Magento is a popular open source e-commerce project. While it comes with a number of 'default' themes to change the look and feel of your store, many people both new and old to Magento struggle with even the more basic aspects of customizing Magento themes. When you read this book you'll see how to change the basics of your Magento theme, create a new custom theme, and much more.
The book is a step-by-step guide to theming Magento, aimed at readers with little technical expertise.
In short, the book guides the common aspects of theming and customizing Magento 1.4 and an equally useful step-by-step walkthrough of integrating more unusual items into your Magento store.
Chapter 1, Introduction to Magento, introduces Magento, including the installation of the software and avoiding common pitfalls in this process. This chapter is an invaluable guide for those who are new to everything in Magento, or just those who are new to Magento 1.4.
Chapter 2, Exploring Magento Themes, introduces theming in the context of Magento and covers terminology used within the Magento project that relates to Magento in a wider context—from interfaces to packages—and more specifically, theme terminology, from skins to layouts, and template files.
Chapter 3, Magento Theme Basics, covers the basics of Magento theming, from changing your store's color scheme to updating your store's logo. This chapter concentrates on altering existing Magento themes to achieve the theming aims for your store.
Chapter 4, Magento Theme Layouts, provides an overview of what a layout is in the context of the Magento system, related terminology including layout handles and layout actions, and uses a number of useful step-by-step guides to common tasks you may need to use within Magento to create your theme.
Chapter 5, Non-default Magento Themes, covers the building blocks of creating your own Magento 1.4 theme, from replicating the necessary file hierarchy for your theme to enabling your new theme, styling your store's search feature, and altering your store's footer area.
Chapter 6, More Magento Theming, built on the previous chapter's content, from integrating @font-face fonts into your Magento store for higher-fidelity typography in your Magento store to customizing your store's navigation.
Chapter 7, Customizing Advanced Magento Layout, looks into more advanced customization and manipulation of Magento layout in order to customize your Magento store.
Chapter 8, Magento E-mail Templates, looks at customizing e-mail templates that are used to contact customers during key processes of their interaction with your Magento store, as well as integrating the well-known e-mail newsletter system-CampaignMonitor.
Chapter 9, Social Media and Magento, guides you through integrating popular social media websites—Twitter and Facebook—with your Magento store, from adding a Facebook Like button to your store to adding your latest tweets to your Magento store.
Chapter 10, Magento Print Style, sees you creating a custom print stylesheet to better allow your store's customers to print key pages from your store.
You will need version 1.4 of Magento Community Edition or the equivalent version of the Enterprise or Professional editions. A familiarity with CSS and (X)HTML is recommended, and knowledge of PHP is beneficial.
This book is aimed at web designers and web developers who are not familiar with Magento at all and to Magento designers and developers who are more familiar with Magento 1.3 than Magento 1.4. The book assumes knowledge of HTML and CSS and an awareness, but not in-depth knowledge of PHP syntax.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: " The default layout for the checkout view is defined in the checkout.xml file in the app/design/frontend/base/default/layout directory."
A block of code is set as follows:
<action method="setTemplate"> <template>page/2columns-left.phtml</template> </action>
When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
<reference name="left">
<block type="core/template" name="left.permanent.callout" template="callouts/left_col.phtml" />
</reference>New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: " Uncheck the checkbox next to Add Block Names to Hints and select Yes from the drop-down field ".
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