If you follow this blog, you know that I have been experimenting with the open source shopping cart Magento Commerce as an updated replacement for the OSCommerce/CRELoaded websites that I have been building. It has a lot of advantages and event though it has a learning curve, I was really enjoying the software. That was until I started using it.

The first installation was cumbersome. But once the server is setup, most of those problems were gone and the second installation went smoothly.

Creating a theme was difficult, but after learning the basics of how it works on the first one I was able to quickly build a theme on the second installation.

Now, there is managing products. On the first site I was working on, all products are simple with no attributes. In this setup, everything works great. With the second site, every product has attributes. Unfortunately, in Magento, you have to add a “sub-product” for each attribute you need. For example, if I have a shirt that comes in four sizes (small, medium, large, x-large) then I have to add the shirt, and then add the sub-products for each size. In this example, I have to create 5 products to show the one product on the website with 4 attributes. If the shirt also has 4 colors, then I have to add 9 products total to display this product. You can see how this can quickly get out of hand if you have a large number of attributes. It also takes for freaking-ever to add products.

I’m going to try and keep the cart on the sites I have it installed on currently, but I think this issue is going to be a deal breaker for me and unless I find an easier solution I am going to have to go back to CRE Loaded.

Any Magento Gurus out there know a better way to add attributes?