What is Magento?

Magento is a PHP/MySQL open source script that you can install on your web site to run a eCommerce store (online shop).

Resources

Official Demo | Official SSH installation instructions | Official FTP installation instructions | Usage Screencasts | Forum

Current Latest Vesion

0.6.13700

Features

• Offers single page checkout
• Ship to multiple addresses
• Advanced marketing tools
• Search engine optimized
• More

Requirements

• Linux or another UNIX-compatible operating system
• Apache Web Server (1.x or 2.x)
• PHP 5.2.0 or newer
• MySQL 4.1.20 or newer
• A Sendmail-compatible Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) - Magento will connect directly to an SMTP server if you don’t have an MTA

Installation Instructions

Magento comes in two flavors: Light and Full. Full version contains a sample product database. Light version does not. If you’d like an install with sample data, choose the full.

In this tutorial I am going to install Magento (Light) on shared hosting environment (DreamHost to be specific) via SSH at http://scriptful.com/sri-addons/scripts/magento/. If your host doesn’t provide shell access, you can still install it using a FTP client. Let’s get started.

1. Connect to your web server space via a SSH client (I recommend and use Poderosa). Navigate to where you want to install Magento.

2. Execute:

wget http://www.magentocommerce.com/downloads/assets/0.6.13700/light/magento-0.6.13700.tar.gz

3. Execute:

cd magento

4. Execute:

chmod o+w var var/.htaccess app/etc

5. Execute:

chmod -R o+w media

6. Visit the URL of your installation (Ex.: http://scriptful.com/sri-addons/scripts/magento/). Agree to the terms & conditions; choose your region, time zone and default currency.

7. Create a MySQL database via the control panel provided by your host.

8. Switch back to installation page, enter the DB access info.

Leave the values in Default store section as is.

Enter the details of Secure Connection. [Purpose: When a visitor sends information to your site, for example, by filling out a form, the secure server feature encrypts that information while it is in transit to your site. This keeps the information safe from any potential prying eyes. This is especially useful when users are sending you sensitive data, such as credit card numbers].
You can contact your host for details on these. If you are a DreamHost user, check out this wiki page. For the purpose of this tutorial, I am going to enter the same values as in the Default Store for the Secure Connection section (this is just a demo installation, not a real production store).

9. Click Continue. If you receive a warning/error regarding validation of URL, tick Skip URL validation and continue. Usually you don’t have to.

10. Create an admin account. Fill in the details. In the Encryption Key section, either let the system generate it (preferred) or you enter one.

That’s it! Your new eCommerce store admin panel will be at http://<Magento URL>/admin.

Screencast

I have recorded the screen activity of Magento installation as a 800×600 5min (6MB) flash movie. Click on the image below to watch (auto starts):

Conclusion

Magento is the latest open source eCommerce solution using which you can build an attractive and feature-rich online shopping solution. It has not yet grown (still in beta) to compete w/ the likes of osCommerce but is heading in the right direction. You might want to hold back from using it on real production sites until it’s out of beta. Till then, install Magento on a sandbox site and familiarize yourself with its features and see how easy/hard it is to customize.

Feel free to comment if you have questions regarding my tutorial. For other questions, head over to their forum.