Magento

Customize the appearance of your Magento 1.4 e-commerce store with Magento's powerful theming engine

• Install and configure Magento 1.4 and learn the fundamental principles behind Magento themes
• Customize the appearance of your Magento 1.4 e-commerce store with Magento's powerful theming engine by changing Magento templates, skin files and layout files
• Change the basics of your Magento theme from the logo of your store to the color scheme of your theme
• Integrate popular social media aspects such as Twitter and Facebook into your Magento store

In Detail

Magento is a popular open source e-commerce project. Whilst it comes with a number of default themes to change the look and feel of your store, many people, both new to Magento and old hands, struggle with even the more basic aspects of customizing Magento themes. When you read this book you'll learn how to change the basics of your Magento theme, create a new custom theme and much more.

The book is a step-by-step guide to theming Magento, aimed at readers with little technical expertise. The first chapters introduce Magento 1.4 and Magento themes, covering Magento theme hierarchy and the key components of a Magento theme: templates, skins, layout, and locales. Later chapters delve into changing the basics of your Magento store, including methods for changing the logo of your store, adding a custom favicon (favorites icon) and integrating Twitter and Facebook into your store. More advanced topics include customizing Magento templates and XML layout files to alter a theme to your own needs and creating a custom print stylesheet.

In short, the book provides guides to common aspects of theming and customizing Magento 1.4 and equally useful step-by-step walkthroughs of integrating more unusual items in to your Magento store.

A practical guide to customizing and creating Magento 1.4 themes

What you will learn from this book

• Install and configure Magento 1.4
• Customize the appearance of your Magento 1.4 e-commerce store with Magento's powerful theming engine
• Learn the fundamental principles behind Magento themes
• Change Magento templates, skin files, and layout files to achieve your theming goals
• Change the basics of your Magento theme, from the logo of your store to the color scheme of your theme
• Customize product view pages in your store to maximize customer interest
• Create a new Magento theme using the Base theme as a beginning
• Using the @font-face declaration in Magento themes
• Integrate popular social media aspects such as Twitter and Facebook in to your Magento store
• Customize templates for e-mail sent to your store's customers
• Avoid common pitfalls with Magento
• Style your store for printing more effectively

Approach

The book is written in an informal tone with clear, step-by-step guides through the major tasks in the book.

Who this book is written for

This book is aimed at web designers and web developers who are not familiar with Magento at all, and at Magento designers and developers who are more familiar with Magento 1.3 than Magento 1.4. The book assumes knowledge of HTML and CSS and an awareness, but not in-depth knowledge of, PHP syntax.

Customize the appearance of your Magento 1.4 e-commerce store with Magento's powerful theming engine

• Install and configure Magento 1.4 and learn the fundamental principles behind Magento themes
• Customize the appearance of your Magento 1.4 e-commerce store with Magento's powerful theming engine by changing Magento templates, skin files and layout files
• Change the basics of your Magento theme from the logo of your store to the color scheme of your theme
• Integrate popular social media aspects such as Twitter and Facebook into your Magento store

In Detail

Magento is a popular open source e-commerce project. Whilst it comes with a number of default themes to change the look and feel of your store, many people, both new to Magento and old hands, struggle with even the more basic aspects of customizing Magento themes. When you read this book you'll learn how to change the basics of your Magento theme, create a new custom theme and much more.

The book is a step-by-step guide to theming Magento, aimed at readers with little technical expertise. The first chapters introduce Magento 1.4 and Magento themes, covering Magento theme hierarchy and the key components of a Magento theme: templates, skins, layout, and locales. Later chapters delve into changing the basics of your Magento store, including methods for changing the logo of your store, adding a custom favicon (favorites icon) and integrating Twitter and Facebook into your store. More advanced topics include customizing Magento templates and XML layout files to alter a theme to your own needs and creating a custom print stylesheet.

In short, the book provides guides to common aspects of theming and customizing Magento 1.4 and equally useful step-by-step walkthroughs of integrating more unusual items in to your Magento store.

A practical guide to customizing and creating Magento 1.4 themes

What you will learn from this book

• Install and configure Magento 1.4
• Customize the appearance of your Magento 1.4 e-commerce store with Magento's powerful theming engine
• Learn the fundamental principles behind Magento themes
• Change Magento templates, skin files, and layout files to achieve your theming goals
• Change the basics of your Magento theme, from the logo of your store to the color scheme of your theme
• Customize product view pages in your store to maximize customer interest
• Create a new Magento theme using the Base theme as a beginning
• Using the @font-face declaration in Magento themes
• Integrate popular social media aspects such as Twitter and Facebook in to your Magento store
• Customize templates for e-mail sent to your store's customers
• Avoid common pitfalls with Magento
• Style your store for printing more effectively

Approach

The book is written in an informal tone with clear, step-by-step guides through the major tasks in the book.

Who this book is written for

This book is aimed at web designers and web developers who are not familiar with Magento at all, and at Magento designers and developers who are more familiar with Magento 1.3 than Magento 1.4. The book assumes knowledge of HTML and CSS and an awareness, but not in-depth knowledge of, PHP syntax.

Solve real-world Magento sales problems with a collection of simple but effective recipes

• Build a professional Magento sales web site, with the help of easy-to-follow steps and ample screenshots, to solve real-world business needs and requirements
• Develop your web site by using your creativity and exploiting the sales techniques that suit your needs
• Provide visitors with attractive and innovative features to make your site sell
• Part of Packt's Cookbook series: Each recipe is a carefully organized sequence of instructions to complete the task as efficiently as possible.

In Detail

Magento is a feature-rich, professional open source e-commerce solution that offers users complete flexibility and control over the look, content, and functionality of their online store. Although Magento provides users with the power to create dynamic e-commerce sites, it can be challenging to get beyond the basics and create sites that are tailored to your unique business needs.

This book gives you a hands-on experience on Magento, helping you increase your revenue by implementing proven sales tactics on your Magento site.

After creating an online store with Magento, you will follow a defined series of steps to boost revenues on your site. By following straightforward instructions you can implement some proven e-commerce sales techniques. You will learn to customize the default Magento storefront so that it becomes your store and also learn about Magento's directory structure and 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 basic, but complete working online store.

What you will learn from this book

• Install and upgrade Magento to get ready for development
• Get familiar with the architecture and internal structure of Magento to get the base system up and running
• Learn about the best modules available and what they can do for you out of the box
• Build a Shipping module for your Magento store to give users options for receiving their items once they have paid for them
• Create a payment method for Magento and the various aspects that go together to complete the payment process
• Speed up your module creation process using the Module Creator script
• Build a basic brand-management module for Magento to manage brands and display their details
• Integrate your favorite CMS into Magento including a walkthrough of integrating Wordpress into Magento
• Create, update, delete, and retrieve customer data from within Magento by implementing the customer API
• Integrate Magento data into your existing external web application or script using the Magento Core API
• Import/export files to retrieving information from and store it to external sources using Excel Spreadsheet or CSV data

Approach

This book contains recipes that define common problems and provide suggested solutions. This is not a book to read from cover-to-cover, it is a hands-on solutions book that takes a practical approach to recipes, providing code samples that can easily be extracted and modified to suit the needs of the reader. Each recipe is presented as a separate entity and prior reading of other recipes is not required. Chapters provide categorization of recipes and give an introduction to the subject area with reference to the recipes contained within.

Who this book is written for

If you are a Magento store owner or store designer who wants to boost sales, then this book is for you

Customize the appearance of your Magento e-commerce store with Magento's powerful theming engine

• Give your Magento stores a unique branded look and feel by creating your own Magento themes
• Use design techniques to reinforce your brand message and increase sales
• Customise your Magento theme's look, feel, layout, and features
• Promote and improve your Magento store with the use of social media such as Twitter, social bookmarks, and so on
• Ideas and examples for defining a good print stylesheet
• Packed with essential hints and tips for effective Magento web design

In Detail

Magento is the hottest and most powerful e-commerce software around and it has gained massive popularity in a short period. By using Magento's powerful theming engine, you can control the look, content, and functionality, and easily launch a flexible e-commerce web site. However, because of its powerful features, developing Magento themes is easier said than done.

Magento 1.3 Theme Design covers everything you need to build effective, attractive themes for your Magento store. You will learn how the theming system works, how to build your own look on top of the Magento Blank Theme, how to give different looks to different parts of your store, and much more.

We start off by introducing you to Magento and its basic themes and then take you through the benefits of changing your store's theme. We then move on to the actual Magento theme design, where you will learn the basics, such as changing the logo, color scheme, and so on. Next, we take a look at more advance tasks where you will learn theme layouts. You will then prepare a Magento theme from scratch and also take a look at Magento templates and layouts. You will also learn how to promote and improve your Magento store with the use of social media such as Twitter, social bookmarks, and so on and how to define a good print style. Finally, you will learn Magento Theme Deployment in detail.

What you will learn from this book?

• Create a custom theme that gives a unique branded look and feel to your Magento stores
• Edit an existing Magento theme to satisfy your business needs
• Give different looks to different parts of your store
• Tricks and tips for making your Magento theme design easier
• Style your store ready for printing by defining a good print layout
• Share your Magento theme with others in the community through Magento Connect extensions
• Embed social media tools to promote and improve your Magento store
• Deploy your new Magento theme to your store
• Create and use non-default Magento Themes
• Discover the basis of Magento themes: templates, skins, and layout

Approach

Magento 1.3 Theme Design is a step-by-step guide to creating custom themes for Magento. The author's experience in Magento theming enables him to design a book that lessens the steep learning curve associated with Magento theming. The author uses code examples and ideas that facilitate learning and make Magento theme development a great learning experience.

Who this book is written for?

Magento 1.3 Theme Design is written for those who are familiar with Magento and know the Magento basics and now want to customize the look and feel. The book assumes familiarity with CSS and (X)HTML. The book is also aimed at store owners who want to customize their e-commerce store and web designers who want to sell their custom-made Magento themes. Seasoned theme designers will find very useful tips and hints in this book.

This book takes a comprehensive look at Magento, a robust and flexible e-commerce platform built on the Zend framework. With over 750,000 downloads, Magento is the fastest growing open source e-commerce solution. This book walks you through all of the steps necessary to build a fully functional Magento-based web site. It also includes information on managing products, customers, and orders. This book is directed at web site designers and developers, but will also be extremely useful for business owners who have web sites built on the Magento platform.

• Introduces you to Magento, the fastest-growing open source e-commerce platform
• Demonstrates how to configure and use Magento
• Covers how to customize Magento and develop extensions for the Magento platform

What you’ll learn

• How to install and set up a Magento based e-commerce web site
• How to effectively manage products, customers, and orders
• How to sell products through Magento
• How to design a custom Magento web site
• How to add content to your Magento web site
• How to create your own Magento extensions

Who is this book for?

Current and prospective web site designers and web developers; small business owners who want an online presence

Design, develop, and deploy feature-rich Magento online stores with PHP coding

• Extend and customize the Magento e-commerce system using PHP code
• Set up your own data profile to import or export data in Magento
• Build applications that interface with the customer, product, and order data using Magento's Core API
• Packed with examples for effective Magento Development

In Detail

Magento is the most powerful e-commerce solution around and has gained popularity in a short period of time. You can create and manage online stores using the extensive suite of powerful tools it offers. However, because of its powerful features, developing with Magento can be easier said than done.

This book will show you how to develop better and do more with the Magento. You will be able to extend and customize modules for the Magento system without editing the core system code. It will show you how to create both basic and advanced functionality modules for your store and help you turn your ideas for extending Magento into reality by building modules from scratch.

This book starts by walking you through the server requirements for installing Magento making sure Magneto's installation and upgrade process can fit into your workflow and suit your hosting environment setup. Then it runs through the architecture behind Magento's system, covering the core file structure and how the template system works. You'll also learn how to build a basic shipping module, payment module, and a brand management module for Magento. As you delve deeper into the book you will learn how to integrate your favorite CMS into Magento for data portability.

By the end of the book you will be able to take your basic knowledge of Magento and turn it into something advanced that will help you develop turn your ideas for extending Magento into reality.

What you will learn from this book

• Install and upgrade Magento to get ready for development
• Get familiar with the architecture and internal structure of Magento
• Learn about the best modules available and what they can do for you out of the box
• Build a Shipping module for your Magento store to give users options for receiving their items once they have paid for them
• Create a payment method for Magento and the various aspects that go together to complete the payment process
• Speed up your module creation process using the Module Creator script
• Build a basic brand-management module for Magento to manage brands and display their details
• Integrate your favorite CMS into Magento including a walkthrough of integrating Wordpress into Magento
• Create, update, delete, and retrieve customer data from within Magento by implementing the customer API
• Integrate Magento data into an existing external web application or script using the Magento Core API
• Import/export files to retrieve and store information from and to external sources using Excel Spreadsheet or CSV data

Chapter 1: Magento: Developer's Guide

Chapter 2: Installing/Upgrading Magento and Preparing for Development

Chapter 3: Magento's Architecture

Chapter 4: Building a Shipping Module for Magento

Chapter 5: Building a Payment Method for Magento

Chapter 6: Basic Modules to Extend Magento's Functionality

Chapter 7: Fully Featured Module with Administration Panel

Chapter 8: Integration of a Third-Party CMS

Chapter 9: Magento's Core API

Chapter 10: Importing and Exporting Data

Chapter 11: Appendix A - Resources for Further Learning

Approach

This book is a practical tutorial, filled with examples, aimed at people with no experience of programming web sites using the Magento system.

Who this book is written for

If you are a PHP developer who wants to understand the architecture of Magento, learn how to extend the system with PHP code, add new features, and integrate Magento with a third-party CMS, this book is for you.

You are expected to be a confident PHP 5 developer. No experience of Magento development is expected, although you should be familiar with the operation of Magento. No experience of the Zend framework is expected.

Create a dynamic, fully featured, online store with the most powerful open source e-commerce software

• Step-by-step guide to building your own online store
• Focuses on the key features of Magento that you must know to get your store up and running
• Customize the store's appearance to make it uniquely yours
• Clearly illustrated with screenshots and a working example

In Detail

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 your store 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.

What you will learn from this book?

• Install and configure Magento and add products to your online catalog
• Create categories and attributes to build your catalog of products
• Enhance your products with descriptions, images, and inventory information
• Create product categories to help your customers navigate your online store
• Automatically apply sales tax rules to different shipping addresses and different types of products
• Present and sell products in groups and sets
• Display products related to the one that is being viewed by a customer
• Offer your customer choices for a product's size, color, or other attribute and give discounts based on quantities
• Accept payments using Paypal, credit cards, and checks/money orders and offer a variety of shipping options
• Create your own, customized shipping rates and connect to shippers such as UPS, FedEx, and USPS

Approach

This book will provide you with step-by-step instructions for installing, configuring, and using Magento to run your own e-commerce site. We will set up an example store in the book with enough information to adapt the instructions according to your needs.

Who this book is written for?

This book is for anyone who wants to create an online store using Magento. If you are a non-technical person and are discouraged by the complexity of this powerful e-commerce application, this book is ideal for you.