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Preface
So you've decided to build and run your own web shop, but you need some guidance about where to start? You have come to the right place. May we suggest the Magento eCommerce platform. Magento comes in various editions: Community, Enterprise, and GO. Each edition has its strengths and weaknesses. Recipes contained in this micro book are aimed at Magento Community Edition (CE).
Magento CE is free, open source software that enables developers and tech savvy merchants to explore the power and flexibility of the Magento platform. In terms of platform all three product editions (Community, Enterprise, GO) share the same code base and functionality so getting to know Magento CE means a step closer to getting to know the rest of the product line.
Magento platform is built on top of Zend Framework, which implies PHP programming language. It uses MySQL database for data storage, and an HTTP server like Apache for serving content as web pages. All of these technologies can be run on Unix-based operating systems like Linux, OSX, BSD or even on Microsoft Windows. This makes Magento a pretty portable piece of software. Most of the time, however, this is not something you will trouble yourself with.
In order to successfully work through all of the recipes in this book, a low cost third-party shared hosting service will be fine. However, once you get the hang of Magento, you should carefully choose your hosting provider, or host Magento yourself if you have the know-how.
Recipes in this book cover everything you need to get your Magento platform up and running.
What this book covers
Installation (Should know) walks you through and basic Magento installation process, from obtaining the installation files, to the final installation success screen.
Basic configuration (Must know) walks you through the basic required, and some often forgotten, post-installation configuration steps.
Categories (Must know) shows you how to manage categories, which are the basic structure building blocks of your web shop.
Product attributes and attribute sets (Must know) emphasizes the importance of knowing the role of product attributes, which are the basic building blocks of each product. This recipe guides you though management of both attributes and their sets.
Products (Must know)