There have been numerous attempts to build the perfect eCommerce platform over the years. For many, Magento is the closest — it’s an extraordinarily powerful eCommerce application, capable of supporting everything from the smallest boutique vendor to the largest eCommerce retailer. Much of the groundwork for Magento’s success was laid by Boris Gurvich, Magento’s original Lead Technical Architect. So, when Gurvich turns his attention to something new in the eCommerce world, it’s worth paying attention. We’d like to take a brief look at his current project: Sellvana, a new eCommerce platform that is designed to be simple to use and deploy.
Sellvana, currently in development, is an open source eCommerce platform created with modern design and development techniques in mind. Based on the lightweight Fulleron PHP framework, which was developed for the project, Sellvana aims to be the eCommerce platform that retailers have been asking for — promising “radical improvements in functionality, flexibility, performance, and security.”
To that end, Sellvana has been designed to account for lessons that have been learned in the eCommerce world over the last few years. Obviously, speed is of primary concern for eCommerce, and the Fulleron PHP framework has been built with performance in mind. Occasionally, eCommerce applications can get bogged down under the weight of their own product catalogues; Sellvana’s developers have tackled this problem with a simple relational database design that’s intended to maintain high speeds even with very large product catalogues.
The focus isn’t just on retailers though. No eCommerce system can hope to compete against the established giants without offering something to developers too. Sellvana was developed with a simplified architecture, offering streamlined and intuitive APIs and a built-in debugging environment. Sellvana is designed to be a true modular system, with the ability to easily activate and deactivate components. There’s also a comprehensive theme functionality which is responsive by default. Devs will be happy to hear that Sellvana will have a marketplace for modules, much as Magento has MagentoConnect. If you’re interested in getting a head start on Sellvana module development, check out the Introduction To Sellvana Module Development webinar.
Sellvana Module Development – Introduction – Webinar from Team Sellvana on Vimeo.
It’s still early days for Sellvana, and it’ll be a while before it’s snapping at the heels of established giants like Magento, but the project shows considerable promise. It has the potential to be a breath of fresh air for eCommerce retailers used to slow, heavyweight, complex applications with a steep learning curve. Sellvana is still in closed beta, but if you’d like to take a look you can request access here.
