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Book Description

As a non-techie you might be a bit daunted at the thought of taking on an e-commerce system as powerful as Magento. But don’t be – our guide makes it all so accessible with its user-friendly, absolute-beginner approach.

  • Install, configure, and manage your own e-commerce store
  • Extend and customize your store to reflect your brand and personality
  • Handle tax, shipping, and custom orders

In Detail

Magento is one of the most powerful, flexible, and customizable e-commerce systems. It offers you the ability to create and manage a profitable 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.

Magento Beginner’s Guide - Second Edition provides 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.

Magento Beginner’s Guide - Second Edition guides you through the installation, configuration, populating your store with products, accepting payments, maintaining relationships with your customers, and fulfilling orders.

You will start with installing Magento on a hosting provider or on your local machine for testing purposes. From there, you will learn everything Magento has to offer, from working with products to adding additional functions.

After installing Magento, you’ll learn how to set up your first store and add multiple stores in the same environment. One of Magento’s strengths, the product catalogue, will also be discussed thoroughly. From there we’ll continue to set up payment and shipping methods. You’ll learn to use themes to give your store the look and feel you need. As well as that, you’ll start using extensions to expand Magento’s functionality and you’ll learn to process your first orders.

You will learn to customize the default Magento storefront so that it becomes your personalized store and also about Magento's directory structure and find out where some of the elements of a store are customized. 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 complete, working online store.

Table of Contents

  1. Magento Beginner's Guide - Second Edition
    1. Table of Contents
    2. Magento Beginner's Guide - Second Edition
    3. Credits
    4. About the Authors
    5. About the Reviewers
    6. www.PacktPub.com
      1. Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more
        1. Why Subscribe?
        2. Free Access for Packt account holders
    7. Preface
      1. Introducing Magento
        1. The history of Magento
        2. Magento versions
          1. Enterprise Edition
          2. Magento Go
        3. Why choose Magento?
          1. Magento pros
          2. Magento cons
      2. What this book covers
      3. What you need for this book
      4. Who this book is for
      5. Conventions
      6. Time for action – heading
        1. What just happened?
        2. Pop quiz – heading
        3. Have a go hero – heading
      7. Reader feedback
      8. Customer support
        1. Downloading the example code
        2. Errata
        3. Piracy
        4. Questions
    8. 1. Installation
      1. Installing Magento locally
      2. Requirements
      3. Time for action – installing Magento on a Windows machine
        1. What just happened?
      4. I'm on Mac; what should I do?
      5. Installing Magento at a hosting service
      6. How to choose a Magento hosting provider
      7. Installatron
      8. Time for action – installing Magento using Installatron
        1. How to test the minimum requirements
      9. What is SSL and do I need it?
      10. Summary
    9. 2. General Configuration
      1. The installation is complete; what's next?
        1. The Magento Dashboard
        2. Have a go hero – changing the admin URL
          1. Setting up your store
      2. Managing Stores
        1. General settings
        2. Search engine optimization
        3. What just happened?
      3. Setting up taxes
        1. General taxation settings
        2. Product Tax Classes
        3. Customer Tax Classes
        4. Customer groups
        5. Managing tax zones and rates
        6. Managing tax rules
      4. EU business to business VAT
      5. Time for action – using VAT validation
      6. Summary
    10. 3. Categories and Attributes
      1. What you need to know
        1. An example category structure
      2. Catalog defaults
      3. Time for action – catalog settings
      4. Working with attributes
      5. Time for action – creating your own attribute
      6. Using attribute sets
      7. Time for action – creating your attribute set
      8. Using categories
      9. Time for action – creating your first category
      10. Summary
    11. 4. Simple Products
      1. Adding a Simple Product
        1. Step 1 – creating a product and assigning an attribute set
        2. Step 2 – the General tab
      2. Time for action – filling the General tab
        1. Step 3 – the Prices tab
      3. Time for action – filling the Prices tab
        1. Step 4 – the Meta Information tab
      4. Time for action – filling the Meta Information tab
        1. Step 5 – the Images tab
      5. Time for action – filling the Images tab
        1. What just happened?
        2. Step 6 – the Custom tab
      6. Time for action – filling the Custom tab
        1. Step 7 – the Inventory tab
      7. Time for action – filling the Inventory tab
        1. Step 8 – the Categories tab
      8. Time for action – filling the Categories tab
        1. What just happened?
      9. Related products, up-selling, and cross-selling
        1. Adding related products in Magento
      10. Time for action – adding related products
      11. Summary
    12. 5. Beyond Adding Simple Products
      1. Virtual products and Downloadable products
        1. Adding a Virtual product
      2. Time for action – adding a Downloadable product
        1. What just happened?
      3. Grouped products
      4. Time for action – adding a Grouped product
      5. Configurable products
      6. Time for action – creating a Configurable product
        1. Simple products don't already exist
        2. Simple products already exist
        3. What just happened?
      7. Bundle products
      8. Time for action – creating a Bundle product
        1. What just happened?
      9. Summary
    13. 6. Customer Relationships
      1. Setting up guest checkout
      2. Newsletters
      3. Configuring contact options
      4. Configuring customer options
        1. Customer accounts on the frontend
      5. Time for action – registering for an account
        1. What just happened?
      6. Customer accounts in the backend
      7. Time for action – adding a customer
        1. What just happened?
          1. Managing an existing customer
        2. Pop Quiz: default address
      8. Summary
    14. 7. Accepting Payments
      1. Common payment methods
      2. Setting up Magento's default payment methods
        1. Setting up PayPal Payments Standard
      3. Time for action – starting to sell through PayPal
        1. Pop quiz – the bare minimum for PayPal Payments Standard
        2. Setting up saved credit cards
        3. Setting up checks / money orders
        4. Have a go hero – activating check / money order
        5. Setting up for a bank transfer
        6. Setting up cash on delivery
        7. Setting up purchase orders
      4. Working with payment service providers
        1. Selecting the right gateway
        2. Setting up a payment service provider – an example
      5. Time for action – installing and configuring a PSP extension
        1. What just happened?
      6. Summary
    15. 8. Configuring Shipping
      1. Logistics in Magento
      2. Shipping processes and shipping arrangements
      3. Default shipping methods in Magento
        1. Configuring free shipping
        2. Configuring Flat Rate shipping
        3. Table Rate shipping
      4. Time for action – configuring Table Rate shipping
        1. What just happened?
        2. Have a go hero – add shipping costs for different countries
        3. Pop quiz – vital conditions for Table Rates
      5. Other ways of calculating shipping costs
      6. Presentation of shipping methods in your store
      7. Magento's blind spots
        1. Purchasing
        2. Warehousing
        3. Returns processing
      8. Summary
    16. 9. Customizing Your Store's Appearance
      1. Magento themes
      2. Your home page, CMS pages, and static blocks
      3. Changing transactional e-mails
        1. Have a go hero – changing the logo used in transactional e-mails
      4. Time for action – changing the text inside transactional e-mails
        1. What just happened?
      5. Choosing between a pre-made and a custom-made theme
        1. What to watch out for with premade themes
        2. What to watch out for with custom-made themes
      6. A combination
      7. Suppliers for premade themes
        1. Partners for Magento themes
      8. Installing a theme
        1. Have a go hero – installing a free premade theme
        2. Have a go hero – installing a paid theme
        3. Have a go hero – configuring a theme
      9. Making changes to your theme
        1. Kinds of changes
          1. Small changes
          2. Medium changes
          3. Big changes
      10. Time for action – changing a heading to normal text
      11. Time for action – changing the color of a heading
      12. Time for action – removing a block from the right column
        1. What just happened?
      13. Summary
    17. 10. Fulfilling Orders
      1. Sales orders on the frontend
      2. Time for action – creating a first sales order
      3. Managing sales orders on the backend
      4. Time for action – opening and processing an order
        1. What just happened?
        2. Some tips to handle your orders more efficiently
      5. Creating sales orders on the backend
      6. Time for action – creating a manual Sales Order
      7. Returns and Credit Memos
      8. Time for action – creating a Credit Memo
        1. But what about my return process?
        2. What if I need to handle these processes out of Magento?
      9. Summary
    18. 11. Maintaining and Administrating Your Store
      1. Managing your store
      2. Overview of your Magento installation
        1. Have a go hero – testing your store
      3. Go-live checklist configuration settings
        1. General settings
        2. Web settings
        3. HTML Head
        4. Placeholder images
        5. Contact information and e-mail addresses
        6. Tax rates
        7. Payment methods and shipping methods
        8. Currency
        9. Transactional e-mails – password text
        10. Admin URL
        11. 404 (page not found)
        12. Stock
        13. Google Analytics
        14. Caching
        15. Index Management
        16. Licenses
        17. Daily tasks / cron jobs
        18. Log cleaning
        19. Database backups
        20. Product meta information
        21. Default images in columns
        22. Escalations
      4. Further development of your website
      5. Time for action – planning for the future
        1. Have a go hero – constructing a list based on your current ideas
      6. Working with partners
        1. A Magento theme
        2. Have a go hero – wireframe your ideal product detail page
        3. Functionality
      7. Time for action – structuring development partnerships
        1. Pop quiz – handling partner relations
        2. General guidelines
      8. Modifying Magento
      9. Cache
      10. Upgrading Magento
      11. Summary
    19. A. Pop Quiz Answers
      1. Chapter 6, Customer Relationship
        1. Pop quiz – default address
      2. Chapter 7, Accepting Payments
        1. Pop quiz – the bare minimum for PayPal Payments Standard
      3. Chapter 8, Configuring Shipping
        1. Pop quiz – vital conditions for Table Rates
      4. Chapter 11, Maintaining and Administrating Your Store
        1. Pop quiz – handling partner relations
    20. Index