What is Magento?
Magento is an e-commerce system that was developed in open source and is considered the most advanced in the world.
The Magento brand and system were developed by Israelis and released for the first time in 2008 to the open source community, which has since enriched and expanded the plugins and templates, thus making Magento a market leader. Today there are almost no open source e-commerce focused systems of the same size and work capacity as Magento (there are only non-open source systems).
Magento was acquired by eBay in 2011, and in 2018 the software and design giant Adobe acquired Magento at a valuation of $1.68 billion.
According to data on various websites, it seems that Magento dominates no less than 30% of the global e-commerce market (taking into account the fact that Amazon, eBay and Google hold most of the trade, Magento is therefore the largest trade system in the world) and helps almost 300,000 merchants worldwide.
Building Magento sites in Hebrew
It is true that Magento was created by Israelis, but it was really not aimed at the Israeli market and in the first years it was very difficult to work with it in Hebrew. Today, to our joy, the community has enriched the capabilities of the Magento system and it is possible to set up websites in Hebrew, place the language from right to left, and open e-commerce stores and online sales in Hebrew in Magento.
In order to build a Magento website in Hebrew, you need to build or find a template adapted to writing and reading from right to left, at the same time as a comprehensive translation or downloading translation sets to the Magento core system (all components of the shopping cart, product details, purchase, deliveries, etc.).
The add-on market for Magento in Israel and in Hebrew is still not large and the many versions of Magento (Magento 1 and Magento 2 which will be detailed later) only add to the difficulties of finding an add-on that will both fit the template and the system version. We at Duran have a lot of experience in both Magento 1 and Magento 2, so if the required plugin is not found in the Magento community, we know how to "convert" plugins or build them in a way adapted to the client's website.
It is true that Magento was created by Israelis, but it was really not aimed at the Israeli market and in the first years it was very difficult to work with it in Hebrew. Today, to our joy, the community has enriched the capabilities of the Magento system and it is possible to set up websites in Hebrew, place the language from right to left, and open e-commerce stores and online sales in Hebrew in Magento.
In order to build a Magento website in Hebrew, you need to build or find a template adapted to writing and reading from right to left, at the same time as a comprehensive translation or downloading translation sets to the Magento core system (all components of the shopping cart, product details, purchase, deliveries, etc.).
The add-on market for Magento in Israel and in Hebrew is still not large and the many versions of Magento (Magento 1 and Magento 2 which will be detailed later) only add to the difficulties of finding an add-on that will both fit the template and the system version. We at Duran have a lot of experience in both Magento 1 and Magento 2, so if the required plugin is not found in the Magento community, we know how to "convert" plugins or build them in a way adapted to the client's website.
Plugins for Magento sites
The Magento system is a very complex system. With all the innovation and perfect adaptation to e-commerce at the highest level (inventory management, product management, complex catalogs, work with branches, checkouts, ERP systems, CRM systems, billing, BIG DATA, and more), the Magento system still works with information records in the configuration Relatively old and cumbersome (obsolete XML) which requires a lot of work on things that look simple from the side.
Therefore, it is almost impossible to build a complex website without using plugins for Magento, whether to connect to clearing, whether to connect to distributors and delivery companies, integrations to inventory systems, or sometimes even a gallery display of YouTube videos - in many such cases the developer will prefer to use existing plugins to Save long days of work with a solution that can sometimes be implemented in half an hour's work.
As mentioned, the Hebrew plug-in market is not large, but a development company or a certified programmer who has passed the Magento certification can relatively easily find relevant plug-ins in the world and translate them into a Hebrew system. If we do not find an exact Magento plugin for the system and its needs, we develop for the customer everything that is required to produce the perfect result for him.
Building a website in Magento or WordPress - Magento Vs WordPress
Often the answer to this question depends on whether the season is deeply familiar with both systems. If he knows more than one system, he will answer that it is better. We at Duran specialize in both systems, so we have no preference or preconceived notion as to which one is better. The answer is a completely professional answer, and it is based not only on many years of experience working with both systems, but also on a deep understanding of the design of the code and databases of both systems and the goals for which they were developed in the first place.
WordPress is a flexible content system, Magento is an e-commerce system. WordPress is so flexible that the WordPress e-commerce system (the most popular is WooCommerce) is ideal for small stores of up to a few thousand or tens of thousands of products but is more aimed at small medium stores and merchants or distributors.
Magento, on the other hand, is a system in which you should not build small projects of a few dozen or hundreds of products because the costs of operation, maintenance, servers, and management are very high. On the other hand, large stores or international companies that work with large inventory systems and complex logistics cannot at all think of WordPress as an e-commerce system that would suit them. Only Magento is an open source e-commerce system that is pre-built to accommodate hundreds of thousands or millions of products, vast amounts of information and customers in a secure manner.
The beauty is that the two systems are very different from each other and suit completely different needs, and both are free to install.
Building a website in Magento 1
The first version of Magento was so amazing simply because there were no open source e-commerce systems before it. A lot of American merchants started their journey with stores on eBay and Amazon and suddenly Magento arrived which allowed them to be indexed on Google quickly, while integrating with their existing eBay store so that all the information could be easily interfaced. It seems that the growing interest of eBay merchants who started setting up Magento stores opened eBay's eyes to understand what was going on under its nose and eventually bought Magento (just like with the payment service PayPal which was also bought by eBay after gaining momentum).
Magento 1 was updated (at the level of security and components) for about 7 years until the second version arrived - Magento 2, and in 2020 Adobe issued a notice about serious security problems that it no longer supports in the Magento 1 version.
Building a website in Magento 2
Magento 2 came to the world in 2015 and brought a new era to the Magento system in a comprehensive and complete way. You can simply say that if we have a site in Magento 1 and we want to upgrade to Magento 2, we more or less have to rebuild the entire template and components and integrations, and we can only use the databases and information of the products.
The interface itself looks more or less the same as the old and familiar interface but allows a lot of innovations and higher speed for upgrades and developments. The Magento 1 plugins are not suitable for Magento 2, so most of the community stopped developing the Magento 1 plugins and shifted all their effort to building new Magento 2 plugins.
We at Duran have extensive experience in upgrading websites from the Magento 1 system to the Magento 2 system quickly and efficiently.
Magento course - Magento developer certification tests
You can find a very wide variety of free or paid courses on the Internet that explain the essence and technique of working with the Magento system. Magento and Adobe only offer certification tests that allow those who successfully pass them to receive a certification as a certified Magento developer.
The founder of the Duran company and the various programmers passed the various certifications of Magento 1 and Magento 2 and each of them is considered a developer - a certified Magento programmer.
Contact us today and we can help you with all issues related to Magento.
