Magento Community Edition Capability Questions

Question

I am just starting out with Magento and have two requirements for a private wholesale store. I realize this question is a bit open ended, but I would appreciate any recommendations for extensions or level of complexity from an experienced Magento developer.

• The store is private. Only available to customers entered within the Magento Admin. Security via HTTP Auth is not an option. I want Magento to handle it. Seems like I would disable new customer registration and then add some custom code to the core. How much code would that require?

• The customer orders are purchased on credit. This credit is set on a per customer basis within the Magento Admin. Customers do not manage their credit. I found an extension for purchase, so it's possible. However, if I am already in the core to do the above, how much more might this be?

Of course, both of the requirements above are features in Magento Enterprise edition, for $13,000/year.

Answer 1

As this has just been asked recently (here):
Use Customer Activation with Login only catalog.

There are a variety of credit extensions available which you have no doubt only just started discovering. When searching be sure to include the phrase "magento connect" so you don't get overwhelmed by similar questions and no solutions, it seems it is a popular subject.

Answer 2

Customer credit, at least as you envision it here, isn't really the best fit for EE. Its credit system is based on issuing store credit for refunds, and doesn't stand alone well as the sole payment type.

As to your questions, the first should be possible with little or no modification to the code. As you said, turn off user registration to prevent users from signing themselves up. If you want to keep the catalog a secret, you may need to add a little code to redirect all unauthenticated requests back to the homepage or a login page.

I don't have specific experience with the plugin you mentioned, but adding new payment types is one of the better thought out systems in Magento, so if it doesn't work you can code a new one in a reasonable amount of time.

Hope that helps!

Thanks, Joe