Mastering Magento -- Table of Contents -- Mastering Magento -- Credits -- About the Author -- About the Reviewers -- www.PacktPub.com -- Support files, eBooks, discount offers, and more -- Why Subscribe? -- Free Access for Packt account holders -- Preface -- What this book covers -- What you need for this book -- Who this book is for -- Conventions -- Reader feedback -- Customer support -- Errata -- Piracy -- Questions -- 1. Planning for Magento -- Defining your scope -- Project requirements -- Requirements checklist -- Planning for users -- Staff -- Customers -- Assessing technical resources -- Technical considerations -- Hosting provider -- In-house hosting -- Servers -- The best of both worlds -- Setting up a local test installation -- Global-Website-Store methodology -- Global -- Website -- Store -- Planning for multiple stores -- Using multiple domains for effective market segmentation -- Using multiple businesses to keep finances separate -- Using multiple languages to sell globally -- Summary -- 2. Successful Magento Installation -- How hosting affects installation -- How is a website hosted? -- Understanding types of hosting -- Successful hosting guidelines -- Avoiding the PCI headache -- What about cloud servers? -- Keys to a successful installation -- Avoiding the bleeding edge -- Take your time -- Installing the sample data -- Setting up Magento stores -- Planning your categories -- Disabling cache -- Setting up websites, stores, and store views -- Modifying the .htaccess file -- Modifying the index.php file -- Configuring Magento -- Configuring Base URLs -- Using localization to sell globally -- Installing language files -- Manually translating labels -- Converting currencies -- It begins with the base currency -- Let Magento automatically convert currencies -- Strategies for backups and security -- Backend backups.

File structure backups -- Keeping it secure -- Summary -- 3. Managing Products -- Catalogs and categories -- Understanding catalogs -- Understanding categories -- Special categories -- Managing products the customer-focused way -- Types of products -- Simple products -- Complex products -- Grouped products -- Configurable products -- Virtual products -- Bundle products -- Downloadable products -- Attributes and attribute sets -- Product attributes -- Attribute sets -- Creating an attribute set -- Managing inventory -- Related products, up-sells, and cross-sells -- Related products -- Up-sells -- Cross-sells -- Importing products -- The shortcut to importing products -- Summary -- 4. Designs and Themes -- The Magento theme structure -- The theme structure -- Templating hierarchy -- Skin hierarchy -- The concept of theme fallback -- Default installation design packages and themes -- Installing third-party themes -- Creating variants -- Assigning themes -- Creative translations -- Using theme variants -- Scheduling a theme variant -- Customizing themes -- Customizing skins -- Customizing layouts -- Structural and content blocks -- Expertly controlling layouts -- Using the reference tag to relocate blocks -- Customizing the local layout file -- Summary -- 5. Configuring to Sell -- The sales process -- The Magento sales process -- Managing backend orders -- Converting orders to invoices -- Creating shipments -- Payment methods -- Classes of payment systems -- Off-site payment systems -- On-site payment systems -- PayPal -- Authorize.Net -- Google Checkout -- MoneyBookers -- How Magento integrates payment systems -- Shipping methods -- Common configuration choices -- Flat rate shipping -- Table rates -- Free shipping -- Configuring sales tax rules -- Creating a sales tax rate -- Creating the sales tax rule -- Outgoing e-mails -- Summary.

6. Managing Non-product Content -- The Magento content management system -- Pages -- Customizing a CMS page -- Assigning a theme -- Modifying the home page layout -- The Content screen -- Adding variable content -- The design screen -- The Meta Data screen -- Static blocks -- Widgets -- CMS page link widget -- CMS static block -- Creating a new products list -- Catalog a product link -- Recently compared and recently viewed products -- Principles of customizing layouts -- Summary -- 7. Marketing Tools -- Customer groups -- Creating a Customer group -- Promotions -- Creating a Catalog Price Rule -- Creating a Shopping Cart Rule -- Newsletters -- Designing a newsletter template -- Sending a newsletter -- Sitemaps -- The Magento sitemap -- The Google Sitemap -- Configuring the Google Sitemap -- Generating the sitemap files -- Generating sitemaps for multiple stores -- Submitting your sitemap -- Search engine optimization -- Global SEO settings -- URLs -- Default meta tags -- Setting page-level attributes -- Automatic product meta values -- Summary -- 8. Extending Magento -- Magento Connect -- Searching Magento Connect -- Why developers create free extensions -- Trusted extensions -- Evaluating extensions -- Is the extension popular? -- What do others think about the extension? -- Does the extension developer provide support? -- Is there a trial or lite version? -- A precautionary tale -- Installing extensions -- Using the Magento Connect Manager -- Manually installing extensions -- Building extensions -- Whether others have gone before -- Creating an extension package -- Your extension files -- Creating your package information -- Release information -- Authors -- Dependencies -- Contents -- Pull the trigger -- Upload your extension -- Summary -- 9. Optimizing Magento -- Exploring EAV -- Entity -- Attribute -- Value -- Putting it all together.

The good and bad of EAV -- Making it flat -- Indexing and caching -- Indexing -- Flat or not flat -- Reindexing -- Caching -- Core caching -- Full page caching -- The impact of caching -- Managing caching -- Tuning your server for speed -- Deflation -- Enable expires -- Increase PHP memory -- Increase MySQL cache -- Use a CDN -- A final word about graphics -- Summary -- 10. Advanced Techniques -- WordPress and Magento -- The FishPig solution -- Installing WordPress -- Installing the FishPig extension -- Configuring the extension -- Database and Integration -- Auto-Login -- Initial peek -- Going the other way -- Setting up a staging environment -- A simple approach -- The basic staging setup -- Don't be tempted to skip -- Magento Cron -- Magento cron jobs -- Triggering cron jobs -- Tuning Magento's schedules -- Setting your frequency -- Creating compatible settings -- Backing up your database -- The built-in backup -- Using MySQLDump -- Setting a cron for backup -- Summary -- 11. Pre-launch Checklist -- A word about scope -- System configurations -- SSL -- Base URLs -- Administrative Base URL -- Reducing file download time -- Merging JavaScript files -- Merging CSS files -- Compressing CSS files -- Caching -- Cron jobs -- Users and roles -- Design configurations -- Transactional e-mails -- Invoices and packing slips -- Favicon -- Placeholder images -- 404 and error pages -- Search engine optimization -- Meta tags -- Analytics -- Sitemap -- Sales -- Company information -- Store e-mail addresses -- Contacts -- Currency -- General sales settings -- Customers -- Sales e-mails -- Tax rates and rules -- Shipping -- Payment methods -- Newsletters -- Terms and conditions -- Checkout -- Products -- Catalog -- Frontend panel -- Best Value -- Sitemap -- Product reviews -- Product alerts -- Product alerts run settings -- Product image placeholders.

Recently viewed/compared products -- Price -- Layered navigation -- Category top navigation -- Search engine optimizations -- Catalog search -- RSS feeds -- Maintenance -- Logs -- Enabling logs -- Log cleaning -- Backups -- Indexing -- Summary -- Index.