Everything You Need to Know about Magento (2018)

“We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge,” aren’t we? When it comes to Magento, both you and we have to swim in the ocean of information, but which one is worth digesting?

If you have the same questions, then we offer you a shortcut here:
>>> Everything You Need to Know about Magento <<<

At BSSCommerce, my co-workers and I have learned about Magento as the daily work to support customers the best. We realize that to answer “What is Magento?”, The definition is not enough. As a result, we come up with this article where you could find ALL about Magento. The knowledge includes both our practical experience as the Magento Select Extension Builder and of other Magento experts.

You should have a look at this sharing whether you are:

- Online merchants;
- Software developers;
- Website developers;
- Magento bloggers.
I. Magento General Overview
1. What is Magento?
In brief, Magento is an open source using PHP scripting language on Zend Framework. First introduced by Varien in 2007, Magento has continuously developed into various products and versions. Currently, it becomes one of the leading open-source platforms which offers almost all features and tools to build an ecommerce website.
Online merchants have a preference for Magento over WooCommerce, OpenCart, Shopify, etc. because:
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Magento is free and flexible to improve with extensions or paid version
Sellers have ownership and full access to hosting service
The features are plentiful and cover almost merchants’ requirements
To have an overview of Magento and its development trend now and in the future, keep reading “What is Magento? – The History of Magento.”
2. What products does Magento provide?
3. What versions have Magento been launching?
4. What are Magento main features?
5. What are some of useful Magento channels for users?
If you enter “What is Magento?” in the search box, there are 59.800.000 results displayed in a quarter of a second. Which one should you read? It is a hard question. Though every shared knowledge is useful, not all of them are detailed or clear enough.

As Magento specialists, we recommend the following channels to get reliable knowledge:

- Magento Website: The official channel of Magento where you could find information about products, solutions, partners, community, resources, and so on.
- Extension Marketplace: The default features of Magento are out-of-the-box and effective. However, you can even enhance their performance and delight customers better with Magento extensions. You can buy high-quality modules on this channel.
- Magento Community: Join here to meet the global community of online merchants, developers, and Magento contributors.
- Magento Forum: If you are a developer who about to start a Magento project or a merchant looking for the best solutions to improve your sites, then you can search or create any topic to discuss here.

These channels are useful but only when you know how to reach your desired information. Just spend one-minute reading “Pro Tips to Make The Most of Useful Magento Channels,” in which we share about our practical experience with those channels. Hope it helps!
6. How to find good and reliable Magento resources?
7. Try a Magento demo
II. Magento 2 for Merchants
1. Why should you choose Magento?
Addition to Magento, you have a lot of other options to select an Ecommerce platform for your business such as Woocommerce, Shopify, OpenCart or PrestaShop and so on. Hence, it is difficult for you to decide which one should be chosen because each platform contains particular functions.

To assist you to make up your mind, we come up with some reasons why you should choose Magento, based on comparison with other platforms:

- Open source
Magento is an open source platform with free Community Edition which allows freely customizing or modifying and adding more functions. This feature cannot be included on any other platforms.

- Scalability
Magento is more scalable than others, especially Shopify because it supports large-scale stores with a lot of products.

- SEO- friendliness
According to a study to find out which platform has the highest SEO score, Magento covers the first position with the maximum score of 100 compared to others. Shopify and Woocommerce are respectively put in the second and the third positions.

⇨ To read more reasons, please explore this article: 10 Biggest Reasons Why You Choose Magento.
2. What makes Magento different from other Ecommerce platforms?
There are plenty of Ecommerce platforms beside Magento such as PrestaShop, Shopify, Woocommerce and so on. Each platform features particular characteristics and serves merchants at both general and specific sides of an Ecommerce website. However, it is evident that many significant differences between these platforms still exist and are making their positions and popularities like at present. Let’s check out what makes Magento different from the two biggest platforms (Shopify and Woocommerce) in following articles to get more details of the unique features each Ecommerce platform provides for users.
In comparison with Magento:
- Magento vs. Shopify
- Magento vs. Woocommerce
Magento is great, isn’t it? When comparing with other ones, Magento is deserved for your choice to build a website thanks to fantastic strengths and continuous efforts for user experience improvement as well as business benefits.
3. What are Magento 2 CE and EE features?
Magento 2 offers two editions for merchants to select: Community Edition (CE) and Enterprise Edition (EE). Magento 2 Community Edition is at no charge at all and is mostly used for small business and business wanting to build a store from the ground up with developers’ help. Meanwhile, Magento 2 Enterprise Edition is the best fit with medium and large size business with more flexibility and exclusive features that are not included in Community Edition. However, as its whole functions, the Enterprise Edition costs merchants a big amount of money to get it in hand. Below are three articles about features of each edition and also a comparison between EE and CE we collected from the most useful resources on the Internet. You can read more to know what you can do with each one and decide on an edition for your website.

- Magento 2 CE Main Features
- Magento 2 EE Main Features
- Magento 2 CE vs. Magento EE
After you learn about two editions if you are still confusing about which one you should adopt to build our site, let’s contact us for more consultation. Based on our experience, we will give you the most accurate assessment and send you useful advice on the best edition for your business.
4. How much does it cost to build a Magento website?
When it comes to costs to build a Magento website, many merchants often take a list of everything they need to prepare and estimate how much will be spent on these things. With more than 5-year experience in providing end-to-end services to help thousands of customers build Magento websites, we come up with a list of costs for you to think over before making your decision. We hope that you are going to plan your costs based on these factors and find out the most suitable budget for a complete website.
- Cost for Magento edition: Community or Enterprise edition to build the website on
- Cost for a domain
- Cost for a Magento hosting service
- Cost for web design
- Cost for development
- Cost for Magento extensions (if needed)
- Cost for more customization
- Cost for maintaining websites
These costs still depend on the level of your website to be built. In case you want to build a simple website, the cost is much cheaper than a complex one with a lot of functions and customization. To estimate it, you can explore more detailed information of this concern in an article published some time ago: How Much Does It Cost to Build a Magento 2 Website?
5. How to find Magento partners to help build your website?
6. What are the Magento 2 website pre-launch checklists?
7. Is your Magento website secure?
“Safety first!” is the key component on running online stores since the security headaches such as spamming, phishing, and data exploitation face both owners and customers. Without a doubt, Magento is of the world most popular ecommerce platforms, but also the prime target of hackers for illegal purposes. Hence, the Magento team always puts security at the heart of development by continuously issuing new versions to fix and enhance specific Magento 2 security issue.

However, why are there still so many Magento 2 websites reporting security problems? If you get into the same situation, you must read our topic today!

8. What is Magento theme?
Your ecommerce site is your storefront online. You need to make it attractive, accessible and highly functional to achieve business success. Having a great product is not enough, you have to bring it to the customer in a way that is appealing, functional and easy to find. That’s why Magento provides the Magento 2 theme to help you design your site to impress customers.

Besides, if you want to find out more everything about Magento 2, please read more in Everything You Need to Know about Magento!

1. What is Magento 2 Theme?
2. Default Magento 2 Themes: Luma and Blank
3. Where to Buy Magento 2 Themes?
4. How to Choose the Right Magento 2 Theme for Your Store?
4.1 Choose the right theme design
4.2 Choose the theme with good technical attributes
In Conclusion
9. How does Magento 2 support SEO?
The answer is definitely Yes. Magento 2 not only well supports SEO but also highlights some advanced improvements in comparison with even Magento 1. Furthermore, SEO features in Magento 2 too defeat other platforms when getting higher SEO score according to a study we mentioned above.

For more information of SEO in default Magento 2, you can take a look at this article we published a few months ago to find out how Magento 2 supports SEO in details: Magento 2 SEO Settings – All Default SEO Features of Magento 2.

What are The Biggest Magento 2 SEO Improvements?
10. How does Magento 2 support Marketing?
11. How to optimize Magento 2 website performance?
12. How to maintain Magento 2 website?
13. What are reliable sources of information for merchants to learn and keep updating with Magento news?
III. Magento 2 Extensions
Magento is an open source platform, which allows free customization like adding more functions to default Magento as a typical case. Thousands of Magento 2 websites are currently being customized based on merchant demands with the purpose of better management, more effective site performance and higher customer satisfaction. Instead of much coding interference, Magento extensions are the most time-saving and beneficial ways for store owners who are not Information technology experts to perform on their own.

Here is an article that gives you more understanding about Magento 2 extensions: A Quick Overview of Magento 2 Extensions.

Moreover, let’s explore Top Magento 2 extensions – both free and paid – to select the best fit for your websites:

Top 100+ Best Free Magento 2 Extensions.
IV. Magento 2 for Developers
1. What are reliable sources to learn Magento from scratch for developers?
2. What backend development knowledge do developers must learn/know?
3. What frontend development knowledge do developers must learn/know?
4. How to find magento developers to help build your website?
Seeking for developers to code for your website is totally upon your current situation such as cost capability, the complexion level of website or the expectation level for the web.

Magento web agencies: There are useful some suggestions for you to consider a web design agency to build your website:

Are they a Magento Solution Partners?
Experience and Testimonials
Portfolio
Pricing
Location
Quality assurance and testing
Support policy
5. What is Magento Definition of Done for Developers?
6. How to develop a Magento 2 extension?
7. What are Magento Certificates for Developers?
V. Magento 2 Installation
1. What Magento 2 system requirements to install Magento 2?
System requirements are varied among different Magento 2 versions. Usually, technology stack (operating system, memory requirement, composers, web servers, database, PHP, SSL, mail servers, etc.), supported web browsers, and recent security requirements (TLS – Transport Layer Security) are required.
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For more detail, please visit “System Requirements for Magento 2”
2. How to download Magento 2?

To start using Magento 2, it is compulsory for users to download Magento 2 on the resource. However, this process sometimes causes users troubles or takes them much time due to requirements to login or register for a new account. Hence, we want to introduce to you a more simple and faster way to get your wanted Magento 2 download. You can download Magento 2 right in this article without experiencing the long and complicated steps as in the Magento website. What’s more is that we will try our best to constantly update and provide you with the latest versions immediately when Magento officially launch to the market.

3. How to download Magento 2 demo
When it comes to Magento, it is necessary for you to try functions on Magento 2 demo so that you can imagine how a Magento website operates and how to configure to meet store requirements.

Hence, we want to give you a Magento 2 demo with sample data which provides you with the adequate complements of a website.

By experiencing features of default Magento 2 on this demo, you – as a store owner can know whether Magento is suitable for your store or not and then make the final decision.

4. How to install Magento 2?
VI. Magento 2 Migration
1. How to migrate from Magento 1 to Magento 2?
2. How to migrate from Shopify to Magento 2?
3. How to migrate from WooCommerce to Magento 2?
4. What are some useful Magento 2 migration tips?

Source: bsscommerce.com - Everything You Need to Know about Magento