Open Source CMS

For an e-commerce site for products 3000+ which of the following which would you choose. Please keep in mind, I'm looking for one that is a bit easier to develop then Magento as it is geared towards the developer, I prefer to work with the site. Joomla I have found to be the easiest to set up and has a wide number of extensions, I realize they are security issues, but with good deny access methods, etc, is it okay? I'd like to go with this. Magento is the wave of the future, but at this point is far coder/developer friendly for my knowledge. I kept a small poll, there are many CMS around.

Please add comments on experiences of any of open cms and pros cons of failed/successful platforms weather on the list or not.

 

Check out Tribulant's Wordpress shopping cart plugin. It's very versatile.

 

It depends, if it's a small scale site for a couple of apps or something, WordPress is the way to go. However, mainly for security purposes, if it's larger I would say Joomla.

Joomla has been around forever and it's far more developed as far as a true CMS goes. WordPress is getting there and will be there one day, but for now it's still a blog that's able to do some cool stuff.

The thing is with Joomla, right now I'd say it's at a crossroads. There's a lot of extensions for it, but when it comes to ecommerce I'd suggest checking out Ecwid. IF, you're planning on this site for the long haul that is.

Because Ecwid offers some very cool features and capabilities (and is also compatible with any CMS, btw, and free as well) however it's ajax powered. Which means Google JUST became able to potentially index its content. Ecwid has a built in catalog that Google will index, but this catalog fucks up your URL structure. (If that doesn't bother you, disregard all the negative things I have to say about Ecwid).

With Joomla, it's best to have the menu power everything and if you know what you're doing, you can have multiple menus on the front end all called from a single menu using levels. You can't do this with Ecwid's SEO catalog, which means you cannot control key things like... Page title, meta tags, URL, etc.

So it's really which way you want to go and wait.. I decided to go with the menu structure controlling my site. So I won't have to do it later, it's much better for SEO. However Google can't see my category/product content yet and I'm stuck there until I can either workaround it or those Russians get sick of hearing me bitch about their shitty SEO out of the box and do whatever it is so that Google can index their ajax content.

Basically, if you go with Joomla, just be prepared to do a lot of work and have at least an intermediate understanding of CMS and PHP code. You can go with different ecommerce platforms to, but no matter what you go with it's going to be a lot of customization. However, you're site will be much more flexible, secure and stable. Plus it's a lot easier than Magento.

 

it is for a larger jewelry site. Items probably around 3000 and will be scalable. I am leaning towards Joomla has I know the CMS well, i have had several sites based on joomla ranking on the first page within 1 week of launch (mind you no black hat techniques, just great design, decent on-site seo, and of course, the domain name contained primary keywords i was ranking for, the only reason it fell was i had to many on going projects and didnt keep up link-building, etc. Thanks.

 

I have always built my sites in Joomla, its a decent CMS, I've tried one or two others, but it has always come out on top; I've never built an eCommerce site though, but there are some good plugins that I played around with in it.

I've never used WordPress but I don't think that would be the best platform for an eCommerce site. I am in the process of setting up a test site with it just to see what all the fuss is about lol, it seems too simplistic for my likings but maybe a few plugins will change that.

~|ChaRoN|~

 

any decent places left to get free jewelry joomla templates, all the good ones from a year-two years ago that had tons of free templates are gone...been searching google, cant find anything..

 

dude.. you added wordpress for ecommerce but you didnt add opencart??? Opencart is best imo.. second magendo..

 

OSCommerce?
The last ecommerce website I built was in Wix LOL!
I voted wordpress, as most of my customers dont want full blown 1000+ product stores.

 

I have to preface this by saying I don't have experience of all of the above, but I have worked with Joomla and Wordpress and have found them both to be very versatile and importantly, customisable. In that respect, and because you're going for e-commerce, I would probably come out in favor of Joomla. It's just that bit more versatile and... I guess the word I am looking for is "serious".

One good thing that Wordpress and Joomla each have in common is the range of add-ons you've got available to you. From my own personal experience and those of others I've worked with, I would vote for Joomla in this case, I think.

 

Wow, I would have thought Magento would have been ranked higher in the poll. I haven't used it myself, but I know someone that owns about 10 stores and he says Magento is the best cart he's used.
Edit: Just wanted to add that I didn't vote in the poll since I don't have first hand experience with them.

 

I don't understand how Joomla is winning this poll... I've always found it to be very counterintuitive and generally confusing.

For ecommerce websites I've used PrestaShop to great effect.

 

Impresspages!!!

 

I spent months researching eCommerce platforms before setting up my eCommerce website. What I realized is that Wordpress can work, but is VERY limited. That said, I would strongly recommend not using Wordpress if you are serious about your eCommerce site. Currently the best solutions are Zen Cart, Presta Shop, Shopify, or my favorite: Open Cart. Shopify is really good if you don't know any programming because you can start selling immediately with very little configuration, however it will cost you an extra $30/mo. Out of the free open source solutions I strongly recommend Open Cart. It is very SEO friendly out of the box, very user friendly, and has a strong and growing community which is very important for any open source solution. The developers are always upgrading it and there literally 1000s of extensions to add increased functionality. If you want to see how it looks you can look at my site: beerpongstadium.com