eCommerce Framework, Currently looking at Magento

Question

Hey guys, I kind of wanted to ask an opinion based question to start off with. I'm going to be picking up an eCommerce project in a month or two so I've been trying to decide which PHP framework, if any at all, I should go with. What does everyone recommend?

Currently, I've been working through some Magento tutorials. One of the things that I have found that needs to be different is the backend. From what I can tell, when the admin logs into the backend, they have a lot of site customization options available such as turning modules on and off. Is there a way to disable features for the backend? There's just some things I don't want the client to be able to do.

Answer 1

I'd recommend taking a look at OpenCart It has options to disable features in the backend for certain users.

Answer 2

I've used Magento and like it. It is very easy to control who has access to what using Roles and permissions in Magento, so yes, you can disable whatever back-end features you want to for your customers.

Answer 3

Are you familiar with MVC? Do you understand XML? Are you comfortable with EAV database structures?

If you have any doubts about any of these questions, you're going to have a long and grating experience with Magento. Check out these links:

Stack Overflow: How does Magento Code Work?

Magento Design Guide

Go through those and see if it fits your style. I wouldn't worry about your client's end experience with Magento; there are plenty of options, and it is a very powerful system. That being said, it is huge and a resource hog, so trying to run it on a shared host is not a good idea. It can also be cumbersome to troubleshoot, and the dev team is pretty much neglecting the community edition at this point.