Website Development on Magento / Adobe Commerce

Website Development on Magento / Adobe Commerce

Magento 2 / Adobe Commerce is an enterprise platform for large-scale ecommerce. It is chosen when you need: multi-site setup from a single installation, complex catalog structure with thousands of attributes, custom business processes that cannot be implemented on SaaS platforms.

Magento Open Source vs Adobe Commerce

For most projects, Open Source is sufficient. Adobe Commerce is justified for B2B scenarios, complex personalization, or integration with Adobe Analytics/AEM.

Server Requirements

Magento 2.4.x (current branch):

• PHP 8.1–8.3 (8.2 is optimal)
• MySQL 8.0 or MariaDB 10.6
• Elasticsearch 8.x or OpenSearch 2.x (mandatory for search)
• Redis 7.x (sessions + cache)
• RabbitMQ 3.11+ (for async queues in large stores)
• Nginx 1.24+ / Apache 2.4
• Varnish 7.x (reverse proxy cache, optional)
• Minimum 4 CPU, 8 GB RAM for dev; 8 CPU, 16 GB RAM for prod

Modular System Architecture

Magento is built on modules. Each module is a folder in app/code/Vendor/Module/ or vendor/vendor/module/:

app/code/MyCompany/Catalog/
├── Block/          # PHP classes for View (legacy approach)
├── Controller/     # HTTP controllers
├── etc/
│   ├── module.xml  # module declaration
│   ├── di.xml      # Dependency Injection configuration
│   ├── routes.xml  # routes
│   └── frontend/
│       └── events.xml  # event subscriptions
├── Model/          # business logic
├── Plugin/         # Interceptors (before/after/around)
├── Observer/       # Event observers
├── Setup/
│   ├── InstallSchema.php
│   └── Patch/Data/  # Data patches
├── view/
│   └── frontend/
│       ├── layout/  # XML layout
│       └── templates/ # .phtml templates
└── registration.php

Dependency Injection and Plugin

Magento doesn't use new ClassName() — all dependencies are injected through the constructor. Configured in etc/di.xml:

<!-- Class substitution (preference) -->
<preference for="Magento\Catalog\Model\Product"
            type="MyCompany\Catalog\Model\Product"/>

<!-- Plugin (interceptor) — without class substitution -->
<type name="Magento\Catalog\Model\ResourceModel\Product\Collection">
    <plugin name="mycompany_catalog_collection_plugin"
            type="MyCompany\Catalog\Plugin\ProductCollectionPlugin"
            sortOrder="10"/>
</type>

Plugin (before/after/around):

// MyCompany/Catalog/Plugin/ProductCollectionPlugin.php
namespace MyCompany\Catalog\Plugin;

use Magento\Catalog\Model\ResourceModel\Product\Collection;

class ProductCollectionPlugin
{
    public function afterLoad(Collection $subject, Collection $result): Collection
    {
        // Add attribute after collection load
        foreach ($result as $product) {
            $margin = ($product->getPrice() - $product->getCost()) / $product->getPrice() * 100;
            $product->setData('margin_percent', round($margin, 2));
        }
        return $result;
    }
}

Custom Product Attribute

// Setup/Patch/Data/AddProductAttributes.php
namespace MyCompany\Catalog\Setup\Patch\Data;

use Magento\Framework\Setup\Patch\DataPatchInterface;
use Magento\Catalog\Setup\CategorySetupFactory;

class AddProductAttributes implements DataPatchInterface
{
    public function __construct(
        private readonly CategorySetupFactory $categorySetupFactory,
        private readonly \Magento\Framework\Setup\ModuleDataSetupInterface $moduleDataSetup,
    ) {}

    public function apply(): void
    {
        $setup = $this->categorySetupFactory->create(['setup' => $this->moduleDataSetup]);

        $setup->addAttribute('catalog_product', 'delivery_days', [
            'type'           => 'int',
            'label'          => 'Delivery time (days)',
            'input'          => 'text',
            'required'       => false,
            'visible'        => true,
            'user_defined'   => true,
            'searchable'     => false,
            'filterable'     => false,
            'comparable'     => false,
            'visible_on_front' => true,
            'used_in_product_listing' => true,
            'unique'         => false,
            'apply_to'       => '',
        ]);

        $setup->addAttributeToSet('catalog_product', 'Default', 'General', 'delivery_days');
    }

    public static function getDependencies(): array { return []; }
    public function getAliases(): array { return []; }
}

GraphQL API Magento

Magento 2.4 has a built-in GraphQL API for headless:

query GetProduct($urlKey: String!) {
  products(filter: { url_key: { eq: $urlKey } }) {
    items {
      id
      sku
      name
      price_range {
        minimum_price {
          regular_price { value currency }
          final_price { value currency }
          discount { amount_off percent_off }
        }
      }
      ... on ConfigurableProduct {
        configurable_options {
          label
          values { label uid }
        }
        variants {
          attributes { label uid }
          product {
            sku
            stock_status
            price_range { minimum_price { final_price { value } } }
          }
        }
      }
      custom_attributes {
        attribute_metadata { code label }
        ... on AttributeValue { value }
      }
    }
  }
}

PWA Studio / Vue Storefront

For headless frontend on Magento, use:

• PWA Studio (official, React) — actively developed by Adobe
• Vue Storefront 2 (Nuxt.js) — popular alternative
• Next.js Commerce — with Magento adapter

Multi-site and Performance

Magento natively supports multiple websites, stores, and store views from one installation. Configuration in Admin > Stores > Configuration with scope: Global → Website → Store View.

For high-load installations:

• Varnish FPC (Full Page Cache) — HTML page caching
• Redis: separate instances for cache and sessions
• Elasticsearch: separate cluster from main server
• CDN for static assets (Fastly, CloudFront)
• Horizontal scaling: multiple PHP-FPM servers + shared NFS/GCS for media

Typical Development Stack

# Project initialization
composer create-project --repository-url=https://repo.magento.com/ \
    magento/project-community-edition=2.4.7 my-magento

# Installation
bin/magento setup:install \
    --db-host=localhost \
    --db-name=magento \
    --db-user=magento \
    --db-password=secret \
    --base-url=https://magento.local/ \
    --admin-firstname=Admin \
    --admin-lastname=User \
    [email protected] \
    --admin-user=admin \
    --admin-password=Admin123! \
    --language=en_US \
    --currency=USD \
    --timezone=UTC \
    --use-rewrites=1 \
    --search-engine=opensearch \
    --opensearch-host=localhost \
    --opensearch-port=9200

# After module changes
bin/magento setup:upgrade
bin/magento setup:di:compile
bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy en_US -f
bin/magento cache:flush

Timeline

Launching a store on Open Source with a ready-made theme and standard set of modules: 4–8 weeks. Custom development with multiple modules, ERP/1C integration, and multi-site: 3–6 months. Adobe Commerce with B2B module, Page Builder, Customer Segments, and Adobe Experience Cloud integration: 6 months+, depends on scope.