Preface
It was a few years ago, I think it was somewhere in 2008, when I first heard about Magento as the new ''Top open source e-commerce solution''. Actually, at that moment it wasn't yet that good, but I could see the potential of the software already. Especially thinking about other open source solutions such as osCommerce at that time, or VirtueMart running on Joomla. No, those were the days when the e-commerce market was still dominated by large-scale companies and expensive solutions, but things have rapidly changed since then.
During 2009, the first edition of this book was published by Packt, written by William Rice. And at that moment it was actually one of the very first books in the market giving readers the opportunity to learn to work with Magento. Also in that area, times have changed and various new versions of Magento have been released since then. So it's time for a completely updated and rewritten version of that first, popular Magento book. And here it is.
Since 2009 we've been working on several Magento projects and learned to get to know Magento the hard way, sometimes just by trying and failing every now and then. Everyone already experienced with Magento will know what I'm talking about. But don't worry, this book will give you a complete overview of what Magento is, how to install it, and how to use it. When you create an online store with Magento, you usually follow a defined series of steps. This book is arranged to support that process. Each chapter shows you how to get the most out of every step.
By the time you finish reading this book you'll have a basic, but complete online store built on Magento that is ready to start selling.
Robbert Ravensbergen
Sander Schoneville
Introducing Magento
Magento is an ''open source'' software, which basically means that you are allowed to view, edit, and contribute to the source code. A lot of people also think that ''open source'' means ''free''. Although it is certainly true that most open source solutions are available for free, it isn't a mandatory part of the open source principle. Looking at Magento we immediately recognize that, because Magento is available freely as well as in a paid for version. We'll cover more on the differences between those versions later on.
As we already mentioned in this Preface, Magento isn't the only open source e-commerce solution in the market. There are other ones as well. We'll name a few alternatives, without being complete:
- OpenCart
- PrestaShop
- osCommerce (more or less obsolete)
- Joomla with VirtueMart
- WordPress with e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce
- Zen Cart
The first two candidates in this list are the more serious options, whereas the other ones are generally used for smaller shops. But don't get me wrong, as I've already seen excellent shops based on something relatively simple, such as WordPress with WooCommerce as well.
Looking at the commercial/paid market, there are really lots of players and it's hard to make a choice if you're new to the business. Also in here, we'd like to name a few solutions, so that you could get an idea of what's available in the market:
- Shopify
- X-Cart
- Interspire
- Volusion
Moreover, we see solution providers offering an online solution that you can use straight out of the box, without having to do any installation. Magento is doing this as well and we'll tell you more on this possibility in our Magento version overview.
The history of Magento
It was way back in 2001 when Roy Rubin and Yoav Kutner founded a company named Varien. They did many e-commerce implementations during those years, especially using osCommerce. But they were never satisfied with the solution. The lack of stability and flexibility made them think that it could be done better. So they decided to start a new e-commerce project in 2007 and named it Magento. The very first beta version was released in August of that year and it took them until March 2008 to release Magento Version 1.0. From that moment on, things moved fast. The solution became incredibly popular within a couple of years and new versions were released once or twice per year. Starting from that first version in 2008, we've currently reached Version 1.7 at the beginning of 2013.
Meanwhile, a lot has changed in the Varien company. It is now called Magento Inc. and has been acquired completely by eBay during 2011. The Magento community is a bit worried about the plans that eBay has with Magento, especially now that one of the original founders, Yoav Kutner, has left the company. Even keeping possible scenarios in mind, Magento has currently grown to be by far the most popular e-commerce solutions available:
Especially knowing that older solutions such as osCommerce and VirtueMart are losing market shares and Magento is still growing makes this picture even more clear about the major role Magento is playing in the e-commerce market at this moment.
Magento versions
Magento being the number one choice at this moment is great, but what does that mean for the company delivering the solution? How are they making money to continue to support the platform? This is where the various Magento versions come in. During the first few years of Magento, only the free 'Community Edition' was available. Actually, this free Community Edition is the one we'll be covering in this book since most users will start using that version. Magento currently offers two other possibilities:
Enterprise Edition
The Enterprise Edition is Magento's flagship solution, made for large-scale online stores. The Enterprise Edition has functionality on board that the Community Edition is missing and we currently often see that new features are first released in this Enterprise Edition. For companies using this version, the important fact is that Magento offers support on it. The Enterprise Edition has its own version numbers that do not have anything to do with the version number of the Community Edition. Magento Enterprise Edition is currently at Version 1.12 and is currently priced at over $14,000 annually. If you'd like to read more on the Enterprise Edition and its features please browse to:
http://www.magentocommerce.com/product/enterprise-edition.
Formerly, Magento also offered a ''Professional Edition'', which was priced in between the Community and Enterprise Editions. It was discontinued, forcing its customers to the more expensive Enterprise Edition.
Magento Go
Seeing more and more competitors like, for instance, Shopify and Volusion offering online e-commerce solutions, Magento has decided to offer such a service as well. Magento Go is an online Magento platform, that you can simply rent by paying a monthly fee. The good thing is that you do not have to worry about hosting, installation, and maintenance. Magento will do it for you. The downside however, is that Magento Go isn't yet suitable for every market and you cannot expand its functionality like you can in running your own installation. If you are interested, please pay special attention to anything that is required for your local market, payment service providers being the most important one. Pricing of Magento Go currently starts at $15 per month for a single store in one language.
More information on Magento Go can be found at:
Why choose Magento?
We've already mentioned that Magento is currently the most popular e-commerce solution, but why would you choose Magento? There are plenty of alternatives, so what makes Magento so popular? Since you're reading this book you have probably already made your choice. Still it is good to look at a few pros and cons of Magento, to make sure that you made the right decision for your business.
Magento pros
- Multi site: One of the strongest pros of Magento is that it's relatively easy to set up multiple stores in multiple languages offering different (or the same) products. You are in control.
- Product catalog management: Magento offers extended possibilities to set up and manage your online product catalog. From simple products to complete sets including options and customer variables anything seems to be possible. Magento also supports selling digital (downloadable) products.
- Theming: If you want to change the look and feel of your store, you have to change your Magento theme or install a completely different one. The number of themes available is huge nowadays, and of course it is also possible to use a custom design for your store. Generally speaking a good Magento theme isn't free. The Marketplace Themeforest (http://themeforest.net) is one of the possibilities to search for and buy a standard Magento theme:
- Extensions: Magento is already pretty complete out of the box. But there's always room for improvement or maybe you need to change the functionality because of local requirements. The Magento Community offers a lot of extensions that you can install and use to change the behavior of your store. There are free as well as paid for solutions available and there are (commercial) companies that completely focus on delivering one or multiple Magento extensions.
- Scalability: The Magento solution is not only versatile, it is very scalable as well. You do not need a very large budget to start and once your company is growing, Magento still offers you lots of possibilities. Magento can therefore be a very good choice for small companies with high ambition levels.
- Support: Although we already mentioned that official Magento support is available for the Enterprise edition, you do not have to worry. There are lots of companies throughout the whole world available to support you and help you achieve your goals. These companies will not work for free, but it's good to know that there's a fallback if you have to go further than this book and information available online have to offer.
Magento cons
A book about Magento describing the downside of the software? Yes, we feel that it is important to tell you the whole story. We are indeed Magento fans, but there are downsides to every solution. And Magento has them as well. Let's take a quick look at them:
- Magento is consumer oriented: Do you need to run a ''Business to business'' store? Magento wasn't designed for that originally. Of course it is possible to use Magento that way, but sometimes it doesn't fit so nicely. Recently we've noticed that Magento is adding functionality to better support this customer group.
- Magento is slow: Haven't you heard this one before? The code of Magento is very well structured but therefore requires more resources than an average website. More on this topic in the next chapter, but remember that if you want to run Magento, you do not go for the cheapest hosting solution.
- Magento is difficult: Well, it certainly isn't the easiest solution, because of the large number of features and possibilities. But also if you need to do coding yourself, you need a lot of knowledge about the product. This isn't a programmer's book though, and we feel that learning Magento itself isn't too complicated. This book will help you getting the job done.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Installation, explains all you need to know to about setting up your own local installation of Magento, or installing Magento at a hosting provider using Installatron.
Chapter 2, General Configuration, talks about Magento as a very versatile but complex product. Before adding your products, you first need to take a closer look at setting up your online store. In this chapter, you'll also learn to set up tax calculations.
Chapter 3, Categories and Attributes, explains that one of Magento's strengths is the way it can handle almost every product type. In this chapter you'll learn to work with Product Categories, Product Attributes, and Attribute Sets.
Chapter 4, Simple Products, talks about adding your first product in your store. During this chapter, you'll learn how to properly set up your products and which fields are important to pay attention to.
Chapter 5, Beyond Adding Simple Products, explains that now that you have added your first product, it's time to explore the other possibilities Magento offers to set up your product catalog. You'll learn to work with downloadable and configurable products.
Chapter 6, Customer Relationships, talks about looking at the other areas, starting with the possibilities Magento offers for setting up and maintaining your customer databases.
Chapter 7, Accepting Payments, explains that before being able to start selling, you'll need to set up payment systems, so that you'll be able to receive a payment from your customer. In this chapter we'll show you how to use Magento's common payment methods and how to add your own using a Payment Service Provider.
Chapter 8, Configuring Shipping, will teach you to work with the built-in Shipping Methods of Magento. We also included instructions to work with different kinds of shipping rates.
Chapter 9, Customizing Your Store's Appearance, explains what is often one of the first things you would like to do: changing the look and feel of your online store. However, now that you learned to work with Magento, it's the right time to work in this area and change the way your online store will look.
Chapter 10, Fulfilling Orders. Everything is set up now to start receiving your first orders. But once you do, how do you take control of the order process? In this chapter you will learn you how to work with orders, shipping, invoices, and credit notes.
Chapter 11, Maintaining and Administrating Your Store, explains that once your store has been set up you're not finished yet. Maintaining your online store is an ongoing process and you have just started it. In this chapter you'll learn which areas you should pay attention to. Besides that we added a checklist that you may use before bringing your store live.
What you need for this book
You do not need any specific software to be able to use the instructions in this book. Just use a modern Windows computer or Mac. You'll need the following tools as well, but it's completely up to you to choose the tool you like:
- An FTP client, for instance, Filezilla.
- Photo editing software for your images. Photoshop is often used, but expensive. Actually any editing tool that you know how to use should be able to deliver good results.
- A text editor, such as Notepad++ (Windows) or Coda 2 (Mac).
Who this book is for
If you are a nontechnical person and are discouraged by the complexity of this powerful e-commerce application, this book is ideal for you. This book would also suit someone with e-commerce knowledge, but requires a guide to getting started with Magento.
Conventions
In this book, you will find several headings appearing frequently.
To give clear instructions of how to complete a procedure or task, we use:
Time for action – heading
- Action 1
- Action 2
- Action 3
Instructions often need some extra explanation so that they make sense, so they are followed with:
What just happened?
This heading explains the working of tasks or instructions that you have just completed.
You will also find some other learning aids in the book, including:
Pop quiz – heading
These are short multiple-choice questions intended to help you test your own understanding.
Have a go hero – heading
These practical challenges give you ideas for experimenting with what you have learned.
You will also find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "On the Select Destination Location screen, click on Next to accept the default destination."
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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