Magento Beginner's Guide

ISBN-10: 1847195946

ISBN-13: 9781847195944

Magento is the world's most evolved e-commerce solution. It runs on the Apache/MySQL/PHP platform. From one installation, you can control multiple storefronts, all sharing customer and product information. Magento's templates and themes enable you to customize the look and feel of your store, even optimizing it for mobile phones. Extensions enable you to connect Magento to a large number of payment gateways and shipping services. Modular code enables you to upgrade your Magento installation while retaining your customizations. Support is provided free by an active open source community and by subscription to Varien, the company behind Magento.Magento is one of the most exciting, flexible, and customizable e-commerce systems. It offers you an extensive suite of powerful tools for creating and managing an online store. As your online store grows, you can be sure that this robust e-commerce system can handle your needs. However, getting started with Magento can be difficult without the right guidance.This book provides that guidance in the form of a step-by-step approach to building a simple, effective online store. The book covers the key features of Magento that will help you get your store up and running. It guides you through installation, configuration, populating your store with products, accepting payments, maintaining relationships with your customers, and fulfilling orders.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 from one step.You will learn to customize the default Magento storefront so that it becomes yourstore and also about Magento's directory structure and where some of the elements of a store are customized. This experience will help you if you decide to go beyond this book and install new themes or create your own themes.As you work your way through each chapter, your store will grow in scope and sophistication. By the time you finish this book, you should have a basic but complete, working online store.

Chapter 1: IntroductionWhat you can do with Magento. A walk-through of a store using the features we will cover.Chapter 2: InstallationHow to install Magento on a low-cost hosting service.Chapter 3: Categories and attributesCreating categories and attributes, a necessary step before you can build your catalog of products.Chapter 4: TaxesConfigure tax rates and rules, to automatically apply the correct sales tax based upon the type of product and the purchaser's location.Chapter 5: Adding simple productsAdd products to your store. Include detailed descriptions, images, and inventory information.Chapter 6: Minimum customization of your store's appearanceCustomize the default storefront to make it your own.Chapter 7: Beyond simple productsPresent related products to your shoppers. Offer products for sale in sets. Give your customers options such as size, color, manufacturer, and more.Chapter 8: Customer relationshipsManaging customer accounts. Configuring store contact options.Chapter 9: Accepting paymentConfiguring Magento's default payment options, such as Paypal, credit cards, check/money order, and purchase orders.Chapter 10: Configuring shippingOffer customers a variety of shipping options. Connect to shippers such as UPS, FedEx, and USPS. Create your own, customized shipping rates.Chapter 11: Fulfilling an OrderA walk-through of fulfilling an order. Discover your options for handling order fulfillment by observing the lifecycle of an order in Magento.Appendix: Abbreviated step-by-step directionsThe step-by-step directions in the chapters containmany detailed explanations of why to choose various options, and the effect they have on your store and the customer's experience. This appendix gathers the directions in one place, and eliminates the explanations so you get just the steps you need