A MUG in Den Bosch

The concept of a Magento User Group, in short a MUG, is to meetup with Magento enthousiasts and share experiences and knowledge - exactly the type of stuff Yireo does in general. Besides a MUG in Den Bosch (or 's Hertogenbosch as insiders insist on calling it), there is also a MUG in Amsterdam. Both are popular and provide a nice meeting place for Magento geeks. And we believe there should be more, as Magento is still ever popular. Setting up a MUG is not hard: It simply requires a location and some dedication. If somebody wants to setup a new MUG somewhere else, tweet us @yireo or drop us a mail. We would be happy to help promoting your MUG.

The topic being XML

January 20th, XML was the topic. For those of you familiar with Magento, you know that XML drives Magento. The main configuration is partially based on XML (plus some stuff in the database), while the theming engine is notorious for its XML layout layer. Both XML types serve a good purpose: They make it possible to extend Magento in a lean flexible way, allowing parts to override other parts simply by adding in new XML. With a few presentations (available online through slides.yireo.com), we went through some of the basics of the XML configuration, some tricks like disabling the Magento automatic updates (so you can run them manually through magerun) and the XML layout. Also discussed were the differences between Magento 1 and Magento 2 - like the introduction of containers and the usage of absolute class names (instead of class aliases).

We also had a few discussions on the Magento Developer Paradise in Kaprun, which seemed to be most about skiing, fun and some bits on Magento 2. And there were a few discussions about best practices, debugging stuff - and how great Alan Storms CommerceBug extension actually is.

Next time: Composer!

I was thrilled to see that the MUG was so much developer-oriented and technical. Instead of being a mini-course for leechers (pardon me for saying it out load), the MUG was actually really about sharing technical knowledge. Even greater is that next time will be even more awesome: It will be on composer - just composer. Jean-Paul Otto will share some of his experiences with setting up new Magento 1 sites using composer. We will discuss useful PHP packages on Packagist that might be useful for Magento sites. And we will deal ofcourse with Magento 2 and its composer integration. If you're new to Magento, prepare to be bombarded with knowledge. If you're a Magento developer, this session will get you thrilled again!