Learning Magento 2 Administration
By Bret Williams and Cyndi Williams
()
About this ebook
- 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.
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.
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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Book preview
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.
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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.
Customer support
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
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To view the previously submitted errata, go to https://www.packtpub.com/books/content/support and enter the name of the book in the search field. The required information will appear under the Errata section.
Piracy
Piracy of copyrighted material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy.
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We appreciate your help in protecting our authors and our ability to bring you valuable content.
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