Magento is an open source E-commerce software, created by Varien which is useful for online business and it has the flexible modular architecture. It is scalable and it has many control options that helps the user. Magento uses E-commerce platform which offers companies ultimate E-commerce solutions and extensive support network.

The uses of Magento are −

• Magento is open source E-commerce software.

• It is scalable and offers small companies to build business.

• It provides the searching and sorting of products in several ways.

• Easily integrates with many of the third-party sites which are needed to run effective E-commerce website.

• Using this, customer can order or purchase number of products. There are no limits on number of purchasing products.

The Web-Hosting sites of Magento are −

• SiteGround

• BlueHost

• HostGator

• Inmotion

• Arvixe

• site5

The disadvantages of Magento are −

• Magento uses larger disk space and memory.

• It takes much time to build the customized functionality.

• It is very slow compared to other E-commerce sites.

• It needs proper hosting environment, if the hosting environment is improper the user can face the problems.

The Web-server that supports Magento are −

• Apache 2.x
• Nginx 1.7.x

Products are the items or things that are sold in Magento. Product can be anything that is capable of satisfying customer needs. This includes both physical products and services.

The product types available in Magento are −

• Simple Products
• Grouped Products
• Configurable Products
• Virtual Products
• Bundled Products
• Downloadable Products

Inventory allows setting a product”s stock quantity. For instance, you have a product with 100 units in stock. If you set the stock availability to “Out of Stock” then it will force the item to be out of stock.

The categories of E-Commerce are:

• Business to Business(B2B)

• Business to Consumer(B2C)

• Consumer to Consumer(C2C)

• Consumer to Business(C2B)

Rate Percent specify the percent of the tax rate.

Priority field specifies when the tax should be applied to other tax rules.

The Zero Subtotal Checkout panel is a payment option that displays when order total is zero and not required to enter payment details for the customer.

It is additional security functionality where customer needs to provide credit card password to complete the purchase order.

The two methods of PayPal Payment Gateways are −

• Payflow Pro (Includes Express Checkout)

• Payflow Link (Includes Express Checkout)

The Payflow Pro option is customizable payment gateway which can be used with merchant account to process credit card transactions.

Payflow Link option often called as hosted payment gateway that keeps customer on your site by providing fast and easy way to add transaction processing to your site.

My Cart Link panel specifies whether the number of quantities in the cart should be shown or whether the number of different products should be shown using the Display Cart Summaryfield.

Google Checkout is online payment processing service provided by Google. Magento allows integration of online stores with Google checkout. It is like PayPal that simplifies the process of paying for online purchases.

Order management is important thing which allows business to run smoothly and keeps customers happy, making them more likely to visit your site in the future.

Google Analytics is a finest Google service for those who are actively managing websites and adds analytics to Magento store including Ecommerce tracking and conversions of their websites.

Layout files are useful in rendering front pages of Magento.

Magento CMS (Content Management System) section is used to manage all web site pages. It is a way of promoting the products by providing valuable information to the customers and increases visibility to search engines.

Static block is a piece of content can be used anywhere in the pages. Magento allows creating blocks of content that can be used through the store and can be added to any page or another block.

Polls are used to get customer”s opinions and preferences. The poll results appear immediately after response is submitted.

Following points describe how to optimize the Magento environment

• It uses complex database, so that it needs to be run on dedicated servers.

• Magento application could be optimized by using cloud computing.

• Merge you JavaScript and CSS files which reduces the load time dramatically since its loading only one merged file.

• Proper MySQL configuration is one of the most important aspects in terms of performance.

• Always upgrade to the latest Magento version allows to perform better.

The following points specify how to optimize the magento configuration

• To speed up Magento performance, don”t run mysql and web server on the same machine.

• Do not host files on your web server that you do not use.

• Optimization of session storage.

• Enabling Magento flat catalog. (Magento uses a complex and resource-intensive Entity Attribute Value [or EAV] based catalog). After initial catalog establishment, enabling the flat catalog can dramatically improve database querying time.

• Identification and disabling of unused Magento modules.

The process of Code Optimization are −

• Removal of unused or unnecessary code processes.

• To optimize Magento performance, JavaScript and CSS files need to be compressed and aggregated.

• Conformance of all site images to optimal web image sizes.

• Identification of bottlenecks(process that causes the entire process to slow down or stop) processes in both front-end and back-end.

The following points describe how to improve the performance of database −

• Unused data must be cleaned up regularly for better performance.

• Optimization of database queries.

• Configuration of setting and limits of the database server (e.g. memory setting, query cache, sort buffer optimization).

PHP 5.4 +

It stands for Web Services Description Language. It is used for describing web services and how to access them.

It is used to set threshold number. When the units of that product are drop to that number, it will display Only X left message on the product details page.

Payment gateway processes the credit card data securely between customer and merchant and also between merchant and the payment processor. It is like checkpoint that protects customers against attempting to gather personal and financial information from customers and also act as mediator between the merchant and sponsoring bank.

Orders follow a standard life cycle process. When customer place product orders, it arrive in the administration interface with a pending status. When order is processed, the status of order changes according to current state in the processing workflow. Once the invoice is created for the order, the status changes from pending to processing status. Next it creates shipment for an order which changes the status from pending to complete status.

The two sections present in Design section are −

• Page Layout
• Custom Design

The Page Layout section contains a Layout option which allows selecting layout as per your choice and Layout Update XML option inserts the XML code.

The Meta Data section contains Keywords and description of the page.

Customer can subscribe to Newsletters using Magento. Customer can sign up for the Newsletter when he creates a new customer account which contains checkbox for signing up. For creating Newsletters you need to enable Newsletter option in your magento to make sure that customer has confirmed to receive Newsletter.

The following points show how to optimize the Magento front-end performance −

• Use the latest version of php, so that you can perform front-end operation much better and faster. The newest released version may cause the errors, so carefully read the release notes and check out the new version.

• Use the clean database to improve the performance of magento. The database logs need to be clear regularly. The database stores the automatically created logs to keep track of record session and interaction.

This is a group of simple products. In this type, you cannot specify a specific price for product; you can just specify the discount.

In this type, customer can select products according to their color and size before purchasing.

Example − Cell phones obtained in different colors and sizes.

Bundled products are those products which cannot be sold separately and doesn”t give any choice for end user.

If it is enabled, customer can buy products even if they are out of stock.

Tax rules are entities that combine product tax classes, customer tax classes and tax rates.

Manage Stores section, you will see website names, store names and Store View Name columns.

E-commerce (Electronic Commerce) is a type of business that involves the commercial transaction or purchasing or selling of goods and services through electronic channels known as internet.

The features of Magento are −

• Magento provides different payment methods such as credit cards, PayPal, cheques, money order, Google checkouts.

• It provides shipping of products in one order to the multiple addresses.

• Easy to manage the orders by using admin panel.

• It filters the products and displays in grid or list format.

The advantages of magento are −

• It is user friendly E-commerce software.

• It is compatible with Smartphone”s, tablets and other mobile devices.

• It provides multiple payment options so every visitor can make payment based on their preferred payment gateway.

• It has many extensions which supports for the development of an online store.

MySql Database

MySQL 5.1

This transaction is between consumer or customer and business or companies where consumer makes a product that the company uses to complete business.