what's a good CMS for e-commerce ?

I have been using both Magento (community edition) and Ubercart depending on client's target hosting preference. I must say that Magento has some impressive functionality and flexible as it has been around for a while. However there are some serious problems with this. Upgrading Magento to the latest version is a complete nightmare and have a good chance of needing to reinstall. Building your themes in Magento is so convoluted, it takes so many inheriting files to create a simple layout change. There is cummunity support, but most of them screaming for help as I remember. Magento model is "make money from support". So I found that they are not so quick to help on the forums.

With Ubercart it is refreshing to see the amount of active help. I think this is important if you are new this. If you are already familiar with Drupal, then I would say stick with Ubercart. It is much simpler to manage than Magento.

They are both good with application security, but you will need to setup your own SSL cert anyway. I've played with some other carts such as Zen and OS Cart, but found them inferior compared to Ubercart and Magento.

cool thanks for the answer. Could you give me some more information about starting with SSL cert ? And, what about integrating in my shop Google checkout or Paypal, in order to avoid to have security issues ?

Patrick 2010-06-22 19:30:56

One more thing. Do you know if I'm going to have security troubles if I don't update Drupal ? I mean.. Drupal is open, so if I use it as e-commerce website, it should be always updated ans it requires to be constantly supervised, right ?

Patrick 2010-06-22 19:32:39

Intergrating with Google Checkout and Paypal is not that difficult. But there are many options to choose from depending on your requirements and business model. See Google - http://checkout.google.com/support/sell/bin/topic.py?topic=8662and paypal - https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_payflow-gateway-overview-outsideDepending on the level of integration with these two, you don't always need an SSL cert for your server if the payment is authenticated outside of your site. Google "ssl provider" for more on this.

Sivakanesh 2010-06-22 19:45:29

With regards to updating Drupal, always follow the release notes from the Drupal team. If they announce they have fixed a vulnerability in the new lease then see if that applies to you, then you must decide to upgrade or apply a fix. But generally you must always keep your eyes open for security vulnerabilities in application and OS installations.

Sivakanesh 2010-06-22 19:52:13

ok thanks. What i meant is that Drupal vulnerabilies are immediately visible to anybody, when they find out them, beucase they publish them with the new version ready. Is the same for Magento ?

Patrick 2010-06-22 21:06:14

These are discussed openly on the release notes on Magento website and the forums. http://www.magentocommerce.com/download/release_notes#Release%20Notes%20-%20Magento%201.2.1.2%20March%203,%202009

Sivakanesh 2010-06-23 08:43:27

ok, so it is the same. Is reasonable to develop an e-commerce webste with an open source CMS and sell it? I should at least inform my customer that he needs to maintain the CMS ?

Patrick 2010-06-23 09:06:41

Or should I go for a not open source e-commerce CMS ? thanks

Patrick 2010-06-23 09:07:07

If you develop a shop in open source Magento or UberCart, you can't charge for the license fee obviously, but you can sell it as a solution to your customers (i.e customisation, branding, features, integration etc.). The price is upto you. Usually you provide the option of maintenance as part of the solution and provide a fixed cost per year or month. If your client doesn't want it then provide them a handover document and explain a list of things they have to do (not how they do it).

Sivakanesh 2010-06-24 08:30:04

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what's a good CMS for e-commerce ?

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