0 -> magento2? No experience [duplicate]

Question

I have little experience with websites. I built my own Wordpress site for my business, and that was a relative breeze with the multitude of tutorials and info out there. Not to mention Wordpress is built for people like me lol. By no means do I know php, html, etc, however I learn extremely fast and can pick things up quickly and easily. I just need some guides or tutorials to learn what I will need.

I would like to use a template and implement all of our products and handle the content of the site. Sort of how Wordpress works really lol. What will I need to do this? Is this just a bad idea? I want to be able to have a working site in ~2-3 months.

TL;dr 0 website building experience. Learn fast, want to build my own Magento2 site off a template.

Answer 1

It is quite difficult to deal with Magento even if you have a lot of experience in the web development. But it’s worth learning, because Magento allows you to create probably the most flexible store for any purpose. Note that Magento works just out of the box with no extra efforts. You just need to learn some official developer guides:

• http://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.0/install-gde/bk-install-guide.html
• http://devdocs.magento.com/

If you plan to work only with the front-end (design and layout) and not to change the basic functionality, then 2-3 month will be enough, if you have some experience, thirst for knowledge and a lot of free time every day. :) To work with the back-end you will need a little more time to study the core.

Useful information for understanding can be found here (you’ll need a day or two to study and write the code sample):

• http://alanstorm.com/category/magento-2

In addition, you can look through the FAQs:

• Magento learning Resources
• What are the first steps in exploring Magento 2?

If you need to change something in the basic functionality, you can always search for a ready module. There are a lot of them for Magento: both ready and in development. Everything depends on your targets and budget:

• https://marketplace.magento.com/

As for me, you can begin from Alan’s articles. If you find them complicated, it would be better to drop this. But if you find the Magento 2 principals interesting, then keep learning and let nothing stop you on the way to success.

P.S. All the questions about Magento you can ask here and the community will be happy to help. But don’t forget to use search – many problems have been already solved.

Answer 2

If you're trying to act as "developer" for a Magento store, based on your own self-assessment, it's not a good idea. Magento is not like WordPress and if you're not experienced, you can get upside-down very quickly.

Magento is very powerful and versatile. As a WP website developer myself, I had to spend a lot of time (and ended up writing 3 published books on Magento) to learn this behemoth.

If you're a DIY, then I would highly suggest you consider WooCommerce. Although, you still have to maintain the same level of vigilance about using shoddy add-ons and you'll want to take careful pains to make sure you version your code and protect your store once it's live.

Another alternative if you're strictly a content/design type of guy is something like Shopify or BigCommerce. They have their limitations, to be sure, but it's a great, inexpensive way to launch a basic site quickly without having to know about servers, caching, code versioning, etc.