Magento is the next generation of eCommerce! It is incredibly well architectured, fully flexible, scalable, and fun to work with. If you've ever thought about creating an online shop, Magento is your choice! Today we are going to install it locally with XAMPP Lite and review the essentials.
Step 1 - What's Magento?
"Magento is a feature-rich, professional open-source eCommerce solution that offers merchants complete flexibility and control over the look, content, and functionality of their online store. Magento’s intuitive administration interface contains powerful marketing, search engine optimization and catalog-management tools to give merchants the power to create sites that are tailored to their unique business needs. Designed to be completely scalable and backed by an extensive support network, Magento offers companies the ultimate eCommerce solution."
That's Magento in their own words. Very cool about Magento is the concept behind it. Due to its high OOP style, you can easily integrate it with your own solutions.
Step 2 - Downloading Magento
First of all we are going to download Magento. Browse to magentoecommerce.com/download and select your preferred format of Magento. You can choose between a smaller "Downloader" version which will get the files during the installation process and a "Full Release" which already contains all files. Take the sample data as well since they are helpful for getting used to Magento
Step 3 - Downloading XAMPP Lite
XAMPP Lite is a Take-Run-Delete-Forget-it package which doesn't require an installation. XAMPP Lite contains Apache, MySQL 5.1, PHP 5.2, phpMyAdmin 3.1 and much more. It is an extra small edition of its big brother XAMPP. It brings (almost) everything we need for Magento. You can neither take the zip file or the selfextrackting zip archive: http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html#646
After you are done downloading, extract XAMPP Lite to your HD like so X:/xampplite (where X is the letter of your partition).
Step 4 - Setup XAMPP Lite
Magento makes high demands on the servers hardware and software. That's my we need to adjust XAMPP Lite a bit. Some extensions must be loaded in additionally. Within the two files D:\xampplite\apache\bin\php.ini and D:\xampplite\php\php.ini we need to uncomment 4 lines of code
In both files search for
- ;extension=php_curl.dll
- ;extension=php_mcrypt.dll
- ;extension=php_mcrypt_filter.dll
- ;extension=php_mhash.dll
...and remove the semicolon to uncomment them like so:
- extension=php_curl.dll
- extension=php_mcrypt.dll
- extension=php_mcrypt_filter.dll
- extension=php_mhash.dll
Step 5 - Replace libmysql.dll
In order to get Magento working we need to replace the libmysql by a newer version. Simply download http://windows.php.net/downloads/snaps/php-5.2-win32-VC6-x86-latest.zip and copy the included libmysql.dll to the folders D:\xampplite\apache\bin\ and D:\xampplite\php\.
Step 6 - Start XAMPP Lite
Click on D:\xampplite\xampp-control.exe to start the control panel. Within that panel you can launch the Apache server and the MySql server.
Step 7 - Creating new DB
Browse to 127.0.0.1/phpmyadmin to open phpMyAdmin. Choose the name of the database ('magento' is a good choice ;-) and click 'create'.
Step 8 - Installing sample data
Magento's sample data have to be installed before installing Magento itself. Otherwise there will be an error.
Got to the tap 'import' and choose magento_sample_data_for_1.2.0.sql which you downloaded in Step 2.
Then click ok to execute the import. This will take a while (at least 20 seconds). So please be patient and do not interrupt that process. The result should look like this:
Step 9 - Installing Magento
First extract magento-1.3.0.tar.bz2 that you downloaded in Step 2 to your htdocs folder: D:\xampplite\htdocs\magento\. Make sure all files are in that folder, including the index.php. Your directory structure should look like this:
Then open localhost/magento in your browser. Magento will now start the installation wizard. First you will need to accept the license.
Choose your Localization and your currency and go on. Under 'Configuration' you can leave every thing as it is. In a productive Environment you would need to enter the admission data you got from your hosting company.
In the next step you need to create your admin account. Enter your personal data and your login information. Your can leave the field for 'Encryption Key' blank.
After you confirmed your Login Information with 'next' you finally finished the installation.
Step 10 - Make yourself familiar with Magento's frontend
When you click on 'Go to Frontend', it will redirect you to localhost/magento/. Now you can discover the store with its sample data, add products to cart or try Magento's famous one-page-checkout. Just play a bit with your fresh Magento Store.
Step 11 - The Admin Backend
When going to Magento's administrative user interface, the backend, make sure to use 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost. Some browser do not save cookie information when there isn't a dot in the domain. Magento needs cookie information to identify you as approved to the backend.
Visit http://127.0.0.1/magento/admin/ to login. Once you entered your Account Information you'll be redirected to the Dashboard.
Step 12 - Intro to Themes
You can install a theme through a platform called "Magento Connect". A theme in Magento is responsible for the visual output.
Magento has a very powerful theme concept. For instance, you can use a default theme which comes with Magento and a new one of your own side by side. That new individual theme only contains files which differ from the default theme.
If you simply want to move the mini cart from the left sidebar to the right sidebar you just copy the according file from "default" to your new theme directory and adjust some code. Magento first loads all files from your private theme and then falls back to the next theme lower in hierarchy (in this case "default") and requires all missing files from that theme.
Doing so, Magento conserves the ability to be upgraded. With every Upgrade pushed out by the Magento Team, files in your default theme are getting overwritten. Your adjusted files are protected this way.
Step 13 - Where to begin with themes?
Magento themes are split into two directories. When working with themes, these two directories will remain your base starting point. The files are separated into "web accessible" (such as image and Javascripts) and those that can be hidden from it for security reasons.
- Directory 1: app/design/frontend/default/default/ — This directory contains the layout, translation (locale) and template materials.
- Directory 2: skin/frontend/default/default/ — This directory contains the images, CSS and block-specific Javascripts.
Step 14 - Interface and theme
An interface is a collection of themes. Let’s have a look at the two directories as they represent the structure of interfaces and themes:
- Directory 1: app/design/frontend/default/default/
- Directory 2: skin/frontend/default/default/
In both cases, default indicates the interface name, and default indicates the theme name. So if you were working on a theme called “my_theme” in an interface called “my_interface”, you would be working in the ‘app/design/frontend/my_interface/my_theme/’ directory.
Step 15 - What are Blocks?
In Magento we work with structural blocks and content blocks. Structural blocks represent the basic structure of a page. Usually we have structural blocks like header, left sidebar, middle content, right sidebar and footer. We can assign content blocks like category list, navigation, search bar, callout etc. to a certain structural block.
Step 16 - Intro to Layout
Content blocks are assigned to structural blocks with the help of layout. Layout is build with XML files and can be found under app/design/frontend/default/default/layout. This way you can reuse earlier created templates, such as the mini cart module on the sidebar, on different pages by simply calling them within a layout xml file.
Step 17 - Roundup
You learned how to setup Magento and the basics of Magento's design terminologies. This will help you diving into that wonderful Open Source platform. To dive deeper into Magento, I recommend the following resources - which cover the fundamentals.
Main Resources
- http://www.magentocommerce.com
- http://www.magentocommerce.com/design_guide
- http://inchoo.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/designers_guide_to_magento.pdf
- http://www.magentocommerce.com/media/screencasts
- http://www.magentocommerce.com/media/tour
Books
- http://www.magentocommerce.com
- http://www.magentocommerce.com/design_guide
- http://inchoo.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/designers_guide_to_magento.pdf
- http://www.magentocommerce.com/media/screencasts
- http://www.magentocommerce.com/media/tour
Books
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User Comments
( ADD YOURS )Whatever April 8th
Eh, why would anyone want to use an open source ecommerce system with optional commercial support,
when there are several existing, well established open source ecommerce packages – With -tons- of documentation and forum posts online.
I suggest that anyone who is reading this, go check out oscommerce or ZenCart.
Ciao vo.
( )w1sh April 8th
I suggest Magento has a “ton” of better features than OScommerce or ZenCart.
Magento is for making highly customizable, large (or small) scale eCommerce sites.
I’m incredibly glad someone is beginning to explain this well! Please, more Magento!
( )Jake April 9th
Magento has the features people have come to expect from commerce sites, features that lack in other open source software, like the ability to purchase on site without registering, and this IS proven to increase sales.
Magento has the power that alot of very expensive commercial software solutions have, i’m hoping your comment is through sheer ignorance. Commercial support is great, but it isn’t needed. The forum is very helpful, the magento documentation is patchy, and a little out of date, but once you grasp the templating system, which by the way, is what the w3c recommended nearly a decade ago, that no one actually bothered to conform to.
Magento gives you the capability and flexibility to build commerce sites on the scale of major retail sites, it’s dripping with features that other commerce solutions should have put in years ago. If anything it’s a pioneer in the open source market.
Jonathan April 9th
You can not be serious…?! The two packages you mention are about as legacy as you can get!
( )Yin Djuy April 9th
I recommend you to keep away from OS Commerce and ZenCart, they have very bad security and has not been updated for a while.
If you don’t like Magento, check out Ubercart! (requires Drupal).
Magento is one of my favorite ecommerce systems, however I do understand why so many people don’t like it. It’s mainly because its so damn heavy on the system. As a webdesigner I know very well how frustrating it can be working on Magento before you finally go live on a server that can handle Magento. Well, maybe it will change some day.
( )spirytus August 26th
zencart and even more so oscommerce is to magento looks like 84 honda civic to merc c classe (at least). its beyond me how anyone could decide to use zencart over magento
( )Joe April 8th
I know someone that is using this system. It looks very simple to use and hopefully has a decent templating system.
( )Enes April 17th
I tell you: It’s totally NOT simple to use
But if you can use it, it’s really good!
( )mike April 8th
great intro! hopefully will be the first of many..
( )Paris Vega April 8th
I agree… It would be cool to see a series on Magento. I’ve been wanting to try it out since I came across it a few months back. Although, I’m planning on using the Wordpress plugin WP E-Commerce for an upcoming project. Anybody have an opinion on how Magento or WP E-Commerce compares?
( )Patternhead April 8th
Thanks, some good stuff for newbies.
Hope to see some more advanced stuff soon.
( )choise April 8th
yes, only helpfull for newbs.
( )i would also like some advanced magento stuff.
Rex Stevens April 8th
Yeah, i would really love to see more “how to” for making themes, even as a plus tutorial, something like the wordpress series, maybe a magento “build a theme from scratch” type tutorial. Just my 2 cents
( )Michael Thompson April 8th
Yes, please. I don’t need to know how to get the thing running, I would like some hand-holding setting up themes, interfaces and layouts — it’s a slightly different paradigm with Magento.
Andy April 8th
Magento is not fun to work with – in my experience it’s a bloody nightmare. It’s incredibly resource heavy and of no use to anyone hosting on a regular shared hosting or VPS.
( )Jake April 9th
You can run it fine on vps or ded. (burstable proffered) but you can’t get away with it on shared. But if your serious about the shop, spending an extra £10-£15 is nothing, compared to the features it has, most importantly the ability to purchase without registering, which tbh is vital for good sales.
But yeah, magento is the most horrible thing to work with initially, until you get used to the whole logic of the system, and the back-end doesn’t bode well for non-tech savvy users.
( )Jason September 13th
Magento does sort of seem like a “bloody nightmare” at first… but as you dive into a bit, you start to appreciate its genius… their seemingly confusing ways seem to make sense after awhile.
( )Haris April 8th
Mike Smullin has covered how to learn to design and code themes for Magento on his blog. It is a wonderful resource for Magento.
http://www.mikesmullin.com/development/learning-to-design-and-code-for-magento-themes/
I hope it helps.
( )Fred Soler April 8th
Hi, that’s a good post. Hope you’ll explain how to make a magento theme.
( )That would be great.
Thanks.
Big Bisous !
Steve April 8th
I too hope there will be a tutorial on how to create a Magento theme.
Great start though.
( )vlad gidea July 31st
Indeed
I’m very interested. Hope you continue the Magneto tutorials
( )Neeraj Kumar April 8th
Man… this is what I was looking for…
( )looking forward for more tutorials on Magento.
Rahul Chowdhury April 8th
Great tutorial, I really liked it. Really good intro and nicely detailed.
( )Ethan:T April 8th
Question: Do you really need to use XAMPPlite for this (or w/e it’s called)? Can’t you just install to a already runnin server?
( )Eric Boyer April 8th
Magento doesn’t REQUIRE XAMPPlite…
( )Kevin Kirchner October 29th
I’m running it with MAMP
( )Tutorial Library April 8th
Its a great Tutorial Thanks a lot
( )Chris Simpson April 8th
Ive worked with Magento a few times, and think its absolutely great. (Well put it this way its a lot better then osCommerce or any other of the larger open source e-commerce solutions)
Written ontop of the Zend Framework i belive
( )DataMouse April 8th
What’s the benefit of Magneto over osCommerce?
( )Derek April 8th
A real plugin system? All the contrib modules for osCommerce I’ve used want you to hack core file.
( )Derek April 8th
I real module system? Every contributed “module” for osCommerce I’ve use has you hacking core files.
( )Yoosuf April 8th
HA HA A TYPOGRAPHY ISSUE IN nettuts THEME
( )Nik April 8th
YESS!!!!!!!! FINALLY, I have been waiting for this.
I would request you to make an advanced series like the recently concluded Wordpress series for plus members such as myself, so that we can master magento once and for all
Cheers
Nik
( )Mike April 8th
What great timing! I’m starting a Magento project in 2 weeks.
This always happens with Nettuts, articles seem to be published *just* as I need them.
Thanking You!
( )Robert Banh April 8th
Don’t forget about their awesome API for both SOAP and XML RPC protocols:
http://www.magentocommerce.com/support/magento_core_api
( )Jeff April 8th
This looks like a good start in investigating Magento! Does anyone know how it compares to Virtuemart for Joomla?
( )Mexx April 8th
@Ethan:T You can of course install it on your own server. I found XAMPP Lite the simplest solution.
———
( )PS: You can follow me on twitter if you like: http://twitter.com/vegevore
Mexx April 22nd
PPS: changed my username to http://twitter.com/maxberndt
( )Chris Wallace April 8th
I’m a big fan of Magento. There is one thing I’d like to explain though about the way Magento themes work. It’s not a completely new way of doing themes. ZenCart has been using a pretty sweet template override system for years. Same with Drupal, WordPress, and others. Magento very much takes the idea of building upon existing themes using “child” themes. I think the only problem is the multiple layers of complexity in the theme structure that can really restrict a Magento theme designer. As long as you’re just working with CSS and images, you’re fine, but once you start changing the actual .phtml files you may get frustrated pretty quickly.
( )Martyn Web April 8th
I’ve been testing Magento myself for a while but haven’t had the time to implement a custom design into the site. It would be great if you could start a series of tutorials on magento.
Great intro to the package.
( )O'Neal Ombu April 8th
Good tuts. but how do we connect Magento to the marchant account?
( )RRL April 8th
Would you mind telling us how big is the database after importing sample data pack ? Last time I’ve seen it was like
( )Sr Gabriel April 8th
Very good…
Congratz for this awesome introduce
( )Richard McCartney April 8th
Awesome intro to Magento, I’ve done a few sites now using this CMS and I would recommend it to any one really. a Theme tutorial would be good for people not so familiar with the set up
( )Wise Man April 8th
Word of the wise, magento sample data cannot be completely removed without deleting tables in the database.
It also stores cc information in the admin panel naively.
It does not have tier pricing.
( )Mexx April 8th
I does have tier pricing: see here: http://www.magentocommerce.com/knowledge-base/entry/how-do-i-use-tier-pricing
( )Unirgy April 8th
And it does not store CC accounts information natively – it’s encrypted in DB.
( )Wise Man April 8th
Still anyone who can gain access to the admin panel with have access to every customer who has ever purchased anything through the store.
Pat April 8th
NETTUS = NOOB
Ross Knight April 8th
Perfect timing, thanks.
( )Adam April 8th
Wow, I literally was looking for an e-commerce solution last night and came upon Magento. I downloaded it and was going to walk thru it today. Glad Tuts is one of the first places I start my day! Can’t wait to give this tutorial a try. I am a total e-commerce noob!
( )Camilo April 8th
Great starting point. Magento is great! (and nettuts too hehe)
( )zik April 8th
Just when I needed an e-commerce app ! Thanks a lot for sharing this tut !
( )Derek April 8th
Could you explain the need for the updated mysql library? I’m trying to translate this in my head on setting up full XAMPP on a mac to run this. Is it just a case of the library in the Apache friends distribution being out of date?
( )Bain May 12th
You don’t need to worry about the random windows library or indeed any of the other customisations to xampp mentioned here if you have the latest version of xampp (currently 1.0.1)
( )Ray April 8th
Awesome!
( )I’ve been waiting 4 this
Nick D April 8th
Perfect timing! I planned to start a new Magento site (my first) this evening!
( )Diego April 8th
Magento its a really powerful choice, i recomended this eCommerce system
( )David Singer April 8th
Love Magento.
( )Bjorn April 8th
I’ve avoided Magento in the past because I was waiting for more of a community to start supporting it. Looks like that is happening. Thank you for the tut!
( )John April 8th
Is it just me or does Magento run like a dog? Have it running ecom for a store that has about 50 products, load times in the backend are exctrutiatingly slow. The most recent release was around 65 megs unzipped, I think someone needs to do some refactoring before this is a fully viable solution, although very very promising.
( )Brady April 8th
Magento is awesome!
We’ve been running our Magento store since September ‘08 and have had minimal issues.
The only downside is when the developers decided to stop supporting the community and charging for service plans instead. But, you’ve got to make a buck somehow, so I think it’s fair – especially considering how robust the platform is.
( )Mexx April 8th
Thanks guys for the feedback!
Love to here that Magento is a requested topic here at Nettuts. Due to fact that there wasn’t a single tutorial dealing with Magento on Nettuts, I decided to create a very basic one.
We will see if more advanced are going to follow. I think that the compensation is too low for an in dept tutorial like “Creating a Magento theme from scratch”.
@Wise Man: I would use the sample data for testing purposes only. When building a store for a client, I recommend using a fresh magento installation. That way there is no need to get rid of the sample data.
( )Nik April 8th
Well put. I think “Creating a Magento Theme from Scratch” would require a 3-part book deal. Not that it wouldn’t be worth it though.
I think the benefit of the Magento system is it’s easily accessible from so many points. The default front-end features are great for our client’s customers, the back-end admin tools, while complex, are very comprehensive. For mostly front-end developers, there are templates and tools available to aid in creating a unique store and for back-end developers… well, there is a huge new puzzle in front of us just asking to be solved. With a Zend based architecture, the use of XML templates and MySQL/PHP scripting, Magento requires a broad skill-set to fully understand and utilize all the available resources in the system.
I made the mistake of first trying Magento out as I was developing for a client project. Getting past the hurdles of the templating system was a series of panic attacks, but the end result was great and I couldn’t be happier having learned the system.
Nice introductory post. Hopefully this continues to help build the Magento community.
For anyone looking for additional assistance. The forums at Magento’s home site at magentocommerce.com are a wealth of knowledge if you just search around a bit.
( )Ricochet April 10th
If NETTUS provided advanced Magento tutorials, I would happily pay the monthly subscription fee. Regardless of the current user-base, Magento ‘will’ become the industry leader in the OS eCommerce field, and NETTUTS would be wise to capture this market now!
( )Ricochet April 10th
If NETTUS provided advanced Magento tutorials, I would happily pay the monthly subscription fee. Regardless of the current user-base, Magento will become the industry leader in the OS eCommerce field, and NETTUTS would be wise to capture this market now!
( )Ricochet April 11th
If NETTUS provided advanced Magento tutorials, I would happily pay the monthly subscription fee. Regardless of the current user-base, Magento will become the industry leader in the open-source eCommerce field, and NETTUTS would be wise to capture this market now!
( )Navdeep April 8th
Magento is really a good system.
@3drockz
( )Les April 8th
a really good system?
come off it; use the worlds best search engine and all you see is the various issues you have with this software…
the software is slow, bloated and does not scale; it does not scale because it uses php but it doesn’t scale because of bad design and lazy developers.
if you want a solution use something else that is open source or pay some decent money and get your own bespoke system done properly.
i’ve had a look at the source and as a developer myself, the code is pretty bad… as bad as wordpress even, and that is bad.
( )Ryan April 8th
Sorry dude, you’re wrong. I’ve worked on Magento projects for companies who do WELL over a million $ in sales per year. So to say it doesn’t scale is completely false.
( )Mark April 8th
My company developed 1 Magento site and found it quite difficult to theme. I am now looking at using Silverstripe CMS with it’s eCommerce module. Will be interesting to see how that compares for a basic store
( )Nate April 8th
Excellent tutorial! And I’m surprised I got first Digg!
( )Andrew Stobbe April 8th
We have worked with Magento over the past year and from a feature perspective, it has everything and the kitchen sink. Lots of eye candy.
( )Nikhil - Powerusers April 9th
Nice one,
( )Very helpful since lot e-commerce activities are going on, it helps to understand them also to help to be ourself part of them..
Sandeep April 9th
Great Tutorial Thanks!
( )WEBBOgrafico April 9th
great start for a magento series of tutorial… hoping to see a magento category in themeforest soon!
( )Jash Sayani April 9th
Wow!! Great tutorial Max. Just love it !!
Keep up your amazing posts…
( )Basem April 9th
thank you for this tut. I had a problem with the login. and after searching in the internet i found the solution:
( )if you can’t login in the admin area then try to change in the adress localhost with 127.0.0.1
Max April 10th
You will find that info in this tut as well
( )Jhalak April 18th
Basem, you save me man………. I couldn’t log in to admin in windows.
( )Evan April 9th
any recommendations for a dedicated or cloud host to run magneto?
I too would love to see more on this module. It’s dead sexy.
( )Joe April 10th
Oh !!! this is very helpul to all ,you can get good idea over this notes
( )Jash Sayani April 10th
My internet is too slow, it took several hours to upload the files to my webserver and it disconnected somewhere in the middle.
Is there a way to trans-load it to my webserver directly from Magento ?
( )Cleefy April 13th
If you have ssh access, you can use a wget command to cut out the middle man and install magento easily.
Feel free to contact me at mick [dot] cleef [at] gmail [dot] com for more information
( )Alfred April 10th
Prestashop is another alternative to MAGENTO
I found Prestashop to be easier to install and modify although not as full featured as MAGENTO, Prestashop is great for my small shop
( )john Doe April 11th
I think a series on Magento would be a big hit.
( )David April 11th
love magento.. would love to see a detail tutorial about skinning magento..
( )Mik April 11th
this magento initiation is most than welcome! thank you. For the people who already roam on magentocommerce, there is nothing very new, but again, this is an excellent idea, please do keep up with the great job and offer tutorials on theming and module development !
We are currently migrating from Miva5 to Magento, with a multistore configuration (12 stores), for a combined monthly volume over 200K$
Magento turned out to have the most potential for us compared to the ageing competition, and thus far we’re not deceived.
Be prepared to spend countless hours understanding the structure in order to make things right, but with the right resources and people, it just plain works.
( )Gareth Jones April 12th
Just starting using Magento, looks really straightforward. Finally a creative solution to commerce.
( )osCommerce Templates April 12th
Thank you for posting a very clear steps on how to install Magento. I have been using Magento for several months now and I know that I still need to learn a lot of things about the software. This will definitely help me.
( )insic April 12th
I received quite a lot of bad feedback about this magento thing in my blog. I found it usable but others has its reason why they don’t like it
Any way well written tutorial.
( )Jhon November 6th
hy insic nice face..
( )evodanh April 13th
Thanks for your tutorial. I’m using Magento for the next project.
( )Julie Berlin April 13th
I’ve used OScommerce, ZenCart, (both are pretty clunky – themes are good but I was always worried about the security and lack of admin features) and am in the process of theme-ing a Magneto site. So far, it seems more robust than the first 2 but it’s definitely overkill for the small site I’m building… are there any simpler OS shopping carts that are still secure?
( )I’d love a comparison of security and features of OS shopping carts. I did find some online but the info seems dated. I have learned so many CMS’ and shopping cart systems only to find that they are not good enough for what I need to accomplish – I’m happy to devote time to learn an app that will continue to be updated and has features that we know we need to use now – Magneto is so far the best I’ve found for e-commerce… but please do tell if there are others!
Also looking forward to the subsequent tutorials on Magneto.
v April 13th
You could check on PrestaCart. It’s a lot less clunky than Magento, but my experience is limited…
( )Augusto Esteves April 13th
On the installation it doesn’t allow me to change the Locale to Portuguese, it keeps changing it to English. Why is that? Do I need a language pack?
( )Mexx April 14th
Yes, at the beginning Magento is English only. After your done installing go to http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect and get the key of your language pack. Then browse in the admin to system->magento connect->connect manager. Enter the key there and click install. And your done
( )Cleefy April 13th
This seems to be a direct copy of the designers guide to magento located on the http://www.magentocommerce.com site.
( )Dave April 13th
I have gone back and forth wanting to use Magento, and always found issues. Now with 1.3.0 it seems like the performance is a lot better, and I’ve recently launched my store utilizing the system. You can check it out here:
http://www.carbonfibergear.com/direct
It does take a large learning curve to figure out how things work, but once you do, it’s not TOO bad. Even though I was modifying their default theme, it still took me a good 40 or so hours to customize and set everything up. So far, well worth it though. I do have some gripes about small things, but the benefits far outweigh them.
( )jg April 13th
We too considered and compared Magento, osCommerce and ZenCart. After running several test of Magento and selecting a good hosting provider we were up and running live in 2 weeks : http://www.jorggray.com.
There are a few issue’s we’re sorting out, but for the most part, it runs very well.
Thanks for the article. BTW. I used virtualbox -> installed ubuntu 8.10 desktop -> installed XAMPP (regular) -> installed magento…
Works like a treat!!
( )Lazar May 10th
Hi,
( )Nice site, what did you use to get magnifier glass on images.
Thank you,
EGY August 8th
Where did you learn to use Magento like that? Your site design is amazing. Could you please let me know how you do it or where you find the learning materials to do it? Thanks.
( )SohoInteractive April 14th
Our clients love Magento. It is not easy to customize, but it’s well worth it. Stable, secure and powerful.
Thank you for the Tutorial Max.
K.
( )Jay April 16th
I tried and tried and tried to install magento on godaddy shared hosting and couldnt get it to work. Just a head’s up for anyone who has gsh and is going to try it out.
Other than that it looks like great e-commerce software.
( )Michael Soriano April 21st
Love it! This definitely helps.
( )Watch out World for my Magento Themes!
Denis April 22nd
Hi… thanks for the post…
but i have some troubles..
C:\xampplite\apache\bin\php.ini dont exist!
( )what to do?
Jay April 24th
@denis
just change the .\xampplite\php\php.ini and dont worry about the other one.
depending on whether you are using xampp or xampp lite it can be in either place. xampp lite is only in the php file.
( )klaus April 29th
Whats up with steps 4 5 6 , that’s not on men.. should be simpler
( )Ruslan Lisitsa May 20th
Hi Maxx
First, Great Tutorial.
I like magento much more than the others ecommerce open source solutions.
I do have a couple of requests, I am sure I will not be the only one to benefit from.
I have had nothing but trouble installing Magento on my remote server.
Could you make a tutorial focusing just on that?
Also could you make some tutorials on customizing the frontend appearance of magento.
For example a great tutorial would be on how to make the default horizontal nav vertical.
Thanks so much for great help.
( )shrikant May 25th
Hi Max
Its a a great article however after step 9
( )i get following error message can you please help me
No releases for package “magento-core/Interface_Install_Default” exist
Failed to download pear/Archive_Tar within preferred state “stable”, latest release is version , stability “”, use “channel://pear.php.net/Archive_Tar” to install
magento-core/Mage_All_Latest requires package “magento-core/Interface_Install_Default” (version >= 1.3.1, version = 1.6.2)
magento-core/Lib_Google_Checkout requires package “magento-core/Mage_Pear_Helpers” (version >= 1.0.18800)
magento-core/Mage_Core_Modules requires package “magento-core/Lib_Google_Checkout” (version >= 1.2.0, version = 1.3.1.1, version = 1.3.1, version = 1.3.1, version = 1.0.18800)
magento-core/Lib_Js_Prototype requires package “magento-core/Mage_Pear_Helpers” (version >= 1.0.18800)
magento-core/Mage_Downloader requires package “magento-core/Lib_Js_Prototype” (version >= 1.3.1, version = 1.3.1, version = 1.0.18800)
magento-core/Lib_ZF requires package “magento-core/Mage_Pear_Helpers” (version >= 1.0.18800)
magento-core/Lib_Varien requires package “magento-core/Lib_ZF” (version >= 1.7.2.2, version = 1.0.18800)
Install Errors
No valid packages found
PEAR ERROR: install failed
geo May 26th
Magento is a great Ecommerce platform, i would be using it too but my host hasn’t all the requirements for magento so i’m using Interspire which is a amazing piece of scripting .
( )James Koster May 27th
Some examples of great Magento web sites here: http://www.magentoshowcase.co.uk/
( )Lesya June 15th
If you also want to be the one of Magento users you may try cart2cart web service. This service will automate data migration fm your shopping cart to magento. For details you can check http://www.shopping-cart-migration.com
( )Balasundaram.G August 25th
There is no PHP.INI file in xampplite/apache/bin…
What to do?? phpmyadmin doesn’t running…
need help
( )Balasundaram.G August 25th
i can’t install magento with xampp, while using xampplite i’ve experienced major problems, phpadmin doesn’t running, no php.ini file in apache/bin folder..
what to do?
( )Magento Themes September 13th
I’ve never seen such a detailed guide to magento! Going all the way through the process of even setting up your server with all the PHP addons and such. What an awesome guide ! Thanks for the post.
( )Wolf September 21st
Hi Mexx, hi all,
Why should I use Xampplite ?
I’ve installed Xampp 1.7.2 (PHP 5.3, MySQL 5.1) local in WindowsXP and want to install Magento inside it ? Is it possible ? Has anybody experience ?
Thanks for tips.
( )rj October 2nd
Great site. Found the tutorial with screenshots very useful
( )martin October 18th
Great topic
( )For quick fix of installation issue of XAMPP please go to http://cookphp.blogspot.com/2009/10/magento-xampp-17-installation-error.html
John Public October 19th
I am pleased you approve of Magento. I have chosen it for one of my ecommerce websites. Thanks for the tips above
( )phpini November 10th
nice tutorial
( )