Magento Guide. Preparations
The first and the most important things you need to start your website is web hosting and domain name.
- Hosting is an offer that allows you to run your website on the internet. In a few words it’s a place for your website files on a computer permanently connected to the internet (server).
- Domain name is a name for your future website like info.template-help.com, google.com etc.
There is a huge amount of domain and hosting offers over the internet from different hosting companies. Unfortunately the web hosting market has various fraud offers that can harm your business. We recommend you to be careful in choosing a hosting provider and gather as much information as possible before ordering.
Before you can start setting up your Magento website please make sure that you and your hosting server is fully prepared for Magento.
1. Hosting requirements
Open the Magento official website at magentocommerce.com and check the Magento requirements. These are the list of features and requirements that your hosting server should fit. We recommend you to contact your hosting provider to learn if you can host Magento on their hosting server.
Some hosting companies offer automatic Magento engine installation from the hosting control panel. You can use this option in case the offered Magento version fits the Magento template requirements
2. Software requirements
If your template would be customized by the third party developer or you are willing to order the template installation from templatetuning.com you can skip this step.
Otherwise, if you are willing to customize the template yourself please make sure you have all required programs installed on your computer. You can check the template preview page to see the template software requirements. Usually you need the following programs to edit the template:
The first application you need is a archive manager, the software that can extract the files from the password protected template package.
- If you are on MAC you can use StuffitExpander software.
- If you are on Windows you can use WinZip software.
Both archive managers have free trial versions available for download so you can use them.
- Adobe Photoshop – to edit images
- Adobe Dreamweaver – to edit CSS styles, HTML and PHP files, JavaScript files etc
- Adobe Flash – in case your template has flash animation and you want to edit it
Note that the above Adobe applications are required for the template customization, in other words you need them if you want to change the template design, layout and functionality. If you are fine with the template and want only to install it and change content you don’t need any specific software.
You may also need the FTP manager to upload the files to your hosting server (in case your hosting control panel doesn’t have any). You can use any FTP manager like FileZilla, CuteFTP, TotalCommander etc
Magento Guide. Downloading
When you are done with the preparations you can start downloading the Magento engine and Magento template files to your computer.
Download correct Magento engine version
At the template preview page, in the requirements section you can see the required Magento version. Please make sure you are downloading the correct one.
The Magento engine could be downloaded from the official website at Magento.org Download > Community Edition. In case you need more recent releases you can click the Release Archives tab at the top of the Download page.
Please be attentive in selecting the download options. First of all you can can see Full Release, Preview Release and Download options.
- We highly recommend the Full Release download option. It’s the best option for Magento installation on a live hosting server.
- Preview Release is a demonstration beta version of the latest Magento version. It can’t be used for a live website.
- As for the Downloader option. It has some benefits, but there are some compatibility issues that can cause installation errors on some servers. Also the Downloader could be used to install only the latest version of Magento. If you need more recent one please go to Release Archive tab and select the full release of the version you need.
You can download Magento engine in zip, tar.gz and tar.bz2 formats. We recommend zip.
Download Magento template
After the template purchase you got an e-mail with the link to the purchase details page. There you can see your order details and download the template using the Download button.
The template is provided as a ZIP file. Download it to your computer and save it.
Magento Guide. Extracting
When you are done with the downloading you need to extract the files from the engine and template packages
To extract the files from the Magento engine ZIP package you can use any archive manager that can handle ZIP archives.
As for the template ZIP package, the situation is a bit different. The template package contains the password protected sources_XXXX.zip file. It countains the template source files and could be extracted only WinZip or StuffitExpander.
The following tutorials will show you how to extract files on Windows(WinZip) and MAC(StuffitExpander).
Magento Guide. Uploading
Upload Magento engine files
After extracting the files you need to upload the Magento engine files and folders to your hosting server. The extracted Magento engine files looks as follows:
- app
- downloader
- errors
- includes
- js
- lib
- media
- pkginfo
- shell
- skin
- var
- htaccess.sample
- index.php
- install.php
- …other files
All these files and folders should be uploaded to your hosting server.
If your hosting control panel has the built-in FTP manager that is able to extract files directly on the server you can upload the engine package as a single ZIP file and then extract it to the necessary folder.
The engine files should be uploaded to the PUBLIC_HTML or WWW directory on your server.
If you don’t see PUBLIC_HTML or WWW directories on your hosting server please contact your hosting and specify where to upload the website files
Magento Guide. Engine Installation
Please decide if you want to install Magento template sample data to make your template appear as at the preview. The sample data should be installed before the Magento engine. If you want to install the sample data please proceed to the Sample Data installation step and perform it before the engine installation.
When you are done uploading all engine files to your hosting server you can start the Magento installation procedure. Please follow the detailed video tutorial below:
Magento Guide. Theme Installation
When the engine installation is complete you can install the Magento template.
To install Magento template you need to upload the app and skin folders from the template package to the Magento root directory on your server. when the upload is complete you can activate the template from the Magento admin panel Setings > Design. Please check the detailed video tutorial below:
Magento Guide. Sample data installation
To make your template appear as at the preview or live demo page you need to install the template sample data. Sample data contains the website settings, sample products, modules, menus, images etc. It is useful when you want to see the template functionality or the examples of the pages design and layout.
Installing template sample data will remove your existing website content if you have any We do not recommend to install the template sample data over your existing website. Use it only with the clear Magento installation. Magento sample data should be installed BEFORE the Magento engine installation.
Magento templates are provided with the SQL file that contains all website sample content(except the images) and sample website settings. The SQL file should be imported into your database using your database management tool (usually phpMyAdmin).
Detailed tutorials on the sample data installation could be found above, in the theme installation part of this guide. Each theme installation tutorial shows how to install the template sample data.