Tutorial by Michelle Grace

What is Magento Community Online?

Magento is one of the best Content Management System, open source platform that uses Zend PHP and MySQL databases. It is a powerful and fast growing ecommerce script created by Varien.

Magento comes in three different packages:

1. Magento Community. Best for developers and technical enthusiasts. Intended for people with more time and resources to solve problems and issues independently.

2. Magento Professional. Best for business related types that require a warranted product.

3. Magento Enterprise Editions. Perfect for online businesses that needs enterprise ecommerce solution.

Magento Professional and Enterprise Editions have more features compared to Magento Community. They also require a yearly license fee. While Magento Community is free to download.

How To Set Up Magento On A Server

Setting up Magento on a server requires a little patient and technical skills to resolve some database issues. Magento is not available on Autoinstaller in Cpanel since it requires permission to allow scripts to write and execute during installation.

Download the Magento Community latest version to get started. Go to Select a format. I recommend ZIP format. The file size is about 26.67MB.

Take note that Magento is large file and it will take a while to upload. You can use a FTP software like Filezilla or CuteFTP. Extract the Magento files and connect to site. Select the destination file where you want it to be stored.

Another option is to upload the Magento file (ZIP File) using FTP.

Login to Cpanel and go to File Manager.

Locate the Zip Magento file you uploaded. Select the file and click UnZip File. Wait until it’s done.

Creating A Database

Go back to Cpanel and click MySQL. Create a new database for your Magento files.

Also create a database username and database password. Set all privileges to both database username and database password. Take note of those details. You will still need them on the installation process.

Setting Permissions

Before running the install page, set permission first on some Magento files. You need to set them as 777 to make them writable.

Here are the files that need to be set to 777:

magento/var/.htaccess
magento/app/etc (all sub directories)
magento/var (all sub directories)
magento/media (all sub directories)

You can use FTP to set permission. Locate the files above and right click on them. Then click File Permissions.

Check all or simply type in 777 then click OK. Do the same thing with the rest of the files.

After the setup, browse the URL where the Magento files were uploaded. You will see this page:

Check the box to agree with the terms and conditions and click Continue.

Localization.

Set the language, time zone and currency and click continue.

Configuration.

The default database type is MySQL and Host as localhost. Type in the Database Name you created on Cpanel. Enter your username and password.

Type in the base url. The base URL is the location where Magento files are stored. Set admin and Admin Path then click Continue once finished.

Create an Admin Account.

Type in your name, last name and email. Provide a login information and click continue.

You’re all set up!

Click Frontend and you will be brought to a page on how your Magento site will look like. The Backend button will bring you to your Admin panel and settings page.

To login, type in the username and password provided on the Admin Panel during the installation process.

You’ll be directed to the Magento Dashboard where all the site settings can be found. Enjoy navigating!

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Sources:
Magento
What is Magento
Magento Installation Guide