An Introduction to Magento: Open Source Ecommerce
I have been learning Magento for the past few months, for a client’s website that I have been working on. Its a pretty robust Open Source Ecommerce plaform that is built on the Zend PHP Framework. At first, it was rather daunting trying to find my way around the software - its pretty robust and the documentation for creating a theme feels rather incomplete. It’s nothing like WordPress which I would take in a heartbeat, if they had a solid enough Ecommerce plugin, I have been spoiled by the WordPress Theme engine for quite some time now.
To make my way around Magento, I have been finding bits and pieces of information scattered across many websites. To make it easier for others, Im going to try to assemble the basics here for you.
The hardest piece for me to grasp has been the folder structure, you have to bounce between two places to build a theme, here is a rundown.
http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/Magento-folder-structure/
- /skin//
/ - is where design package css and images are - /app/design is location of design packages (layouts, templates, translations)
- /app/design//
- theme customizations - /app/design//
/layout - .xml files that define block structure for different cases in website flow - /app/design//
/template - .phtml (html with php tags) templates - /app/design//
/translate - Zend_Db compatible translation files
Common Template Path Hints
<?=$this->getSkinUrl('css/styles.css')?>
<?=$this->getJsUrl()?>
Online Resources
