Atwix blog

Community Structure

Some would say, The Magento community is one of the largest and most active e-commerce communities in the world. It unites engineers and business professionals across the globe. We start this series of articles on the Magento community focused on the inner workings of the community: maintainers, contributors and community engineers. Featuring stories from people who help build the community as we know it, we want to highlight the hidden aspects of the daily routine and make the Magento community even more transparent.

Before COVID-19 cut the possibility of public gatherings, we had plenty of offline hackathons or contribution days in the Magento community world. An essential part of a working toolkit at such events is, obviously, a laptop (there were gurus that wrote the code even on tablets but that’s a different story). And at every table, along with 10 developers with serious faces, you saw at least 7 MacBooks and 3 [something else] with Ubuntu on board. If you are lucky enough, you may meet a dev who uses a Windows-based laptop as a working station but it’s rather a rare exception to the rule.

The growing unpopularity of Windows-based laptops among web-developers in the past has its roots. There was a period when Windows could not provide a toolkit powerful enough for productive web application development. Many developers, who made the switch from Windows to OSX or Linux, never looked back. But during the last few years, the situation with the Windows platform has changed dramatically. Microsoft took the direction of improving the development tools they own (VS Code, WSL) and acquiring new ones (GitHub). We would like to share our recent experience in building Magento 2 local development environment using Docker and WSL 2.

Welcome to 20th edition of MageNews. 🎉

It’s been quite a while since we decided to create this digest. MageNews has gone from a simple idea to a full project with a commitment to deliver the most important and exciting Magento news each month.

Our goal is to make this wrap-up useful for every tier in Magento community, both technical and non-technical people, our merchants, partners and a lots of friends from Magento community. A lot of you have already got used to it, hopefully, love it and are happy to be notified about a brand new post every month.

For me, it’s been a tradition now to end my month with reviewing the latest news, defining information and briefly describing what happened. Of course, the best part is the joy from being able to help others to learn more. 🙌

With my recent decision to take a sabbatical and step away from my daily responsibilities we have decided that MageNews must go on! Alex Lunkov, our Business Analyst, will be preparing MageNews for you as of October.

As for me, I’m going to start a new journey and switch focus to other things. No matter what –  Magento will always have a special place in my heart.

Onward and upward, everyone. 🚀

– Roman

Ho Ho Ho! Anyone else waking up in the middle of the night right now? Any visions of Santa and his elves wearing their Christmas themed masks working diligently but socially distanced? Is it just me!? Too soon, you say! 

Sometimes I ask myself, what defines a moment? What happens when the novelty of something that was “new” wears off and becomes customary? Many of us are probably already past the strategy of waiting out the crisis and have lost hope that we will wake up to find out the the last six months was nothing but a bad dream. Perhaps it’s worth dropping the “new” from the “new normal” now?

In today’s world, having an online eCommerce presence is needed to not only attract new customers but to support current customers. This was the reality for large scale B2C and B2B merchants, but is now true for most local and smaller sellers as well. Recent events have accelerated and normalized this business mandate. This rapid transition is not about scale or introducing new sizzle — it’s about developing an online presence that strengthens a business’s ability to survive in 2020 and beyond.

Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, is quoted as saying, “change is the only constant in life.” Said some 2,500 years ago, he seemed to inherently know what life in 2020 would be for all of us in – a series of sprints to keep data secure and websites performing and compliant, to keep pace with the rapidly adapting eCommerce landscape, to innovate new and different end user experiences. Magento has been doing a whole lot of sprinting lately. In this month’s MageNews, we look ahead at a holiday season unlike any other, we dive into Magento’s newest release, and as always we surface and share Magento community activities. So, take a moment to refresh and replenish by catching up on our August MageNews.

In the previous chapter, we talked about work on the Magento Adobe Stock Integration (ASI) project and how these kinds of volunteer activities are critical to the continued growth of developer’s expertise. As a result of engagement in such projects, not only developers get to improve their Magento skills, but the whole ecosystem benefits from the accelerated roadmap delivery.

The last days of June 2019 were unusually hot for Ukraine. The weather that year decided to follow all possible summer standards: sunny days, very high temperatures, and a lack of precipitation. So it was nice to enjoy a sit on the train near the AC during my ride from Kyiv to Kharkiv. In Kharkiv, I took part in the Magento Meetup. These kinds of events are essential in providing a unique opportunity to share knowledge with the community, improve your skills, and to strengthen friendships.

Magento Commerce Cloud is the ideal combination of a hosting platform together with the right Magento Commerce features for building a website. We already highlighted reasons to choose Magento Commerce Cloud solution – a perfect choice for merchants who wish to simplify website maintenance and, at the same time, acquire a stable platform for developing and growing business.

Magento offers two variations depending on business needs – Magento Commerce Cloud: Starter and Pro-Plan. Let’s compare these in more detail so you can find the right choice for your company.