eCommerce Project

[eluser]Jon L[/eluser]
Magento Commerce has alot of promise, but has a few negatives:
1. It's based on Zend Framework
2. It's slow
3. The SEF implementation allows multiple urls to the same destination = duplicate content
4. In my opinion, it seems difficult to extend, but that's likely due to my own unfamiliarity with Zend Framework and it's MVC implementation

OSCommerce and Zen Cart are fine alternatives, but if someone has a few bucks to invest, I never recommend those solutions.

The best solution I've found, is X-Cart. Yes, it's commercial, but it's fully visible-source, and inexpensive compared to other commercial solutions (only $230 last I checked). It's procedural code, but is fast, and customizing is straightforward. The 3rd party community is very active, as is the normal user community, despite being a closed community (usually the kiss of death for a product, but works great in this case due to the extended user base). My own website operates on X-Cart, and I'm happy with the result.

Cheers