A new version of my favorite shopping cart has been released.  Magento, an open source ecommerce platform, is now available under version 1.1.5.

This version includes many bug fixes for Magento 1.1.x that are listed in the release notes section.

This version also comes with new features:

• New category management tool that will allow store owners to manage a large number of categories, which can be tested on our demo admin site.
• New skin to the Magento Default theme which can be seen here

More information can be found at: http://www.magentocommerce.com/blog/mage...

Magento 1.1 was released last week.  Magento is an open source ecommerce platform (shopping cart).  Several weeks ago, I discussed some of the expected features in Magento 1.1.  Be sure to check out the original announcement for more details on Magento 1.1.

The new version of Kentico CMS enables rapid development of on-line stores. It comes with new E-commerce starter site and step-by-step guide for ASP.NET developers.

The revamped E-commerce module now supports:

• Product and inventory management
• Shopping cart
• Customizable checkout process
• PayPal, Authorize.NET and custom payment gateways
• Product options and configuration (e.g. t-shirt sizes and colors)
• Wish list
• Configurable taxes, shipping and discounts
• Multiple currencies
• Easy integration into web site through built-in web parts
• Sales reports

 ... and other great features.

Download a free trial at http://www.kentico.com/ecommerce.aspx 

Roy Rubin over at Magento discussed what we can expect in the upcoming Magento 1.1.  On top of that list are performance improvements with as much as a 40% improvement in the catalog and sales modules.  Enhancements and new to Magento 1.1 will also include:

• Admin UI improvements: Changes will be made to only load data when necessary, improving the responsiveness of the Admin Panel.
• Web Services API: A highly requested feature which will make integrating Magento with 3rd party software much easier. The API will be added for the catalog, customers and sales modules.
• Virtual Products: These products which do not require shipping information and/or inventory management add to Magento’s product types.
• Customer Defined Product Options: This functionality will allow customers to define text, images, etc. for products.
• Bundled Products
• Improved support for EU and Canadian taxes: The tax rules and functionalities for EU and Canadian taxes will be added to the Core

For additional information along with a video, check out Roy Rubin's post.

The release of Ubercart 1.0 was announced earlier today.  Ubercart is an open source e-commerce package (shopping cart) that fully integrates your online store with the open source CMS, Drupal.  We've been watching Ubercart for some time and like some of the look-and-feel it borrows from osCommerce.

Some of the features in Ubercart 1.0 as reported by their shopping cart's Website include:

• Configurable product catalog includes catalog pages and a block to display product categories.
• Flexible product creation system. Create normal products by default. Add fields to store additional product information using Drupal's CCK system.
• Flexible product attributes system. Create user selectable attributes for your products that modify the price, SKU/model, and/or weight of items as the customer adds them to his or her cart. Set default attribute/option sets for each product class to easily create many similar products.

Webdistortion, a web design studio in Northern Ireland, recently reviewed nine different e-commerce platforms. All nine platforms reviewed were open source software packages.

With e-commerce webdesign really starting to take off, its never been more important to choose a platform which suits you as a developer (i.e. one that you can support) and one that will provide your clients with the features that they need to run a successful online shop.

There are a number of ways of getting a shop online, and we’ve focused primarily on open source e-commerce platforms here.

Those nine e-commerce platforms under review include: osCommerce, ZenCart, VirtueMart (Joomla!/Mambo), Magento, DashCommerce, CubeCart, X-Cart, LiteCommerce, and Shopify. If you're looking for a brief and consolidated review of open source shopping carts, then the Webdistortion reivew is a nice place for you to visit.

For those curious, I found this story via DZone.

Selling Online with Drupal e-Commerce is a new book from Packt which will help users to sell online using the award-winning open-source Drupal web application. Written by Michael Peacock, this book provides the essentials of getting an e-commerce website up and running with Drupal.

Drupal is a free and open-source modular web application framework and content management system (CMS) written in PHP that can run in many environments; including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD. Drupal e-Commerce is a free, open-source, feature-rich, flexible package of modules that seamlessly adds full e-Store capabilities to Drupal.

Last week marked the official release of Magento 1.0, an open source ecommerce platform. Magento has been on my radar scope for some time thanks to those who have left comments about it here. Since, I likely will have need of a good shopping cart this year for a planned project, I've decided to put some focus on Magento. I will be removing Mambo from my top 30 "CMS Focus" list to make room for Magento. My apologies to Mambo fans.

Magento isn't just a "shopping cart" but attempts to also be an "ecommerce platform". Magento recognizes that it needs to improve and introduce additional features, but for a 1.0 version the variety and quantity of features are impressive. Some of Magento's well rounded features include analytics and reports, RSS feeds, site and content management tools, search engine optimization, promotion tools, and multiple theming.