This tutorial covers how to create and manage categories in Magento2 as well as create and manage products in Magento2.
How to Create Categories in Magento 2
You can use product categories to better sort the content of your Store and improve the user experience, as searching for specific products by the customers will become much easier. Magento 2 comes with a default root category but you can create your own and name it as you like. To do that, you will first need to login to the admin dashboard of your Magento 2 and navigate to Products ? Categories.
Further reading:
How to manage content in Magento 2
How to manage sales and promotions in Magento 2
Magento 2 overview, installation and configuration tutorial
Magento2 extentions, themes and advanced tutorials
Magento 2 maintenance and advanced tutorials
We have already created a root category for Men's Clothes so let us create one for Women as well:
- Name - The Name of the category
- Is Active - Activate/Deactivate the category
- URL Key - The URL leading to this directory
- Description - A short description of the category and what it contains
- Image - Here you can choose and image for the category
- Page Title - The title of the page that will show on your browser's tab
- Meta Keywords - Used by search engines to index the category's page
- Meta Description - This description will help search engines to better understand the content of the category
- Include in Navigation Menu - If you have more than 1 root categories you will need to set this to Yes.
When you are ready, click on the Save Category button to apply the changes and create the category. To create a subcategory for the new root category, simply select the root category and click on the Add Subcategory button.
Further reading:
How to manage content in Magento 2
How to manage sales and promotions in Magento 2
Magento 2 overview, installation and configuration tutorial
Magento2 extentions, themes and advanced tutorials
Magento 2 maintenance and advanced tutorials
How to Create Product Attributes in Magento 2
In this tutorial we will illustrate how you can setup your products' attributes. Attributes are an important part of your product catalog as each of them can help potential customers with choosing a certain product that corresponds to their needs. Users will also be able to search and compare products based on their attributes.
Your Magento 2 store includes predefined attributes such as Name, Price, and Description, that can be used for any product. In addition to these, you can create new custom attributes to help your clients with their choice.
To create a new attribute login to your website's admin dashboard and navigate to the Stores ? Attributes ? Product section of Store
This will open the list of all attributes currently available on store. To create a new one click on the big orange Add New Attribute button.
Now you will be able to configure the attribute.
For the purpose of this tutorial we will configure a “Size” attribute which will require multiple selections from the different sizes.
In the Advanced Attribute Properties you can setup:
- Attribute Code - The name of the attribute that will be used by the system
- Scope - Allows you to declare the attribute value saving scope like
- Website - The value of this attribute for a product can be different in different Websites but have to stay the same between Store Views contained under the same Website.
Store View - the value of this attribute for a product can be different in all Websites and all Store Views
Website - the value of this attribute for a product can be different in different Websites but have to stay the same between Store Views contained under the same Website
Global - the value of this attribute for a product must be the same for all websites and stores
- Unique Value - Set this to Yes, if you want the data saved in this attribute to be unique for each product. If you have different products made of the same material or having the same feature, leave this to No
- Input Validation for Store Owner - If you want to validate the data before applying changes to the attribute, select Yes
- Add to Column Options - To add this attribute to the list of column options please select Yes
- Use in Filter Options - If you set this to Yes the attribute will be added to the list of filter options
From the menu on the left, click on the Storefront Properties tab to configure the frontend behavior of the attribute.
To save your new attribute click on the Save Attribute button on the top right corner of your screen. This will bring you back to the attributes list page on which you should see your new attribute.
Further reading:
How to manage content in Magento 2
How to manage sales and promotions in Magento 2
Magento 2 overview, installation and configuration tutorial
How to Add a New Product in Magento 2
As with all stores, you will need to populate yours with products and configure each one of them. The process is seamless and easy to be completed by anyone.
To add a new product, please access your admin area and navigate to the Products ? Catalog from the main admin panel.
Click on the big orange Add Product button to start configuring a new Product.
Now you will be able to configure:
- Name - The name of the product
- SKU - The Stock keeping Unit of the product (for tracking the inventory of your store)
- Price - The price value of the product
- Tax Class - The Tax Class for the product
- Images and Videos - Select an image/video representing the product
- Quantity - The amount of quantity currently in stock
- Weight - The weight of the product (for shipping purposes)
- Categories - The exact category you wish to place this product in
- Description - A short description regarding the features of the product
You should thing about the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your new product. If you click on the corresponding tab from the menu bar on the left you will be presented with:
- URL Key - This will be the end of the URL when your product is being accessed (http://example.com/magento/URLkey). If not filled, it will be automatically created from the product name
- Meta Title - Specifies the title of the web page appearing on the browser
- Meta Keywords - These keywords will help the search engines with indexing your product page
- Meta Description - Describes the content of the product page to the search engines
Before you add the product, you can add a new attribute by clicking on the Add Attribute button.
When you are done, click on the Save button to finalize the product creation process.
Congratulations, you can now add products to your Magento 2 based Store.
Further reading:
How to manage content in Magento 2
How to manage sales and promotions in Magento 2
Magento 2 overview, installation and configuration tutorial
How to Add Reviews and Ratings in Magento 2
Product reviews are a nice way for customers who are satisfied with your store's products and service to show their satisfaction. You will also be able to feature these reviews on your website, for your other visitors to see. Ratings on the other hand consist of criteria that can be modified to better represent your store's features.
To manage your product's reviews and ratings:
- Step 1: Add a new Rating Criteria
- Step 2: Add a new Review
Add a new Rating Criteria
Let us add a new Rating Criteria for our store called Delivery. With it the customers will be able to rate the delivery service that we offer when submitting a review.
Login to your store's admin dashboard and navigate to Stores>Rating from the main admin panel.
Click on the Add New Rating button.
We will name the Default Value - Delivery and set the visibility to Default Store View. We will also checkmark the new rating as Active and set the Sort Order to 3 as we have some existing Rating Values
Attention
If the predefined criteria seem active but are not showing in the review submission process, you will need to set their visibility to Default Store View and click Save Rating to save and apply the setting).
When you are ready, click on the Save Rating button to add the new Value.
Add a new Review
To add a new Product Review, you will need to navigate to the Marketing ? Reviews section of your admin panel.
Here you can manually add a new Review (if you have received such via some other communication method like email or on your store's Facebook page) or select from the user submitted reviews and make them visible on your website. To do the second, select a review and click its edit button.
Here you will see the review details that include the Product which is being reviewd, the author of the review with its account and email, the Ratings and Status which you can change to approved in order to add the review.
Below the status drop-down menu you will also see the Nickname of the author, the summary of review and the review itself.
You can edit all of those fields and you should do so to remove any grammatical or spelling mistakes so the review looks better on your website's front-end.
Click the Save Review button to add the review. This will make it visible on the front-end in the Reviews tab below the product.
You now know how to add Ratings and publish Reviews in your Magento 2 based Store.
Further reading:
How to manage content in Magento 2
How to manage sales and promotions in Magento 2
Magento 2 overview, installation and configuration tutorial
Magento2 extentions, themes and advanced tutorials
Magento 2 maintenance and advanced tutorials
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 evergrowing 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.
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
