Overview of Magento and Magento GO Development February 13, 2013 by Paul Byrne eCommerce Technology Email Email service is not integrated in any version of Magento. Customer service email addresses should be set up in a separate email service (some are free like Google Apps). In addition, you can integrate with services like Mail Chimp and Constant Contact (we recommend Mail Chimp) for email campaign management. This could be fixed with some Razoyo Magento and Magento Go development. Theming and Design Magento functions much like a Content Management System. Styling is done by updating CSS or, in the case of Go, there are some point and click options for choosing fonts, colors and background images. Modifications can be made to layouts by the user by either choosing a columnar setup for the page (1 to 3 columns) or by adding widgets (polls, banners, javascript sliders, etc.). In Magento Go, some updates to layouts can be done by using Magento’s special XML language, but it is very limited. This means that a developer must use scripting (Javascript, jQuery, Prototype) to modify the organization of elements on a page. In Magento Community, modifications can be made to the page layouts by a Magento developer by modifying the page templates and/or adding XML layout updates. This must be done properly to avoid it ‘breaking’ when updates are done to the core software (for security or functionality reasons). There are also ready-make themes available through the Magento Connect store and other sources. Adding Functionality Functionality that can be modified by a non-developer is done through the use of Extensions. There is a vast library of these available to Community users. There is a limited number of extensions available to Magento Go users. You can see what is available at the Magento Connect store. In addition to the existing extensions, it is possible to develop custom modules and extensions for Magento Community. This requires a developer like Razoyo to be done properly. NOTE: There are possible conflicts between themes and extensions and between extensions themselves.