Magento - Understanding Theme and Path of Magento

In previous article, we learnt to install Magento Community module on your local WAMP server. Today we will start learning and getting idea for Magento architecture. Magento is bit complex for beginner to understand how exactly the flow goes and where the files exist in the directory. Actually, Magento is like a wine. The more time you spent on it, the more you will learn every day.

So, when you see “wamp/www/magento” folder within your local drive, you will see list of folders, files and other important details. The most important folders for us will be “app” and “skin” folder.
Navigate once to following paths and you will that finally you will reach to list of folders like “default”, “modern” and few others, those are called themes.

skin:
skin/frontend/default/

app:
app/design/frontend/default/

First go to skin/frontend/default/ and then copy “default” folder and paste it, rename it as “yourtheme”. Same way, do for app/design/frontend/default/, copy default folder, paste it and rename it as “yourtheme”.

skin: (Here js, css and images will come)
skin/frontend/default/yourtheme

app: (Here xml , phtml files come)
app/design/frontend/default/yourtheme

So now you are ready with your theme which we will need to put in admin to let Magento know that this is the theme is need to load while loading the site.

So go to admin section (http://localhost/magento3/admin) and then click “System > Configuration”. You will see something like “Current Configuration Scope:” in left portion with drop down box. We will keep the “Default Config” as selected and click “Design” from left panel coming under Configurations. Click “Themes” and enter “yourtheme” in Templates, Skin (Images/ CSS), Layout and Default and then click “Save Config”

That’s it, now when you refresh your front end, it will come via you new theme. You will see no change in front end since we have not done anything with the theme yet.

But before that, we will need to understand few important point of admin section which I will cover in next article.

Magento Installation Guide

In the previous article, I started the series where a reader can read and understand about the Magento and developing the shopping site using this great platform. All articles will be based on Community edition which is totally FREE. The first article of this series is about “Installing Magento” on your local WAMP or any other server.


PRE Steps:

1) Install WAMP server on your local machine. You can download the latest WAMP5 using http://www.wampserver.com/en/download.php link.

- Create database name called “magento” from phpMyAdmin of your WAMP server interface.

2) You need to create an account on Magento before you can download anything from Magento. You can create your account for FREE by registering at http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/member/register/.

3) Download latest Magento Community edition (1.4.1) on your computer by visiting http://www.magentocommerce.com/download and click “DOWNLOAD” button.

4) Extract the folder and open magento-1.4.1.1. Copy magento folder and put it in C:\wamp\www directory. Now you are ready to install Magento on your computer.

Install Magento:
1) Open “magento/app /Mage.php“ and copy following 2 lines at top part (after PHP tag start) set_time_limit(0);

ini_set(‘max_execution_time’, 0);
2) Open http://localhost/magento, and click check box of agreement. Click “Continue” to go to next step.

3) Keep the same settings in “Localization” step. However, you can update Default Currency or any other parameter as per your requirements. Click “Continue” to go to next step.

4) Put “magento” in Database Name field (make sure to create “magento” named database in your local server) and verify other details of Database Connection, click “Continue” and wait for sometime till Magento installs the tables in your database.

5) Verify that you have got 310 tables added in your database and then enter your Personal information and Login information. Don’t enter anything in Encryption Key. Once done, click “Continue” to reach final step.

6) That’s it. You have successfully installed Magento on your computer and you are ready to use it. Be sure to copy one key coming in bold in last step and put it safely for future purpose.

Here are the URLs to start with.
Front End: http://localhost/magento
Back End: http://localhost/magento/admin
Next article will be the overview of admin back end to give you the idea of the Magento power and also show your some of the front end features and pages.

Content Management System Solutions With Drupal

Drupal is one of open source software which is used on wide platform to develop Content Management System (CMS) applications. CMS comes in wide range for different purposes whether to develop corporate CMS websites, create personal blogs, manage social networking sites or streamlining enterprise resources, etc.

This outstanding platform offers you opportunity to manage an extensive of content-text, video, blog, podcasts on your website. Further, free of cost under General Public License of drupal makes it more popular. Drupal software package usage allows one to build a website of his choice as well as requirements by providing much flexibility. To update the website made in Drupal becomes very easy; moreover, when need arises one can create new features in the website to meet the ever-changing needs.

Drupal stands with over the 6000 modules which meet up different needs of users. However, there is no any requirement to recreate features as one can address his/her requirements with these available add-on modules. Presentation layer of Drupal lets the designers to have an opportunity to create highly interactive website which appeals to its targeted viewers as well as enhance web traffic.
Nowadays, social networking sites involve forum discussions which can be easily and effectively developed using Drupal. With Drupal you can create applications in the website with Drupal modules which helps both users and participators of discussion for sharing their opinions. In addition, the drupal platform site owner has full control on users as to which part of the content will be available for users to view and to put opinion. Thus, administrator allows users to view as well as create content by assigning them different roles.

Web designers and developers are using Drupal software to help their clients in managing their CMS needs by developing websites in Drupal. Further, Drupal websites are secure enough to work with. To get started with Drupal project one has to download free files from Drupal Core. The technical requirements to work with Drupal are PHP programming language and MySQL database server.
If we take a look in the most interesting fact of Drupal then it is Drupal’s ability to offer advanced and sophisticated programming interface for web developers, without any special programming skills to develop basic websites.

So, sum all above influences web design companies these days to use this open source software for developing websites.

Role of KEI - Keyword Effectiveness Index

KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) is the crucial idiom to calculate the value of keyword phrases for targeting your blogs and websites. KEI is simply associated with indication of how popular a search phrase as well as how competitive the market for this search phrase.

KEI stats the (Number of monthly searches) squared divided by (Competing Pages). This mathematical equation tells a lot concerning the keyword competition for SEO experts, online marketers as well as surely for bloggers.

How to determine the popularity of a keyword?

Usually, we requite to look at the monthly searches in a specific search engine for that you can use Google Adwords keyword tool or Word Checker to determine this value. However, many beginner keyword researchers believe that the most popular keyword is the best choice to target, but they are wrong as more searches means more competition.

The competition in terms of search engines: Competition is resolute by contending pages for a keyword phrase in search engines. If a general keyword (such as “Real Estate”) is searched several hundred thousand times in a month at a search engine, thus it will of course have numerous millions pages competing to illustrate at the first page results of the search engines.

We should find moderately searched with small-to-moderate competition. For example. Let’s say keyword phrase A is searched for 100 times a month and 10 competing pages. Another keyword phrase B is 1000 times a month and 100 competing pages. Now, if we didn’t square these terms as well as simply divide then they would give the same results for KEI!

Take in concern that as per our KEI formula (squared) B is much more logical to target as 100 times/month is a small number which actually it will not bring much income unless it is a highly priced keyword.

Furthermore, when you are calculating KEI for serious SEO investment, it is astute to look for keyword phrases those are searched at least 1000 times/month.

Benefits of DMOZ Listing

Significance of page rank is a basis for many contests on search engine optimization forums anywhere several experts squabble whether or not it is all that important to have a higher page rank, and if that then it truly helps a company to enlarge their sales as well as overall revenue.

The DMOZ directory submission, or The Open Directory Project, is now so highly observed that any reputable SEO services company is now present its customers with a DMOZ submission tune. One more reason why the DMOZ site submission is now marked in the services lists of search engine optimization companies is that performing a DMOZ submission can prove to be extremely difficult, or even not possible in some cases, for anyone other than optimization experts.

 

Benefits of DMOZ directory submission or a DMOZ site submission:

- Provide a tremendous boost in page rank, search engine companies charge their clients accordingly.

- Any DMOZ site submission will take anywhere from one to three weeks until the time when the site gets features on DMOZ.

- Purchasing a DMOZ directory submission is not only beneficial because it raises the website’s page rank, but also because this directory get over one million visitors each month.

Majority of these visitors go there with the firm intent of finding a website where they can get information, make purchases and so on. Essentially, the DMOZ submission offers website owners with two prominent paybacks. Way in which a DMOZ submission offers a much larger visibility for the website is the integration of any specific website’s keywords in the actual submission. Thus, this SEO service is not much different than most of the other SEO service, with the only main difference residing in the fact that it does not require multiple submissions to provide great results.