We were lucky to get one of a few copies of “Magento PHP Developer’s Guide“. It was published in April 2013 by Packt Publishing Ltd., one of the most prolific and fast-growing tech book publishers in the world.

Allan MacGregor, the author of “Magento PHP Developer’s Guide”, has a reputation for being professional, skilled and accurate developer easy to work with. I have happened to communicate with Allan and I should say that he is very responsive and friendly as well.

Allan MacGregor started working with Magento when he was a freelance developer little over 4 years ago and now he is a Magento Certified Developer Plus.

“Before Magento, creating an ecommerce website was difficult, expensive and slow,” tells Allan. “Magento changed all that! I enjoy working with Magento because it’s challenging, the framework is very powerful and flexible. And overall, I have fun working with Magento!”

Allan understood that there was a lot of information online, but he felt that there was a need for book that was an easy entry point for new developers and a bit of reference for developers that are not so new to Magento.

“I wanted to write the book that I wished I had when I was starting with Magento. A guide that covers the fundamentals, that gives me the tools to start developing with Magento.”

And Allan did it. Though it was his first writing experience, “Magento PHP Developer’s Guide” turned to be an easily accessible tutorial, designed and written to give the reader maximum understanding of the powerful Magento framework.

Continue reading this post to find out aheadWorks impressions on guide illustrations, contents, and writing style.

Read more…

We are hardly billionaires here, but we definitely know how to grow the company to a well-to-do business: hire the team of professionals and cultivate their desire to master skills and jump higher. Eventually, it pays.

Let’s give salutations to our developers, Ilia Sokolov, Sergey Ostapchik, Michael Valushko, for achieving the statuses of Magento Certified Developer Plus and Zend PHP 5.3 Certified Engineers!

Starting from the left are Ilia, Sergey and Michael

I believe there are a bunch of developers among our readers who are also pursuing the goal of becoming certified Magento or Zend PHP engineers. That’s what our guys have to say them about the certification process and how useful certificates might be.

Read more…

Cheers to aheadWorks team for making a big step forward and embracing the highest possible level of commitment with Platinum Industry Partner status!

This transition to a new partnership level is anticipated since at present more than 25,000 Magento merchants and 40+ official partners in 100 countries are using our high-grade extensions and themes.

‘Platinum Partnership means a lot to us. It acknowledges our expertise in Magento extensions and themes development and provides guarantees that our customer service is top notch. We participate in almost every Magento event and are always ready to support big and small related happenings.

It was a long way to go to become leading players in Magento universe and it looks like we made it‘, – Artyom Rabzonov, the CEO at aheadWorks, states.

Do not forget that aheadWorks takes part in the Imagine eCommerce Conference 2013. If you are in Las Vegas, make sure to stop by our booth #54! Here is the Marketplace plan for you to spot us.

Follow aheadWorks on Twitter and be the first to get the hottest Imagine news from Matt and Artyom.

‘Customers come and go’ – you have to take this simple piece of business wisdom for granted. In between coming and going they can register on your website and leave invaluable bits of private information that help you identify their traits. We want to assist you in collecting as much user data as possible and for this purpose we deliver the Customer Attributes extension.

Customer Attributes give merchants the ability to extend the number of fields on customer registration and personal account pages to have the additional info about clients at their disposal.

Save 25% on the extension from now through Friday, April 12! Pre-order Customer Attributes before its official release (a week from today) and pay $75 instead of $101.

We made it extremely easy to deal with Customer Attributes: no headache expected while installing and configuring the extension. The set of clearly defined features allows this extension to stand out among others of its kind.

Read more…

The biggest Magento event of the year, the Imagine eCommerce Conference, is almost around the corner and aheadWorks team is already packing its suitcases to fly to Las Vegas shortly. This time the third annual Imagine conference will be held in Las Vegas on April 8-10.

Being a Silver Sponsor of the event, we would like to offer you SOMETHING SPECIAL if you are also moving to Las Vegas to participate in the Imagine.

Join Las Vegas City Tour with aheadWorks on April 7 (Sunday) for free to get acquainted with this sin city full of temptation. To hop on a bus with us and make a short trip through all main attractions of Vegas, just REGISTER HERE with your Facebook account or by email and let’s have fun together before the main happening will take place next day.

The number of seats is limited, so be sure to register as soon as you see this announcement!

For all other participants: here are 4 big reasons for you to find aheadWorks booth in the exhibition hall and come talk to us.

1. Claim the Certificate of your Imagine eCommerce Conference Attendance
2. Get free tickets to Las Vegas Tour with aheadWorks on April 9 if you missed the first trip on April 7
3. Learn about best deals and obtain discounts for all products in our store
4. Find out aheadWorks Partnership Program benefits

I strongly recommend you to memorize these two smart, decent looking guys. You will get private coupon codes along with their business cards if you talk to them in person. Make appointment with them beforehand by dropping informal emails to the following addresses.

Artyom, Chief Executive Officer – rabzonov@aheadworks.com

Matt, Chief Marketing Officer – krivoshein@aheadworks.com

See you there! Do not hesitate to initiate dialogue with us anytime you meet our team at the Imagine, next to our booth or somewhere in the crowd. We’ve prepared for you much more.

Editor’s Note: This post is provided for our blog by Mariana Onysko, Head of Marketing Department at MagneticOne. We are working on making aheadWorks blog a true Magento herald, where companies can highlight existing Magento issues and their ways to solve them. This article contains recommendations for merchants to consider from our Ukrainian colleagues while migrating to Magento and pitfall to be aware of.

One of the established eCommerce tendencies of 2013 is the Great Migration of the stores. 49% of today’s online merchants have considered switching their current shopping solutions within the next 2 years. Almost a half of store owners migrating today chooses Magento as their new eCommerce destination.

Nothing weird that Magento totally conquers the world with its vastness and magnificence. The widest functionality, hence unlimited possibilities, free and open source allow doing whatever you wish for free. Still, all these benefits can become a real problem when it comes to data migration.

What should you be ready for?

So, you’ve decided to migrate to Magento? No matter which way you’ll choose to do it, there are a couple of issues you had better considered. Read more…

Editor’s Note: This post is provided exclusively for our blog by Guido Jansen, Magento Evangelist and eBusiness consultant at ISM eCompany, one of the largest Magento companies in the Netherlands. Guido is deeply involved in the Magento community since 2008 and is one of Dutchento community founders.

Since 2003 I was involved in several open source projects, doing mainly consultancy and some project management besides my Psychology studies. I started the online Dutch Joomla! community in 2004 and also organized national events for that community. In 2008 I came into contact with Magento and was really enthusiastic about it right from the start. Since people with webshops on Magento purposefully earn money with it (which is not always the case with a regular Joomla! website), budgets for developing Magento webshops are much higher, and thus, it is more interesting market.

I copied the Joomla! model to Magento and started a local online community, organizing national events and doing consultancy work.

Magento position in the Netherlands

Despite the economy being at a low point, eCommerce is still growing in the Netherlands. There’s a great interest in the Netherlands for Magento and related services. For instance, if you use Google Insights to track interest for “Magento” in the last 12 months, you’ll see the Netherlands on top.

Read more…