How to Manage the Quantity of Your Products in Magento.
All you need to do to change the quantity of a given product is go to your Magento admin area > Catalog > Manage Products and click on the product the quantity of which you want to modify. Then from the Product Information menu on the left click Inventory and fill in the product quantity in the Qty* field.
Click Save to save the new quantity for that product.
In this tutorial we will show you how to create and manage Magento categories. The tutorial includes these topics:
How to create a category in Magento
How to add a category image in Magento
How to list all available categories in Magento
How to create a category in Magento
In order to create a new category for your products, go to your Magento admin area > Catalog > Manage Categories. On the left you will see the available categories (if any) and above them you will see two options - Add Root Category and Add Subcategory. Since we have the Magento data installed, we have several categories. Let's create a new subcategory of the root category by clicking Root Catalog and then Add Subcategory.
You should fill in its Name and Description, add an image, fill in some Meta data for search engines, set it as Active so that it appears on your front page and include it in the Navigation Menu.
The last option is URL key, which, if set, will be used in the links to this category. This is useful for SEO purposes - when sites are indexed, it is considered a plus to have as many relative keywords as possible in the URL. If the category is called "PC", you may want to set this field to "personal-computers" to include two additional keywords in the link.
These are the General Information settings for the category. From the 3 other tabs available you can also manage:
Display Settings - here you can set category Display Mode, its CMS block, whether it is Anchor (i.e. whether or not it should inherit the products in its subcategories) and the product listing sorting options;
Custom Design - from this tab you can select the design for this category, as well as its layout;
Category Products - this tab allows you to add existing products to the category
When you are done with your new category, click Save to create it.
How to add a category image in Magento
Adding a Magento category image is simple. From the Magento admin area > Catalog > Manage Categories select the category which you want to add an image to. Then click the General Information tab and click Browse next to the Image field.
Locate the image you want to set for this category on your computer and then click Save Category to save it. The image will appear as a small thumbnail next to the Image field. You can also upload a thumbnail image for the category.
How to list all available categories in Magento
If you want to get a list of all available Magento categories, go to your Magento admin area > Catalog > Manage Categories. From the Categories menu on the left click Expand All and your whole category tree will be displayed.
How to manage the prices of your products in Magento
To change the price of a product, go to your Magento admin area > Catalog > Manage Products. Click on the product the price of which you want to modify and then click the Prices option available in the left menu.
And here is an explanation for the most important options above:
Price - the price at which you want to sell the product; this is the only required field here and, of course, the most important
Cost - this represents your cost for purchasing the product
Tier Price - through this option you can set discounts based on the quantity of products purchased
Special Price - through this option you can set promotional campaigns - discounts which are valid only within the period defined in Special Price From Date and Special Price To Date; this option is not affected by the quantity of purchased products
In this tutorial we will explain how the Magento orders process works and how to manage your Magento orders.
How to configure Magento order options
How to manage order emails
How to make an order in Magento
How to manage orders in Magento
How to configure Magento order options
To modify your Magento order options (checkout settings, shipping settings, payment methods, etc) you need to go to your Magento admin area > System > Configuration. The options we need are located in the Sales section in the left menu. Let's take a brief look at each of them:
Sales - through this option you can configure your Checkout Totals Sort Order, allow Reorder, set logo for PDF print-outs and HTML Print View (Invoice and Packing Slip Design), set Minimum Order Amount and configure Gift Messages.
Sales Emails - here you can configure different emails for Order, Invoice, Shipment and Credit Memo. More info about this can be found in the Magento order email section below.
PDF Print-outs - this option allows you to set whether or not to display the Order ID in Header for Invoice, Shipment and Credit Memo.
Tax -here you can configure different Tax options - Tax Classes, Calculation Settings, tax display settings and Fixed Product Taxes.
Checkout - this is an important option which allows you to configure your Checkout Settings, Shopping Cart and its sidebar, as well as Payment Failed Emails.
Shipping Settings - here you can configure your shipping Origin and Options.
Shipping Methods - as the name suggests, here you can configure your shipping methods; the available methods are Flat Rate, Table Rates, Free Shipping, UPS, USPS, FedEx and DHL.
Google API - here you can configure your Magento for Google services - Google Analytics and Google Checkout.
PayPal - this option allows you to configure your shop for PayPal.
Payment Methods - the most important option, here you should configure the payment methods you will accept.
Payment Services - there is only one option to configure here - 3D Secure Credit Card Validation - this is an XML-based protocol used as an extra layer of security for online credit transactions
Moneybookers - a separate section for configuring your shop for Moneybookers
How to manage order emails
As we mentioned in the Magento order options section, Magento has a very nice built-in email functionality called Sales Emails which allows you to manage the emails you send to your customers when an order is processed. Before you configure your emails, you might want to add new email templates. You can do this from the admin area > System > Transactional Emails.
Now let's take a closer look at each of the options in Sales Emails:
Order and Order Comments - from here you can enable/disable email notifications your customers receive about orders and any comments you might have added to them. Here you can set the New Order Confirmation Email Sender, the New Order Confirmation Template (this will be used for registered users) and New Order Confirmation Template for Guest which will be sent to guest users. You can also set an email to receive a copy of the order email and select how the copy email should be sent - as Bcc or as a Separate Email.
Invoice and Invoice Comments - from here you can enable/disable email notifications your customers receive about invoices and any comments you might have added to these invoices. The rest of the options are the same as those for Order.
Shipment and Shipment Comments - this option allows you to enable/disable email notifications about shipments and shipment comments. Again, the rest of the options are the same as those for Order.
Credit Memo and Credit Memo Comments - from here you can enable/disable email notifications your customers receive about Credit Memos and any comments you might have added to them. Once again, the rest of the options are the same as those for Order.
How to Make an Order in Magento
The order process consists of several simple steps. You start by adding an item to the cart, then proceed to checkout, select a checkout method, fill in some billing and shipping information, select a payment method and then place the order. The whole order process can be represented as:
Add to Cart -> Process Checkout (Billing/Shipping/Payment) -> Place Order
Once the order is placed, it will show up as pending in the Magento admin area > Sales > Orders. In the next section we'll explain how to manage these orders.
How to Manage Orders in Magento
When a customer successfully completes the order process, you will receive a mail notification about the new order. You can review all your orders from the Magento admin area > Sales > Orders. In the previous section we placed an order, so let's click on it to see how it looks like.
You will notice several orange buttons at the top right of the screen. These are the actions you can take on the order:
Edit - this will cancel the current order and create a new one with the same details which you can then edit and submit again.
Cancel - cancels the order.
Send Email - resends the order email to the customer.
Hold - puts the order on hold so that you can process it another time. To do that, you need to Unhold it first.
Invoice - creates an invoice of the order. You need to click Submit Invoice to create it. This will change the status of the order from Pending to Processing.
Credit Memo - this option appears only when an invoice has been created. It allows you to create an offline refund for the order.
Ship - the final step of the order management process, this is the actual delivery of the product. You need to click Submit Shipment to finalize the order. Its status will be changed from Processing to Complete.
Browse the free Magento themes gallery at SiteGround.
How to upload a Magento theme?
Once you pick a theme and open its details page, click Install Now, select the Magento Connect version (if you are using Magento 1.5 or newer, you need to select version 2.0, otherwise leave the default 1.0), agree to the extension license agreement and click on the Get Extension Key button.
The extension key will be visualised. Select and copy it.
Open the Magento Admin Area->System->Magento Connect->Magento Connect Manager. Enter again the admin login details and paste the extension key in the Paste extension key to install field. Click on the Install button.
Once the installation is completed return to the Magento Admin Area and open System->Configuration->Design->Themes.
Enter the theme name in the Default field and click on the Save Config button.
The front page might not load correctly. The reason could be the number of the columns in the new theme's home page layout.
You can fix this through the Magento Admin Area->CMS->Pages. You will find two home pages. One is with 2 columns layout and the other is with one. Disable the first one and enable the second by clicking on their status links.
Now the front page will appear correctly with the new theme.
In order to manage your web site pages you need to navigate to the CMS section under the Magento admin area.Click on the Manage Pages link in order to proceed with the pages' modification:
You can edit a page by clicking on it. The Edit Page will open:
and modify it to your preference.Static blocks is another useful option. For example, you can edit the footer block which contains the links located at the bottom of your main page:
The Polls section allows you to create and edit polls:
The private SSL certificate is an important upgrade to your website. The basic function of an SSL is to encrypt all communication between the browser and the server, ensuring that all data goes through a secure (HTTPS) connection. An SSL certificate is a necessity when you want to operate an online shop and process the sensitive customers data through your software. It helps you gain your clients' trust and increase your web site's search engines rank. You can purchase a private SSL from the SiteGround SSL Certificate page.
The certificate could be easily enabled through the Magento Admin area -> System -> Configuration -> Web. There you can define the insecure (non-SSL) and secure (SSL) URLs:
In the Base URL fields you should enter the unsecure (regular) web site URL and the web site URL for the SSL connections. You can leave the other values unchanged, as they will be set automatically by the script after you enter the Base URL. Basically the other fields define the URLs of the main Magento store page and the URLs of the skin, media and JavaScript folders. The drop-down menus allow you to enable and disable the SSL support for the web site's frontend and backend.
