to do very good. I think good universities should have their shares in stock market because it will be good time to buy them, Don't stop yourself from increasing your skill or knowledge basic thinking that they are making money of it.. This recession, spend time and your savings on some degree that is going to help you get a better job when the recession is over. You may even consider a career shift, its a good time to make plans for future and may be do the MBA degree you were not able to do after you started your job after graduation
Third, I would say diversifying your savings is the most important thing in recession. Land and houses are going to be really cheap, they are already at bottom prices of many years, how low can they go huh? so if you got plenty do buy some nice place as i think it would be best time to buy it. I won't say that if buying it consumes most of your savings. This idea is only for those who got enough.. Buy some Gold too, with the trillions in dollar recession plans and all the big countries going in major debt, the world may be up for a major currency devaluation ( and i was trying to give you hope). Its a fact , may be an economist would explain me better how all this works but common sense tells me that it should devalue so be ready.
Overall, in this slumping economy i would say make smart choices and be positive, do the savings but don't do spend on the right things , after all spending is what runs the economies.
People are generally very pessimistic about it now and i think are not expecting much from year 2009 and 2010. I am trying to look on what benefits a recession brings,what things easily then before and overall what opportunities it brings so to see the hope of revival of economies and people
First, Lets start with the people who lost their jobs during recession, some of them may have savings and some of them might have not. What these people will try to do depends really but i think many will probably look to start their own business or may be some kind of consultancy work independently of what they were doing at jobs. Some of these guys are going to be very successful, some are going to be average and may be for most its not going to work out. But the one thing common in all of them will be "survival". Most people perform their best not for money, or other goals but for survival, they do the best they have got, because they have no choice overall. So overall if 3 million jobs lost, even if 0.5 million start business and be successful, hopefully they can create jobs for another 0.5 million or may be more. I am not an economists but overall small businesses are best for any economy
Second, I think university business is going to do very good. I think good universities should have their shares in stock market because it will be good time to buy them, Don't stop yourself from increasing your skill or knowledge basic thinking that they are making money of it.. This recession, spend time and your savings on some degree that is going to help you get a better job when the recession is over. You may even consider a career shift, its a good time to make plans for future and may be do the MBA degree you were not able to do after you started your job after graduation
Third, I would say diversifying your savings is the most important thing in recession. Land and houses are going to be really cheap, they are already at bottom prices of many years, how low can they go huh? so if you got plenty do buy some nice place as i think it would be best time to buy it. I won't say that if buying it consumes most of your savings. This idea is only for those who got enough.. Buy some Gold too, with the trillions in dollar recession plans and all the big countries going in major debt, the world may be up for a major currency devaluation ( and i was trying to give you hope). Its a fact , may be an economist would explain me better how all this works but common sense tells me that it should devalue so be ready.
Overall, in this slumping economy i would say make smart choices and be positive, do the savings but don't do spend on the right things , after all spending is what runs the economies.
Friday, April 06, 2007
Open source to the rescue
I remember the times when i had to submit my final year project idea and i gave a knock at the doors of many software houses in the whole city.. reference is for sure the thing in Pakistan and i was for sure bad on it. It was pretty hectic, tiring and sometimes frustrated me too when you get an idea and was done by somebody else already in universities.. It definitely helped me a lot in my future because everything in software development seemed easy after that.. believe me the process of getting the project from software house for university proved to be even more difficult then getting commercial projects for a software house.
The universities on their agenda always discourage web or database projects and getting projects from the market (software houses) are preferred. The software houses on the other hand normally take that as a burden and something that they are not willing to spend their time and money on. Also the idea of sharing their code or core frameworks with university level students always haunts them. Many software houses i know don't give software projects or provide support due to bad experiences of the past in which students left them as soon as the process was finished in the university. Students with references make something up but those without it end up doing substandard projects mostly without any assistance and some even end up finishing a 4-5 month project in years.
The problem therefore is grave in nature. Majority of students end up wasting time on projects. There off course have been good projects done within the same system and some projects make it to the main stream of the I.T companies where they continue professional development on them but thats a really small minority. Most of the projects are kept in archived folders and forgotten and then later on deleted.. and their documentations get dusty in the university libraries.
The solution may be setting up project assistance centers in universities which i think some good universities are doing in Pakistan in the form of software house of university where some research based project is going on and students are given a module or part of it to work on and they learn by working in research based environment but that i would say again is a minority.. and many universities cannot do that for their own political and slow process setups.
One idea, i think can help our students and universities as well and that would be to bring open source into the main stream university projects. That i think would have a number of benefits. The first and foremost is the best of code and documentation resources that is available for all in opensource project done by some best coders and maintained by a community of people who are more helpful then anybody else.
There are thousands of open source projects out there. One can check out sorceforge.net and freshmeat.net for a number of them. Contribution is easy for anyone . just become a part of community.. the community people will help you get started on it.. and once you are successful you can help other people in the community.. Universities on the other hand can take up ideas and make the project open source for the community. This will earn our universities good name.. if they are able to come up with mature open source software and will definitely help their students Between .. what will this benefit anyone? The biggest benefit i see is contacts .. the networking side of it. If the open source software becomes a hit.. there is a fair chance that there will be loads of people who want to customize it for their needs or want some support for it.. and if anybody is active in that softwares community. there is a great chance that he will be contacted for assistance or support. Everybody knows how Linux makes money by providing support. There are many examples in the form of SugarCRM , Dotnetnuke and many others.. Even if the open source software doesn't get success.. you still have the experience of how the open source community work which i think is a great thing in itself.
The universities on their agenda always discourage web or database projects and getting projects from the market (software houses) are preferred. The software houses on the other hand normally take that as a burden and something that they are not willing to spend their time and money on. Also the idea of sharing their code or core frameworks with university level students always haunts them. Many software houses i know don't give software projects or provide support due to bad experiences of the past in which students left them as soon as the process was finished in the university. Students with references make something up but those without it end up doing substandard projects mostly without any assistance and some even end up finishing a 4-5 month project in years.
The problem therefore is grave in nature. Majority of students end up wasting time on projects. There off course have been good projects done within the same system and some projects make it to the main stream of the I.T companies where they continue professional development on them but thats a really small minority. Most of the projects are kept in archived folders and forgotten and then later on deleted.. and their documentations get dusty in the university libraries.
The solution may be setting up project assistance centers in universities which i think some good universities are doing in Pakistan in the form of software house of university where some research based project is going on and students are given a module or part of it to work on and they learn by working in research based environment but that i would say again is a minority.. and many universities cannot do that for their own political and slow process setups.
One idea, i think can help our students and universities as well and that would be to bring open source into the main stream university projects. That i think would have a number of benefits. The first and foremost is the best of code and documentation resources that is available for all in opensource project done by some best coders and maintained by a community of people who are more helpful then anybody else.
There are thousands of open source projects out there. One can check out sorceforge.net and freshmeat.net for a number of them. Contribution is easy for anyone . just become a part of community.. the community people will help you get started on it.. and once you are successful you can help other people in the community.. Universities on the other hand can take up ideas and make the project open source for the community. This will earn our universities good name.. if they are able to come up with mature open source software and will definitely help their students Between .. what will this benefit anyone? The biggest benefit i see is contacts .. the networking side of it. If the open source software becomes a hit.. there is a fair chance that there will be loads of people who want to customize it for their needs or want some support for it.. and if anybody is active in that softwares community. there is a great chance that he will be contacted for assistance or support. Everybody knows how Linux makes money by providing support. There are many examples in the form of SugarCRM , Dotnetnuke and many others.. Even if the open source software doesn't get success.. you still have the experience of how the open source community work which i think is a great thing in itself.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Debug an ASP Project with Visual Studio .NET and Transfer Classic ASp Session to Asp.net session
Most of the developers prefer Asp.Net as everybody is ease at using the latest technology and a lot of features that it offers over Asp 3.0.. Yet we still have many many projects built in asp 3.0, transferring them to Asp.net is sometimes a huge task so many organizations prefer to keep their code in Asp. The developers are thus faced with the problem of again coming back to response.write statements to debug the code.. I was also faced with a similar problem about a year back. Like any other debugger lover, i tried to find a suitable environment for development in which i can debug the asp code.. but all were either too complex to understand or to work with easily..
After looking into it a bit, i found two solutions. One for easing the developers life on debugging on existing asp and other for those who want to convert their application to Asp.net but one by one.
The first one can be found at http://www.devx.com/tips/Tip/18204. by Timm Rebitzki. I would say my thank to him as it saved me from a lot of trouble
With regard to the second part the only problem is that you how do you convert Asp Session to asp.net like either on login.. I found this good technique used here
http://www.eggheadcafe.com/articles/20021207.asp by By Peter A. Bromberg
Thats it for now regarding coding problem. i hope it may help you..
After looking into it a bit, i found two solutions. One for easing the developers life on debugging on existing asp and other for those who want to convert their application to Asp.net but one by one.
The first one can be found at http://www.devx.com/tips/Tip/18204. by Timm Rebitzki. I would say my thank to him as it saved me from a lot of trouble
With regard to the second part the only problem is that you how do you convert Asp Session to asp.net like either on login.. I found this good technique used here
http://www.eggheadcafe.com/articles/20021207.asp by By Peter A. Bromberg
Thats it for now regarding coding problem. i hope it may help you..
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Google Maps Api Project
Zen Chee has created a game based on Google Api's http://www.ashotoforangejuice.com/gmrisk.html
he is busy in making the mutli player version. You can check out now on singal computer
he is busy in making the mutli player version. You can check out now on singal computer
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Does Visual Studio ROT the Mind?
check out charles petzolds comments on "addicition" of programmers to visual studio.net
http://charlespetzold.com/etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind.html
Well i would totally agree that we Faster programming envirnoments for anyone means cheap programming (less $/hr) .
check out charles petzolds comments on "addicition" of programmers to visual studio.net
http://charlespetzold.com/etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind.html
Well i would totally agree that we Faster programming envirnoments for anyone means cheap programming (less $/hr) .
Friday, October 14, 2005
Finally , Ajax Comes to .NET
After Huge success of Googles Gmail and Image Map , providing rich client experience using the Ajax architecture. Microsoft has jumped into the ship by first lauching msn virual earth and now launching he Community Preview Site for ASP.NET code-named “Atlas”(http://atlas.asp.net) . “Atlas” is a package of new Web development technologies available now with ASP.NET 2.0. that will simplfy in a great way the use of Ajax in big Enterprise applications.
Previously , Ajax was a night mare for developers if they wished to use it in there web applications. Now, the rich client side library that will be downloaded on the client pc will enable developing easy to use, rich client side applications also handling the support for multiple browsers. This will definately be a breeze for developers who wish to use the power of Ajax to make client side rich applications.
Microsoft is about to release an upgrage to its hotmail service named Kahuna witht the power of Ajax which will be officialy released in first half of 2006. For now you can take a loot at some it at http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/msn_kahuna_preview.asp
After Huge success of Googles Gmail and Image Map , providing rich client experience using the Ajax architecture. Microsoft has jumped into the ship by first lauching msn virual earth and now launching he Community Preview Site for ASP.NET code-named “Atlas”(http://atlas.asp.net) . “Atlas” is a package of new Web development technologies available now with ASP.NET 2.0. that will simplfy in a great way the use of Ajax in big Enterprise applications.
Previously , Ajax was a night mare for developers if they wished to use it in there web applications. Now, the rich client side library that will be downloaded on the client pc will enable developing easy to use, rich client side applications also handling the support for multiple browsers. This will definately be a breeze for developers who wish to use the power of Ajax to make client side rich applications.
Microsoft is about to release an upgrage to its hotmail service named Kahuna witht the power of Ajax which will be officialy released in first half of 2006. For now you can take a loot at some it at http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/msn_kahuna_preview.asp
Developers ! Microsoft or Others ? What to choose
From Search Engines to Smart Phones , SQL servers to Gaming Consoles , Operating Systems to CRM Microsoft is every where and so is .NET. Infact, in every domain, there is a presence of Microsoft. If you are planning to Switch from any other language or platform to .NET I would recommend you on a no of reasons which I will explain below.
From Search Engines to Smart Phones , SQL servers to Gaming Consoles , Operating Systems to CRM Microsoft is every where and so is .NET. Infact, in every domain, there is a presence of Microsoft. If you are planning to Switch from any other language or platform to .NET I would recommend you on a no of reasons which I will explain below.
Many would argue that Microsoft copied the ideas of others like ,for example, Java to .NET , Virtual Earth from Google Earth. Whatever is in trend . Ajax or web Services . Microsoft will soon jump into it and bring it to its developers community. So what do the developers need to do? Just get your hands good on the .NET Technology and how it works with the new stuff. In case of others, there are so many companies out there. If you are working on platforms like Java, you don't get this kind of interoperability and evolution. Even Java's supporter IBM has not migrated all its products to Java, whereas Microsoft has plans to convert all its libraries to .NET. My plans are not to attack Java. There are some areas where java is good but there are some key points like java is a language not a platform ,whereas .NET is a complete platform.
Companies working with .NET technology have a number of benefits. The first and foremost is the excellent support provided by Microsoft. Its excellent help for developers and extensive information for all the new technologies help them stay upto date. Its developers tools like Visual Studio are a breath for developers and the organizations working on large scale enterprise applications and now with the new visual studio team system . It will easy for teams to work on all phases of a software all through just one tool. Visual Studio iterations includes support for Microsoft's latest technology innovations, with the aim of making use of that new technology as simple as possible for developers. Visual Studio.NET follows the same strategy, making it simple to write .NET versions of everything from GUI applications and ASP.NET web sites, Pocket PC apps to Windows services using the same development tool.
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