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Learning Magento 2 Administration
Learning Magento 2 Administration
Learning Magento 2 Administration
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Learning Magento 2 Administration

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About This Book
  • Strategic planning for maximizing your Magento 2 store’s operations and sales.
  • Important guidelines and advice for optimizing your Magento 2 store.
  • Packed with screenshots and step-by-step instructions to leverage the hundreds of Magento 2 features.
Who This Book Is For

This guide is for store owners who use Magento 2 on a daily basis to operate their online stores. Proprietors will use this guide as a reference for ensuring that they are utilizing the full power of Magento 2. Developers and solution providers will find this guide a helpful tool for identifying opportunities to help their clients navigate the complexity of Magento 2.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateMay 31, 2016
ISBN9781783288267
Learning Magento 2 Administration
Author

Bret Williams

After 15 years in advertising and political consulting, Bret Williams dove into a new marketing venue in 1995 called the Internet. Over the intervening years, Bret and his team at Novusweb created the first site with live coverage of a major sporting event, the first car dealer website to provide online customization and pricing, and an innovative rapid-development process. In 2005, Bret and his wife, Cyndi, launched their first owned e-commerce site, which almost immediately became a leader in its niche. Since then, Bret has worked to research and identify open source platforms that can provide the features and functions necessary for online retail success. Today, Bret and the Novusweb team continue to develop online marketing solutions for their own company as well as select clients all across America.

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    Learning Magento 2 Administration - Bret Williams

    Table of Contents

    Learning Magento 2 Administration

    Credits

    About the Authors

    About the Reviewer

    www.PacktPub.com

    Why subscribe?

    Preface

    What this book covers

    What you need for this book

    Who this book is for

    Conventions

    Reader feedback

    Customer support

    Downloading the color images of this book 

    Errata

    Piracy

    Questions

    1. Introducing Magento 2

    A store owner's primer

    What's new in Magento 2

    Using Magento for e-commerce

    Selling complex products

    Managing multiple online stores

    Extending functionality

    Global e-commerce

    What you need to succeed with Magento

    Summary

    2. Settings and Configurations

    Introducing the Magento 2 backend

    Configuration scopes

    Key system configurations

    Configuration

    General panels

    General settings

    Web settings

    Design settings

    Currency Setup settings

    Store Email Addresses settings

    Contacts settings

    Reports settings

    Content management settings

    New Relic reporting

    Catalog panels

    Catalog settings

    Inventory settings

    XML Sitemap settings

    RSS Feeds settings

    Email to a Friend settings

    Customers panels

    Newsletter settings

    Customer Configuration settings

    Wish List settings

    Promotions settings

    Persistent Shopping Cart settings

    Sales panels

    Sales settings

    Sales Emails settings

    PDF Print-outs settings

    Tax settings

    Checkout settings

    Shipping settings

    Multi-shipping settings

    Shipping methods settings

    Google API settings

    Payment Methods settings

    Services panels

    Advanced panels

    Admin settings

    Summary

    3. Catalogs and Stores

    The Global-Website-Store methodology

    Creating categories

    Creating your category hierarchy

    The General Information tab

    Display settings

    Custom design

    Category products

    Creating Website and Store entities

    Creating Websites

    Creating Store entities

    Creating Store Views

    The frontend selector

    Configuring Store information

    Understanding the Configuration Scope

    Configuring Store settings

    Accommodating multiple languages

    Assigning a locale

    Updating configurations

    Translating products and categories

    Translating other content

    Configuring multiple currencies

    Setting up currencies

    Configuring currency conversions

    Summary

    4. Preparing to Sell

    Understanding the checkout and payment process

    Payment methods

    How payment gateways work

    PCI compliance

    PayPal all-in-one payment solutions

    PayPal payment gateways

    PayPal Express

    Braintree

    Check / money order

    Bank transfer payment

    Cash On Delivery payment

    Zero subtotal checkout

    Purchase order

    Authorize.Net Direct Post

    Shipping methods

    Origin

    Handling fee

    Allowed countries

    Method not available

    Free shipping

    Flat rate

    Table rates

    Quantity and price-based rates

    Save your rate table

    Table rate settings

    Upload rate table

    Carrier methods

    Shipping integrations

    Customer groups

    Using customer groups

    Adding a customer group

    Assigning VAT customer groups

    Managing taxes

    How Magento manages taxes

    Creating tax rules

    Importing tax rates

    Value added tax configurations

    Setup VAT taxes

    Managing orders

    Processing a shipment

    Editing an order

    Invoicing an order

    Issuing a credit memo

    Shipping an order

    Practice makes perfect

    Summary

    5. Products

    Product types

    Simple products

    Complex products

    The Configurable product type

    Grouped product type

    Bundle product type

    Virtual product type

    Downloadable product type

    Product attributes

    Attribute types

    Selecting an attribute type

    Creating an attribute

    Attribute properties

    Managing options

    Managing swatches

    Advanced attribute properties

    Managing labels

    Storefront properties

    Creating attribute sets

    Creating products

    The new product screen

    Creating a Simple product

    Creating a Configurable product

    Creating a Grouped product

    Creating Bundled product

    Creating a Downloadable product

    Creating a Virtual product

    Managing inventory

    Low stock notifications

    Product reports

    Pricing tools

    Pricing by customer group

    Quantity-based pricing

    Autosettings

    Other product selling opportunities

    Related products

    Upsell products

    Cross-sell products

    Summary

    6. Themes

    Theme hierarchy

    Viewing the theme hierarchy

    Assigning themes

    Adding branding elements

    Adding your site logo

    Adding your logo to your e-mails

    Adding your logo to sales documents

    Third-party themes

    Summary

    7. Content and SEO

    Managing CMS pages

    Magento's content pages

    Creating a CMS page

    Using blocks and widgets

    Adding a link using WYSIWYG

    Adding a links using HTML

    Adding a page link using a widget

    Using variables

    Creating your own variables

    Using widgets to insert content onto the site pages

    SEO meta fields

    Using meta fields for search engine visibility

    Meta fields in Magento

    The SEO checklist

    Summary

    8. Promotions and Communication

    Store promotions

    Creating Cart Price Rules

    Adding the new rule

    Defining the rule's conditions

    Defining the rule's actions

    Modifying the rule's labels

    Generating coupon codes

    Testing the rule

    Newsletter subscriptions

    Subscribing customers

    Creating newsletter templates

    Scheduling your newsletter

    Checking for problems

    Managing your subscribers

    Transactional e-mails

    Creating a new header template

    Assigning the e-mail header and footer

    Creating a new e-mail template

    Summary

    9. Security and Administration

    Using SSL encryption

    The SSL certificate

    Obtaining an SSL certificate

    Securing your server

    Configuring user permissions

    Managing roles

    Creating a developer role

    Creating users

    User security

    Magento indexing

    Optimizing your store

    Summary

    10. Startup Checklist

    Setting up product catalogs

    System configuration tasks

    Stores | All Stores

    Stores | Configurations

    Stores | Currency Rates

    Stores | Customer Groups

    Stores | Tax Zones and Rates

    Stores | Tax Rules

    Stores | Terms and Conditions

    System | Cache Management

    System | Index Management

    Finalizing products

    Products | Categories

    Products | Catalog

    Adding content

    Editing communications

    Marketing | Email Templates

    Securing your store

    System | User Roles

    System | All Users

    Summary

    Learning Magento 2 Administration


    Learning Magento 2 Administration

    Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

    Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the authors, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

    Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

    First published: May 2016

    Production reference: 1270516

    Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

    Livery Place

    35 Livery Street

    Birmingham 

    B3 2PB, UK.

    ISBN 978-1-78328-825-0

    www.packtpub.com

    Credits

    About the Authors

    Bret Williams, for over 20 years, has engineered the creation of hundreds of websites, including many profitable e-commerce properties, as well as several Internet firsts. Beginning with version 1.3 of Magento CE, Bret began an odyssey of becoming one of the foremost experts on leveraging Magento to build successful online businesses. Today, as CEO of novusweb llc, Bret continues to provide e-commerce management services from his office in Austin, Texas. Bret authored the wildly popular Mastering Magento and is co-author of the Mastering Magento 2 Second Edition, both Packt Publishing titles. His company also owns MageDaily.com, a Magento news and reviews blog, and MageRevolution.com, selling Magento enhancements.

    Cyndi Williams has worked alongside Bret Williams—her husband of 35 years—building and managing e-commerce solutions, including their own successful online business, which they established in 2005, and later sold in 2009. As President of novusweb, llc, which is based in Austin, Texas, Cyndi focuses on managing online operations for select clients. Cyndi is an expert in operating Magento-based stores, as well as fulfillment, advertising, and social media management.

    About the Reviewer

    Mathieu Nayrolles was born in France and lived in a small village in Côte d'Azur for almost 15 years. He started his computer sciences studies in France and continued them in Montréal, Canada, where he now lives with his wife. Mathieu holds two master degrees from eXia.CESI in software engineering and UQAM in computer science. He is now a Ph.D student at Concordia University studying electrical and computer engineering, Montréal, Canada, under the supervision of Dr. Wahab Hamou-Lhadj.

    During his academic journey, Mathieu has also worked for worldwide companies, such as Eurocopter and Saint-Gobain, where he learned how important good technical resources are.

    You can discover some of his works through his books, Xamarin Studio for Android Programming: A C# Cookbook, Mastering Apache Solr: A practical guide to get to grips with Apache Solr, Instant Magento Performances, Magento Performance Optimization: How to and Mastering Apache, his blog (https://math.co.de/),or its latest realizations bumper-app.com, mindup.io, and toolwatch.io.

    Follow @MathieuNls on twitter for even more information.

    www.PacktPub.com

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    Preface

    The release of Magento 2 marks a major milestone for the world’s most successful open source e-commerce platform. This new version was completely rewritten, retooled, and redesigned to allow its merchants to move forward into the modern age of online commerce.

    With this new version, many store owners will be joining the ranks of others who embrace the power and flexibility of Magento. However, like these Magento veterans, new owners will find Magento a bit intimidating at first. To be powerful, a platform must seem complex at times. To be sure, any top-end e-commerce system requires a depth of configurations, tools, and processes to truly be useful for merchants.

    If you’re familiar with Magento 1.x, you’ll be happy to find much about Magento has also remained the same. At the same time, the core functionality that made Magento 1.x so very popular is now wrapped in a new and friendlier user interface. Workflows are improved and, as to be expected, much of the original functionality has evolved to be better than before!

    In our work managing e-commerce stores and helping Magento store owners maximize profitability, we know that managing a Magento store can take a long time to master. We wanted to change this by condensing years of real world experience into a concise, easy-to-use manual that is specifically aimed at the Magento store operator.

    Learning Magento 2 Administration is meant to be both a course of learning as well as a handy, daily reference book. In this book, our focus is on those who will be configuring and using Magento on a day-to-day basis. There are other great Packt Publishing books that dive deep into the technical development opportunities of Magento. Our book answers the question, now what? Once you have an installed Magento store, what can you do to give your store a competitive advantage? To leverage all the features of Magento? To operate your store efficiently?

    We hope you find this labor of love as useful to you as it has been enjoyable for us to write. We also suspect you’ll find many nuggets within these pages that make it a valuable asset for your Magento-related endeavors.

    Regardless of where you are in using Magento 2 — considering, planning, launching, or operating — we suggest that you start by reading through this book in order. Learn where everything is and watch, especially, for the Tips sprinkled throughout. Then, use the book as a basis for creating your own action plans for improving your use of Magento.

    Above all, enjoy using Magento 2. Embrace it and you’ll prosper. You’ll soon join the ranks of successful Magento-powered online stores.

    What this book covers

    Chapter 1, Introducing Magento 2, gives you a basic overview of the capabilities of Magento, what’s new in Magento 2, and what’s required for success with Magento.

    Chapter 2, Settings and Configurations, is a menu-by-menu, screen-by-screen explanation of the Magento 2 backend configurations.

    Chapter 3, Catalogs and Stores, give you an in-depth explanation of the powerful multistore feature of Magento and how to create manage multiple websites and languages.

    Chapter 4, Preparing to Sell, discusses payments, shipping and taxes, and techniques and configurations to handle the money aspects of operating a Magento store.

    Chapter 5, Products,  contains explanations and guides to create and leverage different product types and tools.

    Chapter 6, Themes,  contains insights to choose and configure themes that give a Magento store a branded look and feel.

    Chapter 7, Content & SEO, discusses specific instructions to manage nonproduct information and how to optimize information for search engines.

    Chapter 8, Promotions and Communication, provides the reader with detailed guides to create promotional discounts, coupons, and newsletters to increase customer visits and engagement.

    Chapter 9, Security and Administration, has key configurations to ensure that your Magento store is secure and optimized for speed and usability.

    Chapter 10, Startup Checklist, this chapter is a step-by-step guide to prepare your new Magento 2 store for a successful launch.

    What you need for this book

    This book was written on the premise that you have — or will have — a working installation of Magento 2. The only tool that you’ll need is your web browser to access your new site, both on the frontend and the backend.

    Who this book is for

    While developers should certainly learn the contents of this book in order to provide better counsel to their clients, this book is primarily aimed at the Magento 2 Store Owner. The day-to-day use of Magento as an e-commerce platform requires a deep understanding of many concepts and functions, some of which are unique to Magento.

    Conventions

    In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

    Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: you could view the category in your store by going to yourstore.com/sofas.html in your browser.

    New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: Click on the Main Website Store link in the Stores panel

    Note

    Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

    Tip

    Tips and tricks appear like this.

    Reader feedback

    Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book-what you liked or disliked. Reader feedback is important for us as it helps us develop titles that you will really get the most out of.

    To send us general feedback, simply e-mail feedback@packtpub.com, and mention the book's title in the subject of your message.

    If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide at www.packtpub.com/authors.

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    Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.

    Downloading the color images of this book 

    We also provide you with a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. The color images will help you better understand the changes in the output. You can download this file from https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/LearningMagento2Administration_ColorImages.

    Errata

    Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books-maybe a mistake in the text or the code-we would be grateful if you could report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the Errata Submission Form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded to our website or added to any list of existing errata under the Errata section of that title.

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    Questions

    If you have a problem with any aspect of this book, you can contact us at questions@packtpub.com, and we will do our best to address the problem.

    Chapter 1. Introducing Magento 2

    It's no secret that Magento is the world's leading open source e-commerce platform. According to BuiltWith website, since its introduction in 2008, the versatility and power of this system has helped it grow into an installed base of over 220,000 online stores. Thousands of developers work with store owners like you to harness this power to accommodate a wide variety of products, markets, and customer types. The Magento ecosystem includes thousands of third-party add-ons, design themes, and services that increase Magento's ability to fulfill almost any online commerce need.

    However, as we all know, you can't stand still in the competitive world of e-commerce. Changes in the marketplace constantly force all of us to re-evaluate every aspect of our online efforts. Whether it's a change in Google's search algorithm, the impact of mobile commerce, or the ongoing influence of social media, those who stand still quickly fall behind.

    The same goes for e-commerce technology. Despite changes in ownership over the past 3 years, Magento management has continued to push their teams to create the next, improved version of Magento. As we in the Magento community championed for some time, Magento needed more than incremental changes if it were to remain at the top of the charts. Magento needed a complete review and reworking of all its systems.

    Today, we can now celebrate the completion of this huge undertaking. Magento 2 represents a total overhaul, poising it for the demands of e-commerce today and in the foreseeable future.

    In this chapter, we'll cover:

    What's new in Magento 2

    Using Magento for e-commerce

    What you need to succeed with Magento

    First, let's discuss for whom this book is primarily written.

    A store owner's primer

    This book is crafted to be an ideal companion for Magento store owners as they explore and benefit from the features and power of Magento 2. After installing and initially configuring a new Magento 2 store, what comes next? Once you read through this book, you'll be able to not only understand the various tools at your command, but you'll also be able to profit from operating a Magento-powered online store by leveraging these tools to your advantage.

    You should also make a copy of this book available to others in your organization who:

    Process orders (refer to Chapter 3, Catalogs & Stores)

    Manage products (Chapter 4, Preparing to Sell)

    Handle design changes (Chapter 5, Products)

    Add and edit site content (Chapter 6, Themes)

    Promote your products and site (Chapter 7, Content & SEO)

    Are in charge of site security and technical issues (Chapter 8, Promotions & Communication)

    Once you read through Learning Magento 2 Administration, you'll find a great checklist in Chapter 9, Security and Administration to make sure you address all the key configurations and processes when launching a new store.

    What's new in Magento 2

    If you currently use or have previously used a Magento 1.x store, you'll notice that many things look different in Magento 2. Throughout this book, you'll note from various screenshots that the backend interface is easier to use and rich in new operations features. We'll explore these in later chapters.

    While the new UI is pretty slick, it's the under-the-hood improvements that you'll come to truly appreciate in your Magento store. Magento has long been challenged by a lack of speed. Even on servers and systems specifically tuned for Magento, heavy traffic from online visitors, large

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