Advice about magento theme - magento

I want to build website same as www.piquadro.com (with different products). The site is on Magento. Is there a way to scrap the theme?
I try it to rebuild it, but I have never worked with Magento and I need to finish it as soon as posible.

The great thing about Magento and all open source platforms is that there is an extensive community of developers who work on it. If you feel like you can't do it by yourself or can't afford to hire developer, you can find free or paid version of fashion theme very similar to what you are looking on www.templatesnetwork.com or other magento theme selling websites.
Here is an example:
http://www.templatesnetwork.com/magento-themes-type/58948.html

No, there is no way to scrape the theme.

Related

Am I able to use foundation without knowing much about Magento? Website is currently running magento version2.0

I have a programming background Microsoft. I have been asked to take over the website at work (multi million dollar business using Magento2 Enterprise). I know php and JavaScript and I am familiar with JQuery and various plug-ins. However I know nothing about Magneto. Am I able to edit the visual layout of the website (that is currently using foundation framework) without knowing much about Magneto? OR do I need to learn to use/program Magneto before I can edit the visual look of our webs-site?
Yes - you can change colours and various CSS styles without knowing much about Magento, but if you want to start changing the templates (HTML) or the way the framework functions, you'll need to learn.

Edit pages content through a UI

Sorry if someone already did this question, but I couldn't find it. I want to allow my client to edit the website pages content through a UI, not using notepad++ or something like that, you know? Like edit the FAQ or add some new product to his store. I don't know how to search it. I already looked for admin dashboard templates, but nothing...
If I'm not mistaken, you want a CMS (Content Management System). This would allow you to run a website with an editor and many other tools to help you and your clients out with development. Popular CMS's even have large libraries of plugins to customize and add virtually anything to the development environment. Popular CMS's include:
WordPress
Drupal
Joomla
ModX
etc.
You can even develop your own via PHP and MySQL databasing. Not only does this allow you to have the tools tailored to your needs, but it's also a great learning experience.
If you're looking for just a sort of online IDE (Integrated Development Environment), then Cloud9 may suit your needs, but it can get pricy depending on what you need: https://c9.io/
Overall, if you're dealing with dozens of HTML documents on a website, it can get messy and the need to switch to templating is an absolute necessity. CMS's are easy to install and have a lot of features, but they can be very bulky. So if you're just looking for a simple management system, I think PHP and MySQL would be best for your scenario. If that's all you want then here are some articles to get you started:
https://css-tricks.com/php-for-beginners-building-your-first-simple-cms/
http://www.elated.com/articles/cms-in-an-afternoon-php-mysql/
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/getting-started-with-php-templating/

Starting a journey with CMS - which product will suits my requirements

I'm starting a journey with CMS. I would like to create a few simple web sites: my pastime blog, programmres blog (but I would be something more than just a plain blog) & three web sites: for my father's & uncle's shops + simple web sites that helps to learn English :)
When it comes to by programming background, I was PHP developer for 2 years so I thought I could use that experience. I found WordPress & Joomla as probably the two most popular platforms. However WordPress is usually recommended as best bloogging platform. What about being a CMS? So perhaps one of them is better as CMS? Or there's something else ever more suitable for my needs (Drupal)?
On every day basis I'm ASP .NET MVC 3 developer, so perhaps you could recommend a good MVC3, active CMS project?
EDIT: How about ASP Project: Orchard?
I would always advocate Drupal over Joomla for CMSs. They are similar in what they offer. WordPress in more beginner friendly but is (currently) less "customisable" and has a different, more blog-oriented, focus. Drupal is very full featured and is easy to manage and install. I believe Joomla is getting better with the release of 1.7 and/or 2.5LTS.
Drupal's community is more comprehensive and as such you get plenty of support. You can choose a very wide range of functional complexity with Drupal that you can't with WordPress. Joomla is similar in this regard but there are a few key things that I prefer from a development perspective with Drupal over Joomla:
Modules and plugins are more plug and play with Drupal and easier to manage.
When you develop a module in drupal you there are code "hooks" to bind to the core where as Joomla you extend the core
The drupal website admin is more intuitively designed and easier to manage modules etc.
Installation and update/upgrading of Drupal is more universally developer friendly (i.e. you don't need to be an expert and if you aren't you are not too likely to destroy your sites!). That said Joomla seems to be starting to follow Drupal more closely now so it will probably start getting better.
The main reason I would advocate Drupal for your needs it your requirement for a variation of functionality. You can enable and disable functionality very easily in Drupal and you can drag and drop themes etc. with ease. I use Joomla every day in work and my experience Drupal is king!
It's not very difficult to use WordPress as a CMS. A good resource is http://digwp.com/. The blog itself should help, but the Digging into WordPress book has a chapter about how to turn WordPress into a CMS. The great thing is you'll get a lifetime subscription of the book, so when new versions of the book come out, you will get the updated PDF for free.
My personal preference is with WordPress. It seems to have the largest user community, which means more answered questions, more plugins, more places to find cool themes, etc.
If you have PHP experience, it's probably your best bet.
As far as WP being a CMS, it has definitely goot the tools you need for a fully functioning website. A lot of the times I use WP as a CMS for clients, because it's so easy for them to catch on, and there is always a way for them to google any question they might have and find an answer without having to contact me for support.
Additionally, WP is great if you know some PHP code and can write your own custom plugins.
There are TONS you can do with it. Take a look at the most recent change log. It's got some great stuff.
http://wordpress.org/ for more info and download.
As far as ASP CMS, I've used Sitefinity in the past (only because I HAD to for work). I didn't find it to be nearly as intuitive as wordpress, and frankly I just don't like ASP. I find it to be clunky and not nearly as easy to modify and theme as PHP. Just my personal opinion of course.
Also, I'm not sure Sitefinity is free, so there is always that to consider. I'm not sure there are many free ASP CMS options as there are for PHP.
Although for simply blogging WordPress is the leading choice, for a CMS I would go with Joomla. There are many extensions that you can use with Joomla, the templates are very easy to edit if you have past experience with PHP, and the native CMS that it comes with is very verbose. Joomla has a strong community behind it, and they support many different aspects of a CMS and are constantly adding new features. Implementing a Blog in Joomla is very easy.
WordPress is certainly the leading choice... if you weren't wanting to use your developer skills. Writing a plugin for WordPress is rather agnostic to programming style (or ability), and is great for entry-level designers, but if you're looking to apply your MVC skills, of the two Joomla would be the choice.
The reason I say this is that Joomla more or less forces extensions to be MVC compliant. They also have a very strong and healthy community (the WP community in comparison is cut-throat, dog-eat-dog, the loudest-jackass-wins kind of a thing) and recently have abstracted the PHP framework layer away from the CMS, so if you're into really hardcore architectural web application coding, you can play with just its framework independently.
WordPress == get it done fast, elegantly (novice & designer focus)
Joomla == get it done right, with some work (business, programmer, and hobbyist focus)
Drupal == build every function of your site from the ground up, then rebuild it again when the next version comes out (engineer focused)
Bottom line is that you won't find good MVC driven CMS at this point in time. I have done very similar research and went through a range of vendors (both commercial and open source).
Yes, Orchard is available and based on your requirements it might be up to the job, however, I'd say that it's mainly for small size businesses that want some basic content management functionality.

Learning Joomla 1.7

I am thinking of starting to learn Joomla 1.7 but don't know where to begin.
I am interested in learning to create blogs, e-commerce websites, forums and other type of websites. I know that there is probably a lot of learning involved but I am willing to commit.
I should also mention that my knowledge starts at XHTML\CSS and ends in Javascript\jQuery (and a bit of Java up to Swing), however I have never done any PHP/MySql programming.
Do I need to learn PHP and MySql before learning Joomla or I can start learning it now?
If I don't need to learn PHP and MySql first what book/tutorial/video tutorial would you recommend for someone who never used a CMS before and would like to learn it to its full extent?
I second the recommendation of the official documentation. http://docs.joomla.org/ overall a fantastic resource, although the wiki format can make navigation tricky. I recommend looking for and clicking the 'Category' links under any article - and/or clicking the back button when you've finished reading a page to go back to the category listing.
For free documentation I'd recommend Hagen Graf's 'books' available as free downloads from:
Here for the Joomla 1.6 version:
http://cocoate.com/joomla-16-english
Here for the Joomla 1.7 version
http://cocoate.com/2011/07/joomla-17-beginners-guide
There are other useful websites for learning to use Joomla:
http://www.compassdesigns.net/
http://www.alledia.com/
http://www.joomlablogger.com/
http://brian.teeman.net/
I've included the 1.6 documentation for anyone out there who is using that particular version, but there is no reason to stick with 1.6 as it is no longer supported.
Presentations by Jen Kramer: http://www.slideshare.net/jen4web
Presentations but Brian Teeman: http://www.slideshare.net/brianteeman
There are many other useful resources too - I'll probably return to this post and add some more resources later.
The official documentation is pretty good so I suggest your starting point should be here. As the documentation also suggests you should install XAMPP in order to run a local Joomla site for experimentation. XAMPP will get out of the way installing/configuring httpd, setting up PHP and MySQL.
I've put several Joomla sites together and I can guarantee you don't need to know PHP/MySQL to put something good together.

Magento - Multistore implementation

Im looking at switching to Magento for a project im going to start.
I was wondering if i could get a bit of advice regarding the Multi-Store implementation.
Does this allow seperate admin users for each store?
Would you recommend this implementation for a small hosted ecommerce application?
Cheers,
Warning - as I'm sure you know, don't start a project with Magento unless you are willing to put a lot of time into it.
That said, to my knowledge the Multistore setup allows one to run multiple stores with the same administration section. You should be able to create multiple admin users - but restricting them to a store isn't available in normal old community edition. It might be available in one of the pay editions.
That said, this extension may do the trick for you: http://www.aitoc.com/en/magentomods_advanced_permissions.html. Note: I've never personally tried this extension and so cannot vouch for it.
Edit
I realized that I never answered your second question.
Though Magento is a very powerful platform with a lot of features, I would not recommend using it for a small hosted ecommerce application. For a small hosted ecommerce store I would consider running Wordpress with the WP-E-Commerce plugin. Wordpress is great for managing website content - and WP-E-Commerce has a lot of features and is consistently being developed and improved upon.
If you are going to go with Magento then I would reccomend using Nexcess hosting. They specialize in hosting Magento and their Magento plans are already optimized for running Magento websites.
enterprise (and maybe professional) edition has the feature you are talking about, separating admin users by store. If you need to restrict that in admin level with community edition you can set up multiple software versions from same development branch with different databases (git is awesome on version tool for that). Lots of different ways to do so if Enterprise is out of reach
regarding of performance i guess you will need a powerful VPS or dedicated machine if you are serious about it and as the traffic grows you then should think about load balancing. Look for magento dedicated host companies for that and it won't run in $5 or $20 per month hosts
You asked:
Does Magento allow seperate admin users
for each store?
The free version (Community version) of Magento doesn't have this feature. There will be a single admin.
But the admin can create user and roles. So, some users can be assigned only to product and category addition page. And some users can only be assigned to Sales part.
Separate admin for each store: This feature is present in Enterprise version of Magento but its cost is too high. At present, it Starts at $12,990 USD/yr
In my opinion, using or not using Magento depends upon the functionality you are searching for your shop.
If you need lots of features and functionalities for your Shop then go for Magento.
If you just want general functions like displaying product, adding to cart, and checkout (that's all), then you may search for any other open source shopping cart.
You may try Oscommerce. I have not used it much but I think there is a Oscommerce module for multi admin login for each store.

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