keith.kg

Magento

Add Terms and Conditions to the Magento Checkout

This tutorial will explain how to add an “accept terms & conditions” checkbox to your Magneto checkout process.

The first step is to turn on the Terms and Conditions in checkout. Login to Magneto and navigate to System > Configuration. Click on the Checkout tab on the left hand side. In the Checkout Options box locate “Enable Terms and Conditions” and choose “Yes” from the drop down menu. Click Save Config in the top left of the screen.

The next step is to set-up an instance of Terms and Conditions. Go to Sales > Terms and Conditions. Click Add New Condition, top left. Give your condition a name and set status to enabled. The Checkbox text is the text which appears beside the check box in the checkout. The Content will appear in a scrolling text area just above the text box, which is where you can add your full terms and conditions. If required you can specify the height of your conditions box, but the default value will work for most instances.

When you have finished editing your terms and conditions you can save it. The new conditions will appear in the checkout and will appear in the final confirmation step of one-page-checkout.

Magento 1.4.1.0

The latest version of Magento, 1.4.1.0 has been launched, and much improved since 1.4.0.1.

The new version has made huge improvements to the content management system and WYSIWYG editor TinyMCE (started in 1.4.0.1). Live categories can be excluded from the navigation menu, URL rewrites now include a history to redirect older links to the new. The system configuration section has been given a make-over and your site can now accept recurring payments for subscriptions and the like. The Sales Reports (Orders, Tax, Invoiced, Shipping, Refunds, Coupons) have been reviewed.

Upgrading is not so easy, and there are still bugs which could mean some stick with older instillations. One issue relates to Magento’s themes and templating system which can break depending but there are a few easy fixes for most of the problems to date. For new websites it seems to be working well and we’ve had no major problems.

You can read through the official documentation on the Magento website magentocommerce.com

How to install extensions with Magento Connect

First, sign into your Magento store admin. Navigate to System > Magento Connect > Magento Connect Manager, or go directly via yourdomain.com/downloader. Enter your admin username and password. At the top of the screen will be the text box like the image above. Paste the extension key from the Magento Connect website as above and click install. The page will jump down to the console box which will inform you weather the extension was installed and if not, why.

Some extensions are only available in Beta, this means they are not quite ready to be declared stable but may work and function properly as expected. In connect manager click on the settings tab and on the “Preferred State” drop-down choose the “Beta” option. Go back to the extensions tab and enter your extension key again.

File Permissions

Occasionally, depending on server-setup and instillation you may encounter the error “Error: Please check for sufficient write file permisssions”. This is caused when the file permissions are set-up to stop the server from writing files and folders. The fix  is fairly simple, you’ll need access to Shell (SSH) and follow the instructions here. If you would rather leave the file permissions, then you will need to install extensions via Shell.

Tutorial: Set-up a Discount Coupon in Magento

Magento has a built in promotions system. This can be use to create two for one offers, category discounts and much more. I this tutorial we’ll set-up a coupon code for a 10% discount.

Login to the Magento Admin Panel and go to Promotions > Shopping Cart Prices Rules. Then click on the “Add New Rule” link at the top of the page. You’ll be taken to a new page with three tabs down the left hand side.

Give your new rule a name, set the status to Active and choose which customer groups it may be applied to. Next enter your coupon code, make it something simple, but nothing too easy to crack “MAYDAY10″, “CHRISTMAS2010″ something along those lines. You can choose to set the users per coupon and uses per customer. Next choose the start and end date of the promotion, or leave blank to allow them for all time.

The Conditions tab is next you can use this to set specific rules which must be true before the coupon will be applied. For example you could require a product form a specific category to be included in the cart. Otherwise leave this blank and click on the Actions tab.

Choose where you want to discount applied in this instance we want to apply a 10% discount to everything in the cart so choose “Percent of product price discount” and set the discount amount to 10. You can specify a maximum number of products to apply the discount, and a discount quantity step. Specifiy if the coupon included free shipping and select wheather or not to allow more rules to be applied to the cart.

In the next box you can set the discount to only be applied to specific products, In a clothing shop you might only want the discount on T-Shirts, or you might only want to apply it to products of a specific price or weight, it’s all there.

Click on Save Rule. Then you should double check it does what you expect and then let your customers in on the code.

That’s it.

Tutorial: Magento CSV Batch Product Upload

There are a few different ways to import products into Magento. The fastest way to upload lots of products is the CSV spreadsheet import. This can be done using a number of methods, but here I will explain the super-easy way. First thing we need is to get a template into which we can add our other products. Using this method we can add Simple Products.

Login to Magento and add a new product. We’ll use this as a basis for our CSV, you could add a few products making sure you set different options and setting for each to give a wider set of variables.

Export Sample CSV

The next step is to export your example products into a CSV file which you an edit and update in Microsoft Excel, or other spreadsheet application. Go to System > Import/Export > Profiles. Click on the “Export All Products” option. The default options on the wizard page should be acceptable, but double check the format type is CSV, you’ll want headers in the first row and you will want all the fields to begin with. There should be no export filters applied.

Click on the “Run Profile” tab on the left hand side, click on “Run Profile In Popup”. A page will pop-up showing the progress of the export. Once the export has completed you will have to log-into your website filesystem. Navigate to the <magento-install>/var/export in which you’ll find the CSV file. Download this onto your local computer.

Edit Original CSV Spreadsheet

Open up the file, it should open correctly in a spreadsheet application, if not right click and choose the program from the options. It will look something like the one at the top of this post.  The list below are the ones you are most likley to use, with example content.

• store
• websites
• attribute_set
• type – “default”
• sku – product ID
• category_ids – “3,4,2″
• name
• short_description
• description
• price – “3.33″
• weight “1.4″
• visibility – “Catalog, Search”
• tax_class -”Taxable Goods”
• qty – “34″
• is_in_stock – “1″ for yes, “0″ for no

Simply create a new row for each of the products you wish to have in your store. Some of the columns can be duplicated (store, website, attribute_set, typpe, even category_ids) throughout your products, the rest need to be entered manually, or copied from another source. In Microsoft Excel when saving your spreadsheet select the alternative format “CSV (MSDOS)” your document should have a .csv extension like the original.

Upload Products CSV

Once you have completed your spreadsheet you’ll have to upload it to Magento, then import the products using the Import All Products profile. Go go System > Import/Export > Profiles. Click on the “Import All Products” profile, and select the “Upload File” tab, find and upload your document. Now click the profile wizard tab, again, the default settings should be fine; make sure the format is CSV.

Import Products

Select the “Run Profile” tab and choose your file from the drop-down menu. Click on the “Run Profile in Popup”, a pop-up will show your product as they are imported to the system. The original spreadsheet you created also acts as a back-up of your products. I will discuss exporting produts from Magneto at a later date, but invoices much the same Import/Export profiles.

That’s it.

Tutorial: Manage Magento Tax Zones and Rules

The first thing you will have to do is set-up the Tax Zones. In this case we’re setting up a website which will operate in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland. This means we need to two Tax Zones each with it’s own rate of VAT.

Tax Zones and Rates

Login to Magento to to Sales > Tax > Manage Tax Zones & Rates. You may which to delete the default zones which are already there. Click on Add new tax zone Enter an identifier for your tax rate, select the relevant country from the drop down. Enter the rate in the bottom box, for example “17.5″ for current UK vat or “21.00″ for the Irish Republic.

You will need to repeat this step for all of the tax zones you are registered to operate in. Depending on your country you may need to set tax in relation to individual provinces or states, or simply use a star “*” to apply to all in your chosen country.

Tax Rules

The next step is to set-up a rule to apply the tax rates you have set-up in the previous step. Click on Sales > Tax > Manage Tax Rules. Again, you can delete the existing rules or replace them with your new ones. Click on Add new tax rule. Give your rule a name, choose the customer group, choose what you want to apply the tax to. Then you will have to select the rule you want to apply and click on Save rule.

Additional set-up

By default your tax rules will be applied according to the customers shipping address. You may also want to clarify how tax is calculated in relation to product promotions and how tax is applied to shipping. These settings can be applied by going to System > Configuration >  Tax.

That’s it.

Important! Please note VAT rates were correct at time of publishing. For the latest please visit the United Kingdom’s HM Revenue & Customs or the Republic of Ireland’s Office of the Revenue Commissioner.

Tutorial: Set-up Configurable Products in Magento

Magento’s configurable products allow you to give users options when ordering products. This could be a product like a t-shirt which is essencially one product but can be bought in different sizes or colours.

Configurable products in Magento appear on the front-end as drop down boxes on the product pages. They are required fields and the user must select one of the options in each of the drop-down boxes before the product can be added to the cart.

Configurable products are managed via one central ‘configurable product’ and lots of associated ‘simple products’. Each of the simple products are created dynamically from the information you add to the main ‘configurable product’.

Set-up your Attributes

First thing you need to do is set-up attributes for the configurable products, like colour, size, etc. Login to magento and navigate to ‘Catalog’ > ‘Attributes’ > ‘Manage Attributes’. Click on the + Add New Attribute button in the top left of the screen.

Fill in the properties with the following settings…

• Scope = Global
• Catalog Input Type = Dropdown
• Use to Create Configurable Product = Yes

Add your attribute to a set

Navigate to ‘Catalog’ > ‘Attributes’ > ‘Manage Attribute Sets’. You can just use the Default attribute set, or create a new one based on the default. Choose the set you want to use and click on it. Drag your new attribute into the set (listed in Unassigned Attributes).

Create the Super Product

Next step is to create your configurable, or base, product. You will need to go to ‘Catalog’ > ‘Manage Products’  and click on + Add New Product. Choose your attribute set, and set the product type ‘Configurable Product’, click continue. Next you need to choose which configurable attributes you want to use to create the configurable product. You can choose as many as you want, but to make life easier for your customer you may want to limit yourself to two or three at most. Click continue.

On the next screen you need to add in the basics for the product; name, descriptions, SKU, status, price, tax, images and categories. Click on the Sage And Continue Edit button at the top of the page.

Create Associated Products

Next you will need to find the Associated Products tab, usually at the very bottom of the list on the product page. To create your configurable options you need to create Associated Products. These share the common details above, but can have different prices and most importantly you can manage the stock independently. Using the Quick Simple Product Creation box set the status, visibility, select the option(s), any additional price can be added to the option(s) and enter the quantity available. Click on Quick Create button. Each of the associated products created will appear in the list at the bottom of the page.

One thing to be careful of is when editing the product at a later date make sure you only edit the Super Product (the one with type: configurable product)

That’s it.

Magento E-Commerce

Magento is a relatively new e-commerce platform with an impressive set of out-of-the-box features.

The software itself it built using the PHP Zend Framework and designed primarily to run on an Apache server with MySQL. The most amazing feature is the community edition, a free to use, open source version. The paid-for (enterprise) edition includes an even more impressive feature set and support. Some of the basic features include:

• run one  install with multiple currencies and shops
• offer as many payment and shipping methods you require
• more promotion options than you can shake a tree at including discount codes
• enhance sales add related products
• hundreds of add-ons for additional functionality
• ship orders to multiple addresess
• compare products

Magento offers a quick and safe way to put your products online, reach far beyond your traditional customer base and into new markets. Get in touch for more information.

• Web Design for Businesses
• Magento Northern Ireland

Tutorial: Set-up Simple Products in Magento

Products are an essential element to every Magento website, this post is a basic overview of the steps required to create a simple product in Magento.

First thing’s first, log-in to Magento, and go to ‘Catelog’ > ‘Manage Products’ and click on the ‘Create New Product’ link in the top left of the page. In a standard install you should select the default attribute set and the product type should be ‘simple product’. Click continue.

Next step is to add in your product’s details. You will have to add all the require fields which can be found in the General, Prices and Inventory tabs down the left-hand-side. Required fields are marked with a red asterisk (*).

Product Images

More than likley you will want to add some images to your products, which can be done very easily by clicking on the Images tab to the left of the sccreen. Click on ‘Browse Files…’ and locate the files on your computer you want to upload. Once you have located them click on the ‘Upload Files’ button. Then, once your image(s) has uploaded  make sure you that you set active using the radio buttons (as above).

Finally, you will need to add the product to the categories you created in the last post — Tutorial: Set-up Categories in Magento. Simply click the Categories tab and check the categories you want to add the product too.

That’s it.

Tutorial: Set-up Categories in Magento

Categories are one of the more basic features of Magento. They provide a easy to use navigation and categorisation system for customers.

First, login to your Magento back-end and navigate to ‘Catalog’ > ‘Manage Categories’ (second option). Enter the name of the cateory into the first box. The second option is a drop-down called “Is Active”, basically this allows you to show or hide the category on the front-end. Set “Is Active” to “Yes” if you want it to appear on the front-end.

The URL key is what appears in the www.yourstore.com/category-name bit of the web adddress, where “category-name” is what you put in the URL key. Keep it simple, preferably lower case, use hyphens, letters and nothing else for best results.

You can also add a description, image, Page Title and Meta data. The description and image can be used to give a bit more information about the products in a category, these will appear at the top of the category page. The Meta data can be used to help with search engine optimisation.

Click on the ‘Save Category’ option on the top left of the screen. This will save your category information. Next, take a look at the left hand side, you should make sure that your cageory is inside the “Default Category”, in order for it to appear in your websites navigation.

That”s it. The next step is to add your products to Magento…