Interacting with Developers: a Project Manager s Guide

Transcription

1

2 Interacting with Developers: a Project Manager s Guide

3 Miscommunication

4 Key Message

5

6 I am Mitch Goldman I make miscakes mistakes. I m not a developer. Working on Magento sites since CE 1.3* (*2009)

7 I am Mitch Goldman I m also a thief. Credit to Stephen McNairn from Session Digital for his inspiration, and his images on Indexing and Caching.

8

9 01 EAV Database Structure

10 E.A.V. database structure ENTITY ATTRIBUTE VALUE

11 Traditional database table

12 Traditional database table Wasted fields.

13 Traditional database table Wasted fields. And the table gets bigger.

14 Traditional database table New columns needed - ALTER table. Wasted fields. And the table gets bigger.

15

16

17

18

19 02 Attribute Sets

20 BEDS Dimensions Underbed storage Mattress size Materials Finish Fabric Assembly Weight CHAIRS Dimensions Seating Height Frame Finish Suspension Filling Fabric Assembly Weight TABLES Dimensions Table height Materials Finish Special features Assembly Seats Weight Colour

21 1. with your developers about the product attribute sets that you want, now and in the future. 2. down all the attribute sets, for both front-end and back-end. 3. for the future

22 03 Product Types

23 PRODUCT TYPES Simple Configurable Grouped Bundled Virtual Downloadable

24 PRODUCT TYPES Simple: a single product

25 PRODUCT TYPES Configurable: drill-down to a single product

26 PRODUCT TYPES Grouped: order several products at once

27 PRODUCT TYPES Bundled: customisable kit products

28 PRODUCT TYPES Virtual: one-time purchases with no physical or digital stock counterpart. Example: magazine subscription. Downloadable: like a Virtual product, but with the ability to add a download link to a file. Examples: music file, software application.

29 PRODUCT TYPES 1. with your developers. 2. it all down. 3. for the future

30 04 Filtering

31 FILTERING

32 05 Attribute Scope

33 ATTRIBUTE SCOPE ALL STORE VIEW (Global) WEBSITE 1 WEBSITE 2 WEBSITE 3 Store View Store View 1 Store View 2 Store View

34 ATTRIBUTE SCOPE ALWAYS double-check the scope that you re importing to.

35 06 Categories

36 CATEGORIES In EAV, Categories are treated the same as products: Each Category is an Entity.

37 07 Indexing

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46 How often do your product attributes and categories change? How many visitors do you get on your website? How many products do you have, and what kind are they? When should we reindex? On update, at a scheduled time, or manually? It depends

47 Product changes not displaying Products not in correct category Out-of-stock products visible/hidden Redirects not working Have you tried reindexing? Products appear at old price Products not appearing in search results

48 08 Caching

49

50

51

52

53 Most of the requests are the same. So why not save the results? On the next identical request, send the saved version. Avoids hitting the server or the database.

54

55

56

57 How often do your product attributes and categories change? How many visitors do you get on your website? How many products do you have, and what kind are they? When should we clear the cache? On update, at a scheduled time, or manually? It depends

58 Enterprise Edition. Open Source. Varnish, APC, Memcached, and others. What type of caching system should I use? It depends

59 Product changes not displaying Products not in correct category Out-of-stock products not visible/hidden Redirects not working Products appear at old price Products not appearing in search results Have you tried clearing the cache (after re-indexing)?

60 09 MVC

61 Stands for: odel. iew. ontroller.

62

63 MVC is a type of software architecture. MVC is what Zend Framework uses. Magento was built on top of Zend Framwork. Magento modified MVC with some key principles in mind. odel. iew. ontroller. MAINTAINABILITY Keeps the core code separate from local customisations and third-party modules. UPGRADABILITY Allows third-party modules to exist independently from the rest of the system, and extend the core code.

64 10 Extension Clashes

65 Invest in automated regression testing. Review the extensions. Talk with developers. Think long-term. Can we use this extension? It depends

66 11 CMS Pages and Static Blocks

67 CMS Pages and Static Blocks CMS pages are stand-alone web pages with URLs that you can access. Static blocks are chunks of web pages which can be embedded in other pages of Magento, such as category pages and CMS pages.

68 12 Magento Developer Survey Results I wish they knew

69 1. Product setup: simple, configurable, etc. 2. Categories and navigation 3. Importing data 4. Store view levels 5. Attribute sets 6. Category and shopping price rules 7. CMS pages and static blocks 8. Filtered navigation 9. Delivery options 10. Payment gateways 11. Caching

70 1. Product setup: simple, configurable, etc. 2. Categories and navigation 3. Importing data 4. Store view levels 5. Attribute sets 6. Category and shopping price rules 7. CMS pages and static blocks 8. Filtered navigation 9. Delivery options 10. Payment gateways 11. Caching

71 13 Recap

72 Talk to your developers, they want to help. The decisions that you make today can affect development tomorrow, so plan ahead. How and why Magento s EAV data model and MVC architecture factor into those decisions.

73 14 ONE FINAL RULE (TO RULE THEM ALL) from your friendly developers

74

75

76

77

78