This post covers an overview os Magento 2, how to install Magento2 via Softaculous and the standard configuration settings in Magento2.
Further reading:
How to manage content in Magento 2
How to manage sales and promotions in Magento 2
How to Install Magento 2 via Softaculous
To easily install Magento 2, you can use the Softaculous auto-installer available from your cPanel. It will automate the steps needed for the installation into one configuration page and 30 seconds of waiting for the install.
To install Magento 2 via Softaculous, you will need to:
- Step 1: Locate Softaculous in cPanel
- Step 2: Configure the Installation
- Step 3: Create an Administrators Account
Locate Softaculous in cPanel
To access your Softaculous auto-installer simply login in your cPanel navigate to the Software/Services section and click on the Softaculous Apps Installer icon.
Now you will need to use the Search bar to look for Magento and click on it.
Configure the Installation
Here you will see different tabs containing overview of the features and reviews of the platform. Click on the Install tab to continue.
Now you will be able to configure the Installation details:
- Choose the version you want to install - Here, you will need to select version 2.0.0
- Choose Protocol - If you have a valid SSL certificate activated for your domain, then you can select https://
HTTP vs HTTPS
Installing your Magento 2 application for the https:// protocol, without having a valid SSL certificate, might affect your website accessibility or result in security warnings. If you need a hosting solution with SSL certificate to secure your store, you may review our Magento 2 Hosting plans.
- Choose Domain - Select the domain on which you would like to install Magento 2
- In Directory - If you want to have your store accessible directly via your domain name (http://example.com) then you should leave this box empty. In case you would like to have your Magento store accessible via any subdirectory (http://example.com/store/), please fill the directory's name.
Create an Administrators Account
- Admin Username - The username for your admin account
- Admin Password - The password for your admin account
- First Name - The First Name of the owner of the admin account
- Last Name - The Last Name of the owner of the admin account
- Admin Email - An email that will be associated with the Admin account and on which you will be able to receive account recovery emails and store emails.
You will be able to setup a few Advanced Options as well:
- Database Name - Here you can change the name of the database that will be created during the installation process
- Table Prefix - Prefixes are used to distinguish different applications’ tables situated in the same database, you can leave that as it is or change it for a more secure database
- Disable Update Notifications - If you checkmark this box, you will not receive notifications for newer versions of Magento
When you are ready to complete the installation, click on the Install button. Once done, you will receive confirmation and links to both your Store's front-end and Admin area.
Congratulations, you have successfully installed Magento 2 using the Softaculous auto-installer.
Further reading:
Overview of Magento2
Magento 2 is the technological continuation of the Magento platform. After a several years of development, Magento 2 shows an impressive advancement in the e-commerce field by bringing some key features and making more efficient resource use of the current generation of Servers. Here are a few of the improvements we mentioned:
- Increased Speed -The full page caching provides an immense boost in loading speed on sequential page visits while the optimized code makes Magento 2 25% faster right after installation compared to version 1.9
- Increased Security - The strengthened hashing algorithms (SHA-256) help in password management while the X-Frame-Options HTTP request header provides protection against clickjacking attacks. There are also new settings regarding mode switching (developer/production) that restrict permissions on application files.
- Improved Scaling Potential - Database separation allows for dedicated databases servicing specific store features thus increasing the potential load the platform can take. On another note, the overall Scalability of the Catalog has been improved by more than 1800%
- Simpler and Faster Checkout Process - During our tests, we managed to checkout from Magento 2 via a credit card in around 40 seconds from start to finish plus the loading times which is extremely fast. This was possible due to a few tweaks in the form fields and the removal of the credit card type menu which is obsolete nowadays. Making the checkout process seamless, is a great improvement that will surely increase the usage of the application.
Magento's ever growing market share, is a sign that the platform is heading in the right direction. The newest installment of the application comes with all new system requirements which must be met in order for it to work.
Further reading:
Magento 2 maintenance and advanced tutorials
System requirements:
Operating systems (Linux x86-64) - Linux distributions such as RedHat Enterprice Linux (RHEL), CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian etc
Composer (latest stable version) - Composer is required for developers who wish to contribute to the Magento 2 codebase or anyone who wishes to develop Magento extensions
Web servers
- Apache 2.2 or 2.4 with mod_rewrite enabled.
- nginx 1.8 (or latest stable version)
Database
- MySQL 5.6
- MySQL 5.7
PHP
- 5.5.x
- 5.6.x
- Magento 2.3.1 has been tested up to PHP 7.2.11 and support for PHP 7.2 is scheduled for releases 2.3.x+
* Magento no longer supports PHP 5.4.
Required PHP extensions:
- PDO/MySQL
- mbstring
- mcrypt
- hash
- SimpleXML
- curl
- xsl
- dom
- ctype
- iconv
- spl
- zip
- libxml
- gd, ImageMagick 6.3.7 (or later)
- soap
- intl
- bc-math (enterprice edition only)
- openssl
Requirements
Our Magento 2 Hosting is fully compatible with Magento 2 and our plans meet all additional recommendations. Furthermore, our servers are running on SSD disks for the best Magento 2 experience.
Useful Resources for Magento 2 users:
- Magento 2 Hosting
- Official Magento 2 Website
- Magento 2 Documentation
- Official Magento 2 Forum
- Official Magento 2 Blog
How to Configure the Design Settings of Magento 2
With Magento’s version 2.1 changes some of the design options have switched menus inside the Admin Dashboard, so due to a request from our users, we have added this updated tutorial on how to find the design settings and use them to change your website's favicon, logo and footer copyright message among other things.
The first thing you will need to do is to log in your admin area inside your Magento website. Afterwards, navigate to CONTENT ? Configuration.
Now select the store and level on which you wish to edit the design by clicking on the Edit action.
Theme Warning
Note that some of these settings may not apply unless you choose the applied theme (if a custom one is applied at the moment)
Select the Other Settings submenu and expand the HTML Head option.
Here you will be able to add your favicon. Due note that Magento supports the following file types for favicon:
- .ico
- .png
- .apng
- .gif
- .jpg
- .jpeg
- .svg
While not all browsers support all these formats the most used and well known format for a favicon is the .ico.
The other important option here is the Default Title. This title will be used for any page that does not have a specific Title predefined for it. The prefix and suffix options can be to add a certain word phrase before or after all page titles in bulk.
To add a new Logo for your Store, expand the Header option which is right below the HTML Head one. The allowed formats are
- .png
- .gif
- .jpg
- .jpeg
Now you can add/change the logo, configure its width and height as well as add a Welcome Message for your store and alternative text for the logo so search engines can crawl it correctly.
With this you can substitute the default Magento copyright message or any custom one that may appear with a theme you have enabled with your company's.
Don't forget to click the Save Configuration option in the upper right corner to save the changes you just made and Flush your Magento Cache if caching is enabled.
After you have successfully installed Magento 2, you will need to configure the general settings for your store.
The first thing you will need to do, is accessing the admin dashboard of your Store and navigating to the Stores ? Configuration section.
Here, select the General option from the navigation menu on the left and you will be presented with these settings to configure.
Locale Options:
- Timezone - The Time zone of the Store
- Locale - The default language
- Weight Unit - The weight unit that will be used for the products of your store (and in weight shipping)
- First Day of Week - Setup the Calendar of your store
- Weekend Days - Select the Weekend Days for your store
Store Information:
- Store Name - The name of your Store
- Store Phone Number - The phone number for contact
- Store Hours of Operation - The hours during which your store is open
- Country - The Country in which the store is situated
- Region/State - The region in which the store is located
- ZIP/Postal Code - The ZIP/Postal Code of the area in which the store is located
- City - The City in which the store is located
- Street Address - The Street Address of the Store
- VAT Number - The VAT Number for your store (this will make sure VATs are calculated correctly)
You now know how to configure the general settings for your Magento 2 Store.
Magento 2 comes pre-defined with a Contact Us page which can be used by your customers to leave feedback or ask questions. The link for the page is located in the footer but can be moved to another place if needed.
To modify the content of the contact form, login to your admin dashboard and navigate to the Stores ? Configuration ? Contacts section.
You will see the following options:
- Enable Contact Us - This should be set to Yes if you wish to have the Contact Us page on your Store
- Send Emails To - Here type the email address on which you want to receive all of the messages submitted via the form
- Email Sender - This option is used for the email "From" field.
- Email Template - From here you can select the template of the email. You can create new Email Templates by going to Marketing ? Email Templates.
Click on the Save Config button to apply the changes.
Search Engines will craw your website in order to index all of your Store’s content and products. To make this process more efficient you can optimize your Magento 2 website by enabling Search Engine Friendly URLs (SEF URLs). This will also make your URLs easier to read by your customers and on websites when they are being shared. Usually this feature is enabled by default, but if you are not seeing the URLs as they should be you will have to re-enable it.
To activate the SEF URLs for your Store, you will need to first login to your admin dashboard and then navigate to the Stores ? Configuration ? Web section.
Now simply select Yes from the drop-down menu on the Use Web Server Rewrites option.
Magento uses the Apache mod_rewrite to create the SEF URLs. If your Magento store is installed in the root of your domain (http://yourdomain.com) you will not have to perform any changes in this file. However, if your Magento store is located under a subdirectory (http://domainc.om/magento/) you will need to edit the .htaccess file by changing the following line:
#RewriteBase /magento/
to
RewriteBase /your-magento2-folder-here/
Congratulations, your store now uses Search Engine Friendly URLs.
The SSL protection of online stores has become standard procedure in the e-commerce field. Not only that it will add security for your visitors during they sign up, but also protect their credit card and personal information by encrypting it. Having an SSL activated for your Store will also attract more clients as your business gains credibility.
Free Let's Encript SSL
Todhost's Magento 2 Hosting SpeedUp package is optimized to provide fast and secure hosting environment for all Magento features and comes with Free
Let's Encript SSL Certificate.
After you have the SSL installed on your domain, you will need to enable it via the Magento 2 admin dashboard by navigating to the Stores ? Configuration ? Web section.
Now select the Base URL (Secure) and edit the first field Secure Base URL by changing http:// to https://
If you wish to make the entire Store's front-end to open only via HTTPS, set Use Secure URLs on Storefront to Yes. Note that this might have negative impact on your website's performance as it will load every element via https instead only the sensitive information.
To secure the Admin area of your Store with SSL, set the Use Secure URLs in Admin option to Yes.
Congratulations, your Magento 2 Store is now more secure.
How to Configure the Currencies in Magento 2
Changing the currencies for your Magento 2.0 Store is easy as you will not need to add a new currency and configure its value, symbol and shortcode. You will simply need to login to your admin dashboard and navigate to the Stores ? Configure section from the main admin panel.
Now access the General>Currency Setup section.
Here, you will be able to change the Base and Default currencies for your Store from a list of pre-defined currencies.
You now know, from where to edit the currencies used by your store.
