While a lot of the focus of Mage-OS to date has been on forming our organization and moving things forward technically, there has also been work ongoing around content for Magento Open Source. In this update we want to share what we’ve been up to, why, what we’re planning next, and finally, how you can get involved!

Why does Mage-OS care about Magento content?

Since acquiring Magento, Adobe has stopped publishing the magento.com domain, and now forwards that to information about their paid Adobe Commerce product, with no mention of Magento Open Source at all. In the process, they removed valuable information about Magento Open Source and made it difficult to learn about the platform or start using it. Our aim is to create a replacement site where merchants, developers, and other professionals can find out key information about the platform in one central location.

Furthermore, with the inaccurate ‘Magento is Now Adobe Commerce’ marketing still being used by Adobe, we feel it’s more important than ever that information about Magento Open Source is made publicly available.

What is Mage-OS’ vision for a Magento content site?

In addition to creating a replacement for content from the old magento.com site, we want to make it a proper community portal. We want this content site to be a gateway and repository to everything you could want to know about Magento as a platform, product, and community. The website should allow you to discover the entire ecosystem.

These are the areas we want this site to contain:

  • A strong landing page that explains what Magento Open Source is and helps direct visitors to the right place to learn more based on their needs (e.g. merchants, developers, etc.)
  • Multiple product pages with technical (but merchant friendly) details about the different features Magento Open Source offers, e.g. multistore, CMS/Page Builder, catalog and search, checkout, SEO, marketing, etc.
  • Platform comparison pages, e.g. how Magento Open Source compares against other eCommerce platforms, including an unbiased comparison with Adobe Commerce (the paid version of Magento that Adobe offers)
  • Multiple links for developers, merchants (such as documentation sites) and community resources (such as the various forums and chat groups)
  • A community directory where agencies, technology providers, and merchants can list their businesses, sites, and services
  • News and event listings
  • A blog with merchant case studies and industry best practice articles

Note: we’re also open to further suggestions!

Our Journey So Far

There’s obviously a lot we want to achieve. So far we’ve focused on getting a development site set up that we can add content to, and have made progress in the following areas:

  • The main landing page
  • An initial draft of the site navigation, including many external resources
  • A number of product/functional pages
  • The community directory

We certainly won’t launch with all the above listed areas, and we will be taking an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) approach to ensure we can launch something useful, given the harm caused to the ecosystem by not having an informative magento.com site.

On Adobe, the Magento Association, the Magento branding, and the magento.com domain

Our initial intention was to create a non-Mage-OS-specific site that could replace magento.com, ideally on the same domain or a similar one such as magento.org, and utilize the Magento branding (e.g., the Magento logo) on that informational site. Additionally, we offered to hand over control of that site to the Magento Association (MA) or even Adobe, should they wish to maintain it.

Many discussions were held during the Magento Association Task Force and Content Committee meetings over the past year, with Adobe representatives present on multiple occasions. However, after almost a year of attempting to make this happen, and due to the lack of movement, interest, and willingness (from Adobe, not the MA), we’ve unfortunately accepted this will probably never happen. As a result, we are putting the site fully under the Mage-OS brand rather than Magento (though references to Magento Open Source as a product will still remain).

Next Steps

Up until the past few weeks, we’ve only had a handful of people involved, focused on getting a site up and running and adding content. However, recently we’ve had additional help offered that should improve and accelerate our progression going forward.

First, maxcluster (a Germany-based hosting company) have kindly offered their support. They are currently undertaking a strategic review of what we’ve done to date and how we can better move forward in terms of architecture, content, audience, and messaging. We hope to have the results of this in the coming weeks.

Second, we’ve had assistance offered by Amasty to help organize and manage the content effort better! They’ve set up a Trello board and planned all the current tasks we have to work through, so we can better see progress and meet deadlines.

After the strategic review, we’ll further update the tasks and deadlines and have a much clearer roadmap to launch.

How Can You Get Involved?

If you want to help us create this Mage-OS/Magento ecosystem content site, there are many ways you can be involved, listed below. But first off, you’ll need to join the Mage-OS’ Discord server (as this is used as our main communication method) and be in agreement with our contribution guidelines.

Here’s how you can contribute:

  • Join the conversation and discussion on the #content channel on our Discord server
  • Share your views and input on our weekly meetings
    • These take place on Mondays at 15:00 UTC (07:00 PST, 10:00 EST, 15:00 GMT, 16:00 CET, 17:00 EET, 20:30 IST) on our Discord server
  • Help write or review content for pages on the site
  • Create/provide assets we can utilize on the site (e.g. screenshots, imagery, diagrams, and videos)
  • Contribute to the overall site structure and content required
  • Help with organizing and planning content and other tasks
  • Aid with the overall strategy and vision of the site
  • Undertake frontend development (theming) to help improve the look and feel of the site
  • Add your organization, site, or service offering to the community directory section of the site

Alternatively, if you just want to keep up to date with the ongoing progress, then please ensure you are subscribed to the Mage-OS newsletter.

Thanks

Finally, we wouldn’t have gotten this far without the help of many folks in the community. So, a big thank you to Arron Moss, Barbaros Selim Büyükelçi, Benno Lippert, Bernard Robbins, Brent Peterson, Damien Retzinger, Dominik Rammert, Nicole Mentzen, Sergej Derzap, Willem Wigman and many others (plus, of course, all the Mage-OS Board members who’ve been involved).

Once again, we’ll have more to share soon. Thanks for reading! 🙌🏻

The Mage-OS folks