Getting Started with Magento Development: 18 Essential Resources

Magento is one of the most popular ecommerce solutions among developers these days. The following list will help you understand the ecosystem and will also help you find the latest news and features about Magento along with best practices for the platform.

While working on any particular framework, it is a good idea to have some reliable resources to make the job easier. This list will help you understand the ecosystem and give you the latest news and features about Magento while keeping you updated on the best practices of the platform. This can is extremely useful while coding since there are a lot of resources in the wild but only a few that are reliable and well documented.

People

People are the key to any community and a major part of learning the ropes in any technology. The people of any community serve to inform, educate, and support each other as well as new developers who enter the community. Here is a list of influential members of the Magento community.

<a href=”http://twitter.com/benmarks” target=_“blank”>Ben Marks</a>

• Official Magento Evangelist
• Always has the latest news about the Magento world
• Events, patches, community questions, everything any developer should know about the Magento ecosystem

<a href=”http://twitter.com/MariusStrajeru” target=_“blank”>Marius Strajeru</a>

• Almighty Marius, undisputed #1 in Magento Stack Exchange
• Creator of <a href=”https://github.com/tzyganu/UMC1.9” target=_“blank”>Ultimate Module Creator</a>
• With +35.000 Stack Exchange points, he may know everything (or at least he knows where to look)
• His <a href=”http://marius-strajeru.blogspot.com.ar/” target=_“blank”>blog</a> is full of resources (even modules) to make a developer’s life a lot easier

<a href=”https://twitter.com/alanstorm” target=_“blank”>Alan Storm</a>

• Top notch developer
• Alan’s <a href=”http://alanstorm.com/category/magento” target=_“blank”>blog</a> is one of the most technical in the Magento community
• Very active on Stack Exchange

<a href=”https://twitter.com/philwinkle” target=_“blank”>Phillip Jackson</a>

• Amazing developer and top contributor on Stack Exchange
• Will be able to answer any question posted by the community
• His hair has <a href=”https://twitter.com/philwinkleshair” target=_“blank”>a separate Twitter account(!)</a>

<a href=”https://twitter.com/magento” target=_“blank”>Magento Official</a>

• Official Magento account
• All the latest news, use cases, and events can be found here

<a href=”https://twitter.com/barbanet” target=_“blank”>Damian Culotta</a>

• One of the best developers in the Spanish speaking world
• His <a href=”http://damianculotta.com.ar/” target=_“blank”>blog</a> is a must read for the Spanish community

Sites

After people, the next best resource is a location on the web to find what you are looking for. Here are some of the best resources for this:

<a href=”http://magento.stackexchange.com/” target=_“blank”>Magento Stack Exchange</a>

• Number one site for Magento developers
• Central repository of Magento knowledge
• Anyone can ask and the community will respond

<a href=”http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards” target=_“blank”>Magento Forums</a> (now closed)

• Similar to Stack Exchange
• Now closed and being refactored to be relaunched soon
• Since the forum is now only in read mode, no questions can be asked but there’s a wealth of info in the existing posts

<a href=”http://inchoo.net/blog/” target=_“blank”>Inchoo blog</a>

• Based in Eastern Europe, Inchoo is a Magento dev shop
• Covers best practices
• Written in a way anyone can understand

<a href=”http://www.classyllama.com/blog” target=_“blank”>Classy Llama blog</a>

• Magento Gold Partner company
• Blog about business, conferences, features, modules
• A must read while developing

<a href=”https://github.com/magento/magento2” target=_“blank”>Magento 2 on GitHub</a>

• Official repository for Magento 2
• The new version is being built by developers
• The community is providing lots of useful feedback

<a href=”http://www.magekarma.com/” target=_“blank”>MageKarma</a>

• Created by Marius Strajeru and <a href=”http://twitter.com/tim_bezhashvyly” target=_“blank”>Tim Bezhashvyly
• Particularly useful when using third party extensions
• Everything is reviewed: code, features, pricing, etc.

<a href=”http://magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/” target=_“blank”>Magento Connect</a>

• The official extension channel (like an app store)
• Contains paid and free extensions

Modules

Finally we have modules; pieces of code that allow you to better extend your Magento setup. Here’s a list of a few popular modules:

<a href=”https://github.com/netz98/n98-magerun” target=_“blank”>MageRun</a>

• A set of tools for developers that can be used from the CLI to perform operations like creating customers, setting/getting configs from the admin, reindexing, clearing cache, and so on
• Addons at https://github.com/kalenjordan/magerun-addons

<a href=”https://github.com/tzyganu/UMC1.9” target=_“blank”>Module Creator</a>

• Created by Marius Strajeru
• Allows you to create modules with a couple of clicks
• Extremely easy to use and really good for beginners

<a href=”http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/enhanced-admin-grids-editor.html” target=_“blank”>Enhanced Admin Grid</a>

• Magento Admin is all about grids and extending them is not always easy
• This module helps you to create customized grids or to edit existing ones with a few clicks, making clients requirements easy to handle

<a href=”http://sourceforge.net/projects/magmi/” target=_“blank”>Magmi</a>

• This project “is an attempt to provide a product importer for magento that can handle several thousands of products at a reasonable pace compared to magento dataflow”
• This module is used when moving information between Magento sites or environments, making things easier for developers

<a href=”https://magemail.co/” target=_“blank”>Magemail.co</a>

• Created by <a href=”http://twitter.com/kalenjordan” target=_“blank”>Kalen Jordan</a> for merchants to increase ROI
• One of the best options for transactional emails for Magento
• Amazing support

Anyone can be a better developer by simply participating in the community trying to answer questions in Stack Exchange or writing blog posts. The strenght of a framework lays on the community and Magento has proved that point. eBay has even taken this into consideration for the development of the new version of Magento.

This is a good set for newcomers and for seasoned developers looking to be updated on the important subjects related to the platform, such as events, updates, community news, and so on.

Are you a Magento dev? Is there a resource we’ve missed? Anything you’d like to share with people just getting started in the Magento community? If so, throw us a comment below.

About Miguel: Miguel has been developing Magento for almost 6 years. He covered most of the Magento world while developing and 2 months ago was certified as a Solution Specialist, being the only one in his home country Argentina.

Miguel enjoys doing integrations between Magento and third party APIs.

He can be found on twitter as <a href=”https://twitter.com/mbalparda” target=_“blank”>@mbalparda</a>