- Learning Magento 2 Administration
- Bret Williams Cyndi Williams
- 17971字
- 2021-07-02 16:40:29
Key system configurations
Magento's real power comes from its ability to adapt and accommodate almost any type of online selling needs. We will go through the most important backend configurations that you need to review when setting up a new Magento store. As you'll see, there are many settings. However, the more you know about how they affect your store, the more productive your selling opportunities can be.
The various configurations we are going to discuss are contained within two main navigation menus: Stores and System. First, let's explore the Stores menu.
Tip
For now, we will approach configurations as if you have a single Magento store front. Setting up and configuring multiple stores in a single installation will be covered in Chapter 3, Catalogs and Stores.
Configuration
There are six side tabs under the Stores top-level menu on the Configuration screen: General, Catalog, Customers, Sales, Services, and Advanced. Let's discuss each configuration set.
To expand each side menu, click on the down arrow on the right, and click to select a sub-menu item. The main content area of your screen will then contain various configuration panels. To expand each panel, click the down arrow within a circle located to the far right of each panel title.
Under the General panel you would see the following options:
You will find the following options within the General settings of the General panel (yes, we know it's a bit confusing):
Country Options
- Default Country: Select the "home" country for the store. If you're building multiple stores, you can select a different Default Country for each store.
- Allow Countries: Set the countries from where you will allow certain activities within your site. As you go through various settings for payments, shipping, and more, you will have the option to allow certain activities with Allowed Countries or to select certain target countries. If you know you're only going to do business within a select group of countries, you can preselect that group within this configuration.
- Zip/Postal Code is Optional for: You can also add to the countries for which a postal code is optional (not required, but desired).
- European Union Countries: Change the selection of countries that are part of the European Union (this does change from time to time).
- Top Destinations: The countries you select in this list will appear at the top of any country selection list. For instance, if you select United Kingdom and United States, the Country selector on the Checkout page would list these countries at the top and all other Allowed Countries in the list below.
Tip
When configuring multi-select fields (such as the list of Allowed Countries), scroll through the list to see what is already selected by default. If you wish to add to those selected, click while holding the Ctrl key (cmd for Macs). Likewise, use this to de-select the selected values. In this way, you don't change other already-selected values. If you make a selection error, simply refresh your web page and try again.
State Options
- State is Required for: Add or subtract from the list of countries in which the selection of a state is required during checkout or account registration. The United States is one, for example, in which you will want to require a state selection.
- Allow to Choose State if It is Optional for Country: In some cases, the selection of a state or province is not required, yet you may want the user to have the ability to enter one.
Locale Options
- Timezone: Set the applicable time zone for your store.
- Locale: This sets the regional language and formats for your store. For instance, if you choose English (United States), the store language will be English and numbers will appear as 9,999.00.
- Weight Unit: Choose pounds (lbs) or kilograms (kgs) as the default weight measure.
- First Day of Week: Many countries consider Monday as the first day of the Week. In the USA, Sunday is generally considered the first day of the week. This setting affects reports showing weekly activity (for example, sales).
- Weekend Days: If you want to separate the weekends from weekdays, select the days that are considered weekend days.
Store Information
The information here will be available to shoppers, and should reflect the information you wish to communicate for your store (which may be different from your actual business entity).
Single-Store Mode
If you're sure you will not use multiple stores in your Magento installation, you can set Enable Single-Store Mode to Yes. This will remove the configuration scope choices, and prevent you from making different configurations at the Website and/or Store View levels. When selected (and saved), the Configuration Scope menu at the top-left of your screen will be removed, as will the scope labels beside each configuration field.
Tip
Even if you plan to possibly use multiple stores later on, enabling the single-store mode can, for now, avoid any confusion when configuring your stores. Unless you're intent on immediately configuring multiple Websites or Stores, we recommend using this feature to reduce backend complexity. Once you add additional Websites or Stores, this selection becomes moot.
The Web settings are settings that affect public access to your site.
Note
Be very careful when changing the settings in this section, as they can easily disable your site. A qualified Magento developer can help advise you on these settings, as they can also be affected by how your site is installed and configured on a server. If you don't understand a setting here, do not change it.
URL Options
Consult your Magento developer for these settings. We select add store codes to URLs when we build a store that will use a common SSL URL (for example, https://www.domain.com) across multiple stores with different domains. Otherwise, this is probably not needed.
In most cases, you will want to select Auto-redirect to Base URL, as this will help prevent duplicate content. We usually set this to Yes (301 Move Permanently).
Search Engine Optimization.
In most cases, you will want to use Web Server Rewrites.
Tip
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is much, much more than just this setting, of course. In Chapter 7, Content and SEO, we will discuss ways to improve your search engine visibility.
Base URLs
The base URL is the web address that people will use to access your website. You can set different URLs for static view and media files in the event that you're using a different server for delivering these assets. Your developer can best advise you on these settings.
Base URLs (Secure)
Security for your customers (and for you) is very important. Once you have an SSL certificate installed on your server, you can enter the secure URL for your site here. You can also choose to secure the frontend of your site, as well as the admin backend.
Default Pages
Your site will contain pages of information, not just categories and products. In Chapter 7, Content and SEO, we will discuss content pages in more detail. In this section, you will create the pointers that allow Magento to respond to various requests for your Home page, the "404 Page Not Found" page, and a page to warn users that they need to have cookies enabled.
Breadcrumbs are the navigation items shown at the top of a page that show a user where they are in your site in relation to the Home page. For example Home > Contact Us tells the user that they are on the Contact Us page, which is one level down from the Home page (which is clickable).
Default Cookie Settings
Cookies are the small, invisible files created when you browse the web that allow websites to save information on your computer. This information helps websites keep track of your activities, such as your shopping cart, number of visits, and authorizations. For instance, as you work in the Magento backend, a cookie lets Magento know that you're an approved backend user. It also notes the last time you visited a page so that Magento, as a security measure, can request that you log in again if a certain amount of time has elapsed since your last visit. In this section, you can set the amount of time that a customer cookie is valid for (in seconds). If you want a customer's session to last longer than one hour (3,600 seconds), you can increase this amount. For sites that will be using Google analytics and/or selling to countries in Europe, you should activate the Cookie Restriction Mode. This gives the user a message that cookies will be used, and asks for their permission to allow it. Once allowed, the message will disappear.
Tip
To edit the Cookie Restriction Message, go to CMS | Static Blocks, and find the Cookie Restriction Notice. For more on editing static blocks, see Chapter 7, Content and SEO.
Session Validation Settings
Do not change these settings without consulting your Magento developer.
Browser Capabilities Detection
If you want to properly handle users who have disabled cookies or JavaScript—both important for the operation of your store—you should leave these set to Yes.
Local Storage refers to a feature of HTML5 that enables storage of data locally on a user's computer rather than only in cookies. Local storage is more secure, and can hold more data. If you wish to provide a warning to users when their browser does not support local storage, select Yes.
The Design settings address both the appearance of your store as well as certain "under the hood" code to improve your site's visibility.
Design Theme
In this panel, you can select any of the Magento themes properly installed on your server. If you have different themes installed for various browser or device types, you can specify them here (see your developer for specific information).
HTML Head
The "head" of your website is the code within each page that provides key information to your browser.
- Favicon icon: The small icon that appears in a browser tag or address line. You should prepare a square image of your logo or symbol. The minimum size should be 16x16 pixels, but a larger image can be used as long as it is square. For maximum compatibility across browsers, use an ICO or PNG format file.
- Default Title: This will appear as the Page Title of any page not otherwise specified (see more in Chapter 7, Content and SEO).
- Title Prefix and Title Suffix: These will be prepended or appended, respectively, to any Page Title. For example, if you want My Company to appear after any Page Title, enter it in the Title Suffix field.
- Default Description and Default Keywords: These are the text that will appear whenever you have not specified other values in products, categories, or pages.
- Miscellaneous Scripts: Any scripts that you need to add to the page head (such as tracking or pop-up scripts) can be added in this field.
- Display Demo Store Notice: To give notice to visitors that your store is under development and will not honor orders, set to Yes.
Tip
As we will discuss in Chapter 7, Content and SEO, good SEO is important for elevating your store in Google rankings. We suggest that you leave the Default Description and Default Keywords fields blank to avoid duplicate meta content, which could be adverse to your SEO efforts. Commit now to address the description field in every category, product, and CMS page and you'll have better results. The Meta Keywords field is virtually ignored by search engines, but, if used, should be attended to with the same dedication as your description field.
Search Engine Robots
When search engines visit your site, they first look to find the robots.txt file. This file gives instructions as to what the search engine should and should not index and display in their ranking listings. While you're building your store—particularly if it can be found by others on the Web—you should set Default Robots to NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW. This will prevent search engines from parsing your store until it's ready. Afterwards, set this to INDEX, FOLLOW.
- Edit custom instructions of the robots.txt file: For the first time, Magento now allows you to manage the contents of the
robots.txtfile. If you have other indexing conditions, you can add them to therobots.txtfile. In Chapter 7, Content and SEO we will provide you with the defaultrobots.txtfile that we use in our Magento stores.
Header
- Logo Image: Upload a logo file that will usually appear at the top of your website (this depends on your design theme). You should upload a file that is no more than twice the size in which it will display.
Tip
One of the most common mistakes we see is the use of an image that is much larger than the space in which it is contained. For instance, if the area for your logo is 400x100 pixels, don't upload a 2000x500 pixel image. While it will be displayed in a smaller size, you'll be asking users to wait while their browser downloads a much larger file. This goes for photos and other images: don't tax your users' patience by using images that are larger than their final display size. The one exception is product photos. Magento will resize product images as needed, and the larger the original image, the better the final results—in most cases. Depending on your logo, you should try to use a PNG format file. It will retain details better than JPG files, particularly if the logo is a graphic rather than a photo. One exception to the size rule is the retina displays. New generation iPhones, iPads, and iMacs have high-resolution displays. To give your logo a better, sharper image for these devices, use an image that is exactly twice the size of the intended size. For example, if your logo display area is 400x100 pixels, upload a logo image of 800x200 pixels. Some themes may accommodate two logo images—one for normal and one for retina displays. Consult your theme information for more details.
- Logo Image Width and Logo Image Height: In these fields, you can specify the exact size of your logo image as you would like it to be displayed on your site. Some themes will restrict the size (usually height), so you may need to have your developer adjust your theme should you desire a larger logo size than what is allowed by the theme.
- Logo Image Alt: For SEO purposes, it's important that every image in your store has an Image Alt value. This is a hidden value that describes the image. For this field, you might enter
Acme Hardware Logo. This tells search engines what the image is, since they can't discern the contents of an image. - Welcome Text: Depending on the theme used, a welcome message can be displayed, usually at the top of the page:
Footer
- Copyright: You may enter the text that you want to appear at the bottom of your web pages.
- Miscellaneous HTML: This field can be useful when you need to insert JavaScript code snippets for tracking or other features. While you can do this, as mentioned previously in the Header section, some services will request that you place the code at the end of your page code. This field places whatever you place inside as the last item before the ending
</body>tag.
Product Image Watermarks
Watermarks are images that are overlaid on your product images. You may notice on some e-commerce sites that the store name is placed on the product image as semi-transparent text.
By adding a graphic with a transparent background, you can overlay your store name, URL, copyright, and so on.
Personally, we're not big fans of overlays that detract from the photo or product detail. We understand that some merchants are trying to battle plagiarism of their images, but we feel a better approach is to "brand" your imagery using themed backgrounds. In the image that follows, notice the branding "star" of the company's logo and the ©ADC in the lower-right corner. By using this theme throughout the site, American Dictation (http://www.AmericanDication.com) has built branding consistency while providing some difficulties for others who wish to repurpose their images as their own. Interestingly, we've found that most images which have intrusive overlays are actually images provided by manufacturers, and are not original photos owned by the merchant.
Recently, we had a client who told them that Google was disallowing their products for Google Shopping because their images had watermarks on them.
There are three image sizes for each product image (we'll cover this in detail in Chapter 5, Products): Base, Small, and Thumbnail. You can set the watermark image for each size in this section, each with the same available settings described as follows:
- Image Watermark Default Size: Enter the size in pixels (width x height) of your overlay.
- Image Watermark Opacity, Percent: Enter the percentage (without %) of opacity, or transparency, that you want for your image. The lower the percentage, the more transparent your image.
- Image Watermark: Find and upload your watermark file.
- Image Watermark Position: Set how you wish your watermark to be displayed on top of product images. Stretch will resize your watermark, both in width and height, to match that of the overlaid image. Tile will repeat your image, both horizontally and vertically, to fill the image area. Other selections will place a watermark image, in its default size, at a set position over the product image.
Pagination
New to Magento 2 is the ability to control the pagination that appears at the bottom of categories that have more products than can be displayed on a single page.
- Pagination Frame: Enter an integer value such as
1,2,3,4, and so on for the most page links that you wish to display at the bottom of the page. - Pagination Frame Skip: Let's say your category listing requires 20 pages of products. If you set your Pagination Frame to
5, then you would make it difficult for customers to reach the later pages without having to make a lot of clicks. It might be more user-friendly to have a link beyond page 5 that takes the user to page 10 so as to skip more rapidly through your list. The value in this field will add links to your pagination to allow skipping to further pages (when available). - Anchor Text for Previous/Anchor Text for Next: If you don't want arrows at the beginning and end of your pagination frame, you can enter text that you wish to use, such as
PrevandNext, orAnteriorandDespués(Spanish).
Transactional E-mails
In Chapter 8, Promotions and Communication we will talk more about the many e-mails that are generated by various events in Magento (for example, orders, new accounts, and so on). You can upload your store logo for use in these e-mails as well as include an image ALT text.
Tip
While you may be able to style your logo's size when creating custom e-mail Templates (as discussed in Chapter 8, Promotions & Communication), you should probably limit your logo size to somewhere around 200-300 pixels wide and no more than 100 pixels tall so that it doesn't dominate the e-mail view, especially in mobile e-mail views.
New to Magento 2 is the ability to create header and footer templates that can be used on all e-mails. This makes it much easier to change information such as business hours or phone numbers across all e-mails.
In today's global economy, it's not uncommon for online retailers to accommodate customers in many countries and areas of the world. While you don't have to offer your products in multiple currencies, you may wish to do so.
Note
There are two approaches you can take to offering multiple currencies for your online business: automated currency conversions and static currency pricing. With automated conversions, as discussed later in Chapter 3 , Catalogs and Stores, you will have a single Store View with a drop-down menu allowing customers to display prices in different converted currencies based on the current currency conversion ratios. Alternatively, you can create multiple Store Views, each with its own default currency (like US Dollar, British Pound Sterling, Euro, and so on), and enter a specific, static price for a product for each Store View. Some businesses prefer this method, as it allows you to adjust the price for specific currencies based on regional costs (you may be shipping UK products from a UK-based warehouse, and US products from a US-based warehouse, each with its own cost structure).
- Base Currency: Select the currency you wish to use for your payment transactions. You may want to use US Dollars for your payment gateway transactions (like PayPal, Stripe, and so on), but display your primary currency in another currency (next setting).
- Default Display Currency: As mentioned earlier, you can display your default currency in any desired currency.
- Allowed Currencies: If you select more than one currency in this field, Magento will display a drop-down currency selection menu on your site allowing customers to select from among the currencies selected.
Tip
There are additional settings and configurations required to present multiple currencies on your site. See Chapter 3, Catalogs and Stores, for more information on how to complete this process.
Webservicex
WebserviceX.NET is a free service that provides connectivity with a wide variety of online databases and services. Magento uses this to retrieve currency conversion factors for updating currency ratios (for example, US Dollars to Euros).
- Connection Timeout in Seconds: You should not need to alter this value, which is the amount of time Magento should wait for a response from WebserviceX.NET. If you get timeout messages e-mailed to you regularly (see next panel), you might consider increasing this number, as your web server may be experiencing delays in sending and receiving the currency update request.
Scheduled Import Settings
If you plan to use automated currency conversions, you'll need to enable the WebserviceX.NET service.
Note
There are some alternatives to WebserviceX.NET for prior versions of Magento, but we're unaware of any for Magento 2 at this point. Personally, we haven't found any reason to use another service, but if you find the conversion rates provided by WebserviceX.NET are not accurate for your purposes, you might scout for other alternatives.
- Enabled: Set to Yes to enable currency conversion updates.
- Service: At present, only Webservicex is available.
- Start Time: Enter the time according to the time zone of your installation server. You may want to update values after major markets close or at midnight (default setting).
- Frequency: Select how often you want to update currency ratios.
- Error Email Recipient: You'll see this in several places throughout the configuration panels. This allows you to enter an e-mail address to which any error reports will be e-mailed. If the WebserviceX.NET retrieval fails, an e-mail will be sent to this address. You may enter more than one e-mail address, separated by a comma.
- Error Email Sender: You can select the e-mail address from which the e-mail will be sent (these are set in the next panel, Store Email Addresses).
- Error Email Template: Choose the default template provided by Magento, or if you have created your own customized template (see Chapter 8, Promotion and Communication, regarding transactional e-mails), you may select that.
Magento allows you to set up to five different e-mails for use throughout your store installation. You can set different e-mails at the Website and Store View levels as well.
For each e-mail, you have to set the following :
- Sender Name: The name that will appear in the From field of any e-mail sent by Magento
- Sender Email: The e-mail address used in the From field
Magento has a built-in Contact Us form as part of its code. Use of this form is optional, as you may have another extension that provides more customization or functionality.
Contact Us
- Enable Contact Us: Set to Yes to enable the default Magento Contact Us form as shown in the preceding screenshot.
Email Options
- Send Emails To: Enter the e-mail address to which you would like the Contact Us form submissions e-mailed. You might choose to send them to a customer service rep in your organization or to an e-mail address that automatically ingests the inquiry into a Customer Relationship management (CRM) system, such as Salesforce Desk.
- Email Sender: Select your Store e-mail addresses that you wish as the sender of the e-mail.
- Email Template: Choose the default Contact Form e-mail template, or a custom template you may have created (see Chapter 8, Promotions and Communications).
At present, there are only limited settings for affecting the overall reports in Magento, and these are only configurable at the global level.
Dashboard
- Year-To-Date Starts: Select the month and day you wish to use as the start of your "Year" for reporting purposes. You may choose to use a month and day that coincides with your fiscal year, not January 1.
- Current Month Starts: If you wish your reporting to start on a day other than the first of the month, you may select it here.
The static pages of your Magento store and the various content areas throughout the site are part of the Content Management System (CMS) of the platform. In Chapter 7, Content and SEO, we will go into more detail about how you can customize the content areas of your store.
WYSIWYG Options
WYSIWYG (pronounced "Wiz E Wig") stands for What You See Is What You Get, and refers to the idea that as you edit content on the site, you can use an editor that shows you what your content will look like as you write.
If you select text and click on the B (for bold) icon in the editor menu bar, your text will appear bold; if you click the I, you will see text in italics, and so forth.
- Enable WYSIWYG Editor: In some cases, you may not want to have the WYSIWYG editor used by default. If it is not engaged, the content field is simply a field that shows all text and HTML code. For those who prefer to input their own HTML code, disabling the WYSIWYG editor is preferred.
- Use Static URLs for Media Content in WYSIWYG for Catalog: In most cases, you'll want to leave this set to No. However, if you're inserting images into content fields for products and categories that require dedicated URLs which should not change if the Base URL changes, set this to Yes. An example would be when you're using another server to deliver the images, and you want to preserve that URL regardless of which Store View is being viewed on the frontend.
New Relic (http://newrelic.com/) is a popular, advanced server application monitoring system. Many developers and system administrators use New Relic to provide substantial information about the performance of server applications, including e-commerce systems.
Magento 2 includes an integration of New Relic for those who want this added level of performance monitoring. Check with your developer if you should use New Relic. Some hosting providers already perform 24/7 server monitoring, but few will provide the level of in-depth analysis that New Relic does.
The settings in these panels affect the way your categories and products are displayed to consumers, the way you plan to manage inventory and availability, and how you push your product information to search engines and other parties.
Product Fields Auto-Generation
Another new feature of Magento 2 is that you can now add placeholder fields and static copy to appear on product pages in the hidden SEO meta tags. We discuss SEO strategies and tools in Chapter 7, Content and SEO. These settings only apply to products that are auto-generated—that is, products that are not created individually, but are created by using variations from a single product (more on Products in Chapter 5, Products).
- Mask for SKU: Insert any placeholder code (such as
{{name}}for Product Name) or characters you wish to use to auto-generate new SKUs (these can be changed after the product is created). If you want all the new SKUs to begin with NEW, you may enterNEW-{{name}}. - Mask for Meta Title: Enter anything you wish to have auto-generated for the title meta field (this will appear as the page title in your browser).
- Mask for Meta Keywords: Enter whatever values you wish to use for auto-generated keywords.
- Mask for Meta Description: As will be discussed in Chapter 7, Content and SEO, the Meta Description field is an important field. By including the placeholders for product name and description, you should be creating unique Meta Descriptions for auto-generated products.
Product Reviews
When product reviews are active on your site (you can turn these off in the Advanced Settings, which we discuss later), you can choose whether to allow guests to write reviews or only allow logged-in users. In Chapter 4, Preparing to Sell, we discuss the difference between customer types.
Storefront
The settings here affect the way your products are shown in category listings or search results.
- List Mode: Products can be shown in a grid of rows and columns, or a list of products, one after the other. Choose the default view, and whether to allow users to switch between the views.
- Products per Page on Grid Allowed Values: On category pages, customers can choose the number of products to show in each view.
Tip
So that the grid view doesn't end with a partial row of products, it's a good practice to choose multiples of how ever many products you are showing in a single row. For instance, if your products (according to your theme) are showing 4 in a row, you may want to use 8, 16, 24 as possible values (or 4, 8, 12, and so on). This would display 2, 4, and 6 rows, respectively.
- Products per Page on Grid Default Value: This is the default number of products to show in a Grid view. It does not have to be the lowest number used in the preceding field.
- Products per Page on List Allowed Values: Just as with the Grid View, you can choose the number of products customers may choose to view on each category page.
- Products per Page on List Default Value: The default number of products to display on a List View page.
- Allow All Products Per Page: Besides the allowed values noted before this, you can also allow customers to select to view "All" products. If your categories contain many products, you may not want to enable this, as it could make category page render times uncomfortably long.
- Product Listing Sort by: In each category, you can choose the position by which products will be shown (Position). Alternatively, you can set the default sort of products by Name or Price. Both will be in ascending order (A to Z, lowest to highest).
- Use Flat Catalog Category/Use Flat Catalog Product: One of the many ways Magento optimizes the installation for speed is to compile all the category and product information into two flat files for more rapid database lookups when rendering pages on your site. While you're setting up your new store, you may want to keep this set to No so that you won't have to re-index your site (see Chapter 9, Security and Administration, for more on indexing) while you're making lots of changes and updates to your content. When your store is live, you should set these to Yes to speed up your site.
- Allow Dynamic Media URLs in Products and Categories: As we addressed in the WYSIWYG Editor settings section earlier, you should allow Magento to create the full URL for media inserted into products and categories in order to keep from breaking image paths, especially if you're going to use multiple Store Views. While dynamic URLs can impact site performance, it's generally a better practice to have this turned on.
- Swatches per Product: Where you have product variations that include swatches—images of different colors, textures, and so on—you can limit the number of swatches that will appear on any product listing.
Product Alerts
You can allow customers to request e-mail alerts when a product price or availability changes. This can help you capture customers who are desperate for particular products, but willing to wait. Alert e-mails are generally sent out when Magento finds applicable changes (see the next panel for setting the frequency).
- Allow Alert When Product Price Changes: Enables the alert feature when a product price changes.
- Price Alert Email Template: Choose a default e-mail template or one you may have customized.
- Allow Alert When Product Comes Back in Stock: If a product shows "Out of Stock" on your store, a customer may request an e-mail alert when the product becomes available again.
- Stock Alert Email Template: Choose either the default or a customized e-mail template.
- Alert Email Sender: Choose your company e-mail contacts that the alert e-mail is to be sent from.
Product Alerts Run Settings
You have control over how often you want the alert e-mails to be sent.
Note
Periodic e-mails and other events in Magento are driven by a "cron" schedule—a server activity that occurs every so often (see the Advanced Settings for more on setting cron frequency). Despite the many cron-related settings in Magento, your developer needs to set your server to run the Magento cron functionality, ideally, every 5-10 minutes. If you set a cron-related activity, such as product alerts, and notice that it is not triggered properly, ask your developer to ensure that the Magento cron is running.
- Frequency: Set the alerts to be sent Daily, Weekly, or Monthly.
- Start Time: The time of day you wish the alerts to be sent. If you're using a Daily frequency, it should probably be set at a time after which any product updates have been made in Magento.
- Error Email Recipient: The address to which any error report is e-mailed if something doesn't go right with the product alerts function.
- Error Email Sender. The store contact from which the error e-mail is sent.
- Error Email Template: The default template or the one you have customized.
Product Image Placeholders
When you don't have images for a product, Magento can insert a placeholder image. By default, an image with the Magento logo will be used. Therefore, you should create "Coming Soon" placeholder images that complement your brand and design (and don't have the Magento logo).
The ideal size for each depends on your theme. Ask your developer to provide you with the ideal sizes if you wish to create your own placeholder images.
Recently Viewed/Compared Products
As customers click through your store, Magento remembers the products they are viewing and/or comparing.
- Show for Current: You can allow customers to see a list of their recent product views by Website, Store, or Store View, depending on how you have structured your multistore setup (this won't apply to Magento installations with only one Website/Store View).
- Default Recently Viewed Products Count/Default Recently Compared Products Count: Enter the number of products you wish to display in a list of recently viewed or compared items.
Product Video
With Magento 2, you can now add Vimeo or YouTube videos to your product listings (see Chapter 5, Products). In order to add YouTube videos, Google requires that you obtain a YouTube API key. For more information on the YouTube API, see https://goo.gl/zaej4.
Price
When you set a Base Currency (as described earlier in this chapter), you can decide if the Base Currency at the Global level will apply to all products, or if each website can apply a different Base Currency (the one associated with each website).
Layered Navigation
One of the most powerful features of Magento is that of "Layered Navigation"—the selectable filters that are usually seen along the left side of a category listing. They allow a customer to narrow the list of choices by selecting certain product attributes, such as color, model, and size.
Magento's layered navigation also shows, be default, a grouping of price ranges, such as $0-100, $100-500, and so on.
- Display Product Count: Enabling this feature will add the number of products that match a particular price range or attribute.
- Price Navigation Step Calculation: Magento 2 gives you three ways of calculating the price ranges displayed in the layered navigation: Automatic (equalize price ranges) will create price ranges by taking the least amount and the highest amount among the products shown, and creating equal groupings according to a set algorithm. Automatic (equalize product counts) uses the same method, but groups prices by creating equal numbers of products. When selecting this option, you will be allowed to choose whether each price interval will be shown as one price or a range, and the minimum number of products that will make up a single price interval. Finally, Manual gives you control over the dollar amount of each price step and the number of price intervals.
Catalog Search
Searching for products and categories within your store will be a common activity of customers. Understanding how search works can be complex though, unless you're familiar with how databases work. Consult with your developer on how to best help your customers search your site.
Search Engine Optimization
In Chapter 7, Content and SEO, we discuss the strategies for managing the SEO features of Magento. We will revisit this panel then, but for now, let's briefly describe each of the fields.
Note
In Magento, the URL Key is that portion of the URL that designates the product, category, or page. In http://www.yourstore.com/motor-boats, "motor-boats" is the URL Key for the Motor Boats category. Likewise, for http://www.yourstore.com/iphone-5-case, "iphone-5-case" is the URL Key for that product. If the URL ends in .html, the .html is not considered part of the URL Key.
- Popular Search Terms: As customers visit your store, Magento can record any of their searches. If enabled, you can view the top searches each day in the Dashboard of your backend. Customers can also go to a Search Terms page, and see what are the most popular search terms.
- Product URL Suffix/Category URL Suffix: You can enter whatever you wish to appear after a product URL. Usually, you would use html (a dot before suffix is added automatically), or leave it blank.
- Using Categories Path for Product URLs: You can choose to include or not include the name of the category in the product URL:
http://www.yourstore.com/kids-shoes/running/great-shoe.htmlversushttp://www.yourstore.com/great-shoe.html. - Create Permanent Redirect for URLs if URL Key Changed: When you change the URL Key for a category or product, the old key no longer points to the new page. If the old category or product key is listed in search engines or links to your site from other websites, visitors clicking those links would see a "404 - File Not Found" error. If you want old keys to "re-point" to the new key, enable this feature.
- Page Title Separator: If you have entered title suffixes or prefixes under General | Design earlier, you can specify a separator that you may want to appear between the actual page title and the suffix or prefix. "-" or "|" are common separators.
- Use Canonical Link Meta Tag for Categories/Products: A canonical link tells the actual primary URL of a page to Google and other search engines. For instance, if you assign a chair to the "furniture" and "seating" categories in your site, it might be possible for customers to access the chair at
http://www.yourdomain.com/chair.html,http://www.yourdomain.com/furniture/chair.html, orhttp://www.yourdomain.com/seating/chair.html. If a search engine indexed all these URLs, you would be penalized for having duplicate content. Yet, if the canonical link for each one werehttp://www.yourdomain.com/chair.html, the search engine would consider all three pages to actually be the same page and not duplicates of each other.
Category Top Navigation
The main navigation menu on your site will, depending on your design, show categories in a hierarchical fashion. That is, there will be a top level of categories with sub-menus showing lower sub-categories. You can control the maximum number of levels that will be shown. Setting this value to 0 means the menu will show all levels possible.
Downloadable Product Options
Many online stores today sell digital products such as music, books, and software. Magento gives you great flexibility in selling these intangibles, as we'll discuss later in Chapter 5, Products.
- Order Item Status to Enable Downloads: Depending on your order workflow, you may want to allow customers to receive links for their downloads as soon as they place their order. Otherwise, they will be e-mailed links (and have them show up in their own Dashboard) once the payment is processed and the order is invoiced (more on orders workflow in Chapter 4, Preparing to Sell).
- Default Maximum Number of Downloads: You can restrict the number of times a customer may download a digital product. Setting this to 0 gives them unlimited downloads.
- Shareable: Can users share their download link with others? If not, set this to No.
- Default Sample Title: Magento lets you include samples for downloading on a product detail page. This can be useful if you want to give a customer one chapter of a book or a snippet of an audio file. This field value will be the name you give to these sample links.
- Default Link Title: Likewise, you can set the title used for download links.
- Open Links in New Window: For download links displayed in a customer's Dashboard, you may want clicking the link to open a new window rather than refreshing the user's screen. This behavior largely depends on the browser used.
- Use Content-Disposition: Your selection here determines whether clicking on a link will open the file in the browser (inline), or force the browser to save the file to the user's computer (attachment).
- Disable Guest Checkout if Cart Contains Downloadable Items: If you allow a customer to check out as a Guest, they will not be creating a Customer Account in Magento, and therefore, will not be able to log in to retrieve their downloads. Guests will only be able to download from the e-mails they receive.
Date & Time Custom Options.
You can set certain parameters when date selections are shown to customers.
- Use JavaScript Calendar: For date entry fields, using a JavaScript calendar will display a clickable calendar rather than only allowing a text entry.
- Date Fields Order: Like so many things in life, people in different regions of the world read dates in different orders. In the US, the "normal" order is Month-Day-Year. In many other countries, the order is Day-Month-Year. Some may even prefer Year-Month-Day.
- Time Format: You can choose to display time in a 12-hour or 24-hour format.
- Year Range: Set the minimum and maximum year you want any entered dates to fall between. You may, for instance, not want entered dates prior to the current year.
If you sell tangible products, you want your customers to purchase items knowing whether that product is in stock or not. Furthermore, your accounting depends on maintaining accurate inventory counts, as much of your capital may be tied up in stock.
Tip
If you dropship your orders-that is, you send your orders to a distributor who maintains inventory and ships directly to your consumers-it may be difficult, even impossible, to maintain accurate inventory levels. Distributors have to ship for many retailers, and without real-time integrations, you won't be able to accurately display stock levels to your customers.
We'll cover inventory management and the process of accounting for orders in Chapter 5, Products. Many of the settings in this panel can be overridden at the product level: consider these more as default settings.
Stock Options
- Set Items' Status to be In Stock When Order is Cancelled: When an order is cancelled, Magento "releases" the items in the order. If you want those items to increase inventory counts, any product which went "Out of Stock" as a result of that order can be changed back to "In Stock" as a status.
- Decrease Stock When Order is Placed: Related, do you want an order that is not yet fulfilled to reduce the available inventory stock?
- Display Out of Stock Products: If you have products that go out of stock, but return to In Stock quickly, you may want to leave them visible to consumers. This gives interested buyers the opportunity-if enabled, as discussed earlier-to sign up for a product availability alert. This can help gauge interest for replenishment.
- Only X left Threshold: If you set this number to greater than 0, a message will appear to customers when the stock level of a product reaches that number or less. For example, if you enter 10, when the product inventory count declines to 10 or below, the customer will see "Only 10 left." This could be a good incentive to buyers who might consider this message to denote high demand for an item.
- Display products availability in stock in the frontend: Enabling this feature will display whether products are In Stock or Out of Stock, whichever the case may be, on the product detail screen.
Product Stock Options
- Manage Stock: Do you want to manage your inventory counts in Magento? If so, choose Yes.
- Backorders: This Global setting affects how you allow customers to place orders for products that are out of stock. If you want to allow backorders, you can simply take the order or select to take the order, and let the customer know by a message on the Shopping Cart that the item is backordered.
- Maximum Qty Allowed in Shopping Cart: We've never had a client choose any lesser value than the default of 10,000 items. However, we can certainly see where it might be prudent to limit the number of items of any one product that can be purchased. Particularly if you want to restrict purchases by resellers.
- Out-of-Stock Threshold: While it's understandable that if a product's inventory count goes to 0, it would be out of stock, you might want to keep a minimum amount in stock as a cushion.
- Minimum Qty Allowed in Shopping Cart: This sub-panel allows you to create minimum purchase quantities based on Customer Group (see Chapter 4, Preparing to Sell, for more on Customer Groups). For example, you might want to require that wholesalers purchase a minimum of 12 of any item.
- Notify for Quantity Below: During Magento's cron operation, it can send an e-mail notifying of any products whose inventory count falls below the entered amount.
- Enable Qty Increments: If you set this to Yes, you can set the default increments at which products will be sold. If you want to sell your products in groups of 3, then customers would be limited to buying 3, 6, 9, and so on of a product.
- Automatically Return Credit Memo Item to Stock: When you refund a customer for a returned item, Magento can automatically return the item to the inventory count.
The sitemap is an XML file that is accessible to search engines to help them index the contents of your site. Rather than forcing Google, for instance, to learn all about your site by following all the links in your site, a well-formed sitemap can provide Google with links to all the content in your site within one file.
We will discuss the relevancy of this panel and its settings in Chapter 7, Content and SEO, when we cover SEO optimization.
Rich Site Summary (RSS) feeds are as widely used today as they were earlier. News readers were very common in the early years of the Web to retrieve and display timely information from websites.
That said, making your website information available via RSS feeds may help publicize what you have to offer should any services subscribe. Additionally, RSS feeds can be used by your resellers, for instance, to keep them alerted to new wholesale products you're offering.
Another neat marketing feature of Magento is the ability for your customers to easily e-mail links of products to their friends. This can help expose your products to a wider audience of referred consumers: a virtual "word-of-mouth" market.
The settings in this panel are designed to help you control the frequency of these e-mails, as it could be easy for someone to overuse this to spam their friends or others, thereby damaging your store's reputation.
Of course, you don't succeed unless you have customers. They're the buyers that make e-commerce fruitful. We'll discuss more about customers in Chapter 4, Preparing to Sell, but for now, let's quickly touch on the various settings that aid your interaction with your buyers.
Subscription Options
Once you have a buyer, you should work to keep them interested in your store, as it's less expensive to resell to current customers than to find and attract new ones. Magento helps by providing an e-mail newsletter functionality where you can compose and e-mail promotional messages to customers who give you permission to do so.
Tip
There are many reasons you should investigate alternatives to Magento for sending out newsletters. It's not that Magento's newsletter functionality is bad—it's just not as good as many affordable third-party services. Plus, you don't run the risk of overwhelming your server's mail sender or having your site blacklisted by providers who might consider your e-mails as spam. Our favorite one, which integrates very well with Magento, is MailChimp. In addition, MailChimp's Magento extension (http://store.ebizmarts.com/magemonkey-magento2.html) can add a mailing service called Mandrill to your store that adds abandoned cart e-mails and other low-cost features for increasing communication with your customers.
The options in this panel give you control over the e-mail templates used for confirming subscriptions and unsubscribes. Additionally, you can set whether you want subscribers to confirm their actions, which can help reduce rejections as spam.
Online Customers Options
Under the Customers menu in the main navigation menu on the left, you can go to Now Online to see all the customers currently on your site. Visitors will pause as they go through your site to read product information, look at category listings, and so on. Whether they're considered "online" is determined by the amount of time between clicks or actions. By default, if a customer doesn't perform an action on your site for 15 minutes or more, they are no longer considered to be online. You can increase or decrease this time interval according to your preference.
Account Sharing Options
You can choose whether your registered customers will automatically be assigned to all websites in your Magento installation or only to the websites to which they register. If your websites are quite different in scope, or if they cater to different types of consumers, you may want to restrict customer accounts to each website.
Note
As we will cover more thoroughly in Chapter 4, Preparing to Sell, customers in Magento are those who register either by creating a customer account or by registering during checkout. Guest customers are not listed in the Customers section of your site, as they are not considered customers in Magento. In other words, customers are those who are registered and can log into your site.
Create New Account Options
As customers register with your site, you can choose to automatically assign them to a customer group based on a customer VAT tax qualification. In the US, VAT taxes are not relevant. We will cover the creation of VAT tax rules in Chapter 4, Preparing to Sell.
- Enable Automatic Assignment to Customer Group: By selecting Yes, you will be given the opportunity to assign customers to various groups based on their VAT tax entry.
- Default Group: New customer registrations that are not addressed by VAT tax considerations will be automatically assigned to the group selected.
- Default Value for Disable Automatic Group Changes Based on VAT ID: If this is enabled, the customer group changes automatically for customers who enter a VAT ID. If disabled, customers are assigned to the Default Group and can later be reassigned by an administrator.
- Show VAT Number on Frontend: Setting this to Yes will show the VAT ID number to customers on your website.
- Default Email Domain: This is one of the more unusual fields in Magento, as it has never had any effect on how we have operated Magento stores in the past. What it appears to do, however, is to create a temporary e-mail address for orders until the customer completes the checkout process. This is one setting you can most likely ignore.
- Default Welcome Email: Choose the e-mail template or customized e-mail that you wish to send to new registered customers.
- Default Welcome Email Without Password: You can choose an alternative e-mail template for accounts that are created without a password.
- Email Sender: To set the address from which you wish the welcome e-mail to be sent.
- Require Emails Confirmation: If you want to validate your customer's e-mail address, Magento can send an e-mail asking them to click on a link to validate their e-mail. Doing so can help to reduce communication errors due to mistyped e-mail addresses.
Tip
As with e-mail newsletter subscriptions, some may think that sending confirmation e-mails are a bit much; that customers will be turned off by receiving additional e-mails. We feel just the opposite: confirmation e-mails not only demonstrate to your customers that you want to confirm their decision, it allows you an additional way to send a marketing message to your customers. Why not include a coupon opportunity or new product announcement in your confirmation e-mails? There's nothing that says you can't use these as upsell opportunities.
- Confirmation Link Email: A standard or custom e-mail template for the e-mail confirmation message.
- Welcome Email: If you do require a confirming e-mail, the template you choose here will be sent to customers after they have confirmed their e-mail address.
- Generate Human-Friendly Customer ID: By default, Magento creates a random, complex ID for customer records. You can have Magento create IDs that are less "geeky", especially if you want your customers to use their ID for communicating with you.
Password Options
To provide better service to your registered customers, Magento provides a solid means of allowing customers to reset their passwords if they forget it. This can often happen if a customer revisits your site after some time. Rather than subject your valued customers to a litany of silly questions (for example, "Who was your first grade teacher?"), Magento simply e-mails them a link to reset their password.
To retrieve their password, they will have to use the e-mail address with which they registered. Another good reason to enable e-mail confirmations.
- Forgot Email Template: Choose the default or custom template that you wish to send to users who have forgotten their password.
- Remind Email Template: The chosen template here sends the password to the customer; generally, once they register an account.
- Reset Password Template: This e-mail tells the customer that their password has been reset.
- Password Template Email Sender: Select the store contact from whom password-related e-mails will be sent.
- Recovery Link Expiration Period (days): You should limit the "life" of a password reset link for security purposes.
Name and Address Options
Magento gives you flexibility in how you wish to obtain the name and address information from your customers when they register or purchase on your site.
- Number of Lines in a Street Address: The default number of address fields is two, but you may choose to show one to four lines if you like.
- Show Prefix: This refers to name prefixes, such as Dr., Mr., or Ms.
- Prefix Dropdown Options: If you enable prefixes, you can enter the ones you wish to provide to customers in a dropdown by listing them, separated by a semicolon (;). For example, you could enter
Mr.;,Ms.;,Dr.;Hon.;,Rev.". If you leave this blank, the prefix field will be a simple text entry field where the customer can enter whatever they like. - Show Middle Name (initial): Choose Yes if you wish to provide a middle initial field.
- Show Suffix: Like the prefix, you can allow the use of name suffixes, such as "Jr.", "II", or "Esq."
- Suffix Dropdown Options: Using a semicolon as a separator, enter whatever suffixes you wish to appear in a drop-down menu. Whenever we have enabled suffixes in the past, we've simply left this blank to allow customers to enter anything they wish, as there are so many available choices.
- Show Date of Birth: This is a field that can sometimes be a bit intrusive (much like Gender, as discussed further in this section). If you do want to obtain customer birth dates for the purpose of marketing or validating adult status, enable this field.
- Show Tax/VAT Number: Enable this field if you need to ask customers to enter their VAT ID. If you're creating group rules based on VAT, as described earlier, then you would most likely enable this field.
- Show Gender: As with the birth date, it's best to have a legitimate reason to ask this, as some customers may feel this is a bit overreaching.
Login Options
This section has one simple choice: to direct registered customers to their account dashboard after they log in, or return them to the page from which they came when first accessing their account.
Address Templates
The template code shown here dictates how addresses will be displayed to your customers on the site or text-only e-mail (Text and Text One Line), in an HTML email (HTML) or on a PDF, such as a printed invoice.
The code uses substitution tags to render the information. Adding a return after the line of code will insert a line break in the final display.
It's easy to break your layouts if you don't know what you're doing. Given that this involves knowledge of Magento programming variables, you may be better-off consulting with your Magento developer should you need to modify your address layouts.
CAPTCHA
A CAPTCHA is an image that appears at the bottom of a form, where the user is asked to type the characters shown in order to proceed.
CAPTCHAs are designed to thwart scripts that rapidly try combinations of names and passwords to crack into a website. It can also hinder hackers who try to set up user accounts automatically. Although they're not entirely foolproof (there are some services that use humans to assist ne'er-do-wells when encountering CAPTCHAs), you do want to protect your customers as much as possible.
If you enable CAPTCHAs, you will be given several choices for configuring how they will work on your site.
- Font: If more than one font is shown in the dropdown (early versions of Magento 2 only included LinLibertine), you can select different fonts to text for readability.
- Forms: Select the forms on which you wish to include a CAPTCHA. We usually enable CAPTCHAs on the Create User, Login, Forgot Password, and Contact Us forms. Customers who are checking out are not hackers, as these criminals wouldn't bother buying something just to create multiple accounts.
- Displaying Mode: For the Login form, you can choose to show the CAPTCHA always or whenever someone fails to enter the correct username and password after a number of attempts.
- Number of Unsuccessful Attempts to Login: Enter the number of failed login attempts that will trigger the use of a CAPTCHA.
- CAPTCHA Timeout (minutes): As an additional measure of security, you can limit the amount of time for which a CAPTCHA is valid.
- Number of Symbols: You can enter any value from 1 to 8, as well as a range (for example, 2-4). A range will randomly choose the number of characters shown within the range you designate.
- Symbols Use in CAPTCHA: The default selection provided by Magento is a solid choice, as it removes those characters that are hard to distinguish from one another, such as "I", "l", and "1".
- Case Sensitive: If you want users to enter letter characters using the same case (upper or lower) as shown, you can enable this feature. We usually allow either case, as long as the customer enters the correct letter.
Many retailers like to provide a wish list to customers, as it helps them build a selection of products they want to buy at some time in the future. Customer wish lists can also be accessed by you should the customer call to place their order, thus saving time and showing the customer that you're on top of things.
You should be aware that to create a wish list, a customer must create a registered customer account, and be logged in. This is the only way a wish list can be saved and attributed to a customer for later retrieval.
Note
Wish List functionality in Magento has previously been limited to the Enterprise edition. As of this writing, it is appearing in the Magento 2 Community Edition. If you don't see this section in your backend, it may have been moved to the Enterprise edition, or you might have this module turned off in the Advanced section.
General Options
In this panel, you can enable or disable the wish list functionality on your store or stores.
Share Options
These settings affect the way wish lists are shared by customers with others. Customers can choose to have their wish list e-mailed to multiple recipients.
- Email Sender: Select the store contact from whom the shared wish list will be sent.
- Email Template: Choose the default or customized e-mail template for the outgoing e-mail.
- Max Emails Allowed to be Sent: Enter the maximum number of recipients you will allow for the e-mails. You may not want to allow a huge number, as it could be considered spamming.
- Email Text Length Limit. With each list, the customer can enter a message to include for their recipients. This number is the maximum number of characters (not words) you allow.
My Wish List Link
A wish list is much like a shopping cart, except that it isn't used for checking out. Like a shopping cart display (see My Cart Link under Sales | Checkout later in this chapter), you can choose to display the number of different items in the wish list or the total quantity of products.
For example, if the list has one cap and two of the same shirt, you could choose to show 2 (Display number of items in wish list) or 3 (Display item quantities).
In Chapter 7, Content and SEO, we'll learn how to create promotional discounts. This section allows you to set the default parameters for creating coupon codes.
Auto Generated Specific Coupon Codes
- Code Length: The number of characters you should have in a coupon code.
Tip
It's not necessary to have long coupon codes in order to create large numbers of random coupon codes. For example, if you choose the Alphanumeric code format (discussed further in this section) and a length of six characters, you could create as many as 2,176,783,336 possible combinations (366: A-Z, plus 0-9 for 6 places). That would provide a unique coupon code to about one-third of all the people on Earth! Shorter codes are easier for your customers to type without making mistakes.
- Code Format: Choose between alphanumeric (A-Z, 0-9), alphabetical (A-Z), or numeric (0-9) as the characters to use when generating random codes.
- Code Prefix: Enter any value you wish to have at the beginning of a coupon code. Avoid spaces.
- Code Suffix: As with the prefix, enter the value you want at the end of a coupon code. You might use either of these to denote codes that belong to a particular store or campaign.
- Dash Every X Characters: Magento can insert a dash every X number of characters. For instance, if you set this at 3 and have a code length of 9, a code might look like DJI-9EF-PL7.
When people visit your website, Magento creates a number of cookies in their browser to help keep track of the customers' use of your store. You can enable persistence to allow Magento to remember a customer's shopping cart contents well beyond their initial visit to your site. Magento does this by creating a record in its database of the cart contents so that if the user revisits your site using the same browser (like Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and IE), they will find that the shopping cart has retained their chosen items.
Persistence also pertains to maintaining a customer's login state, or whether or not they have logged into your site as a registered customer.
- Enable Persistence: Yes to enable; No to disable.
- Persistence Lifetime (seconds): Enter the length of time you wish to retain a customer's cart contents or their login state. The default of 31536000 is 60 years, which is probably more than you need.
- Enable "Remember Me": When a customer logs into your site, they can check a Remember Me box so that they will not have to log in again as long as they revisit your site with the persistence lifetime.
- "Remember Me" Default Value: If you have enabled the "Remember Me" feature, you can choose if you want it checked (Yes) or unchecked (No), by default. We recommend you leave it unchecked for security purposes, as it then forces the customer to determine as to whether to make their login status available on their computer.
- Clear Persistence on Log Out: If enabled, when a logged-in customer purposely logs out of your website, their shopping cart and state will be erased.
- Persist Shopping Cart: If you wish to have Magento remember customers' shopping cart contents, enable this setting.
The Sales panels address the configurations related to the checkout process, and the way orders are managed in your system. These are important and critical settings, as they can greatly determine how your customers are actually able to purchase what you're selling.
General
The only choice on this panel is whether or not to show a customer's IP number when you view their orders, invoices, shipment, and the like. An IP number is the numerical ID assigned to all computers and devices on the Internet. Your computer has an IP number, although to the world, your IP number may be that of your router or gateway. An IP number, such as 66.211.190.110, is unique to each connected device.
Why would an IP be important to know? In most cases, it isn't. However, it can help you analyze the legitimacy of an order. For instance, if you suspect that an order is not "honest," you can do a lookup of the IP number for clues about the buyer (try http://ip-lookup.net/). For example, if the buyer's address is in the US, but their IP number shows a location in Nigeria, the order might have been created using a stolen credit card. Not that Nigerians are thieves, but when a customer is not accessing your store from the same side of the globe as their billing address, it might be suspect.
Tip
There are a number of services that provide a form of insurance for your orders by comparing the order parameters against a variety of factors such as IP location. Signify'd (https://www.signifyd.com) is one that we've used with great success. Signify'd analyzes each order, and if it is approved it, the order is validated and the payment method charged. If not, Signify'd can optionally cancel the order automatically. Once it approves an order, and if the order later turns out to be purchased using a stolen card, or if the buyer disputes the charges, Signify'd reimburses you for any loss and charges.
Checkout Totals Sort Order
You can manage the order in which the various totals and amounts are listed on the checkout screen. Enter any numbers in these fields. The sort order is based on the item with the lowest number, working up.
Reorder
For many retailers, customers often order the same thing over and over again. If you turn on Reorder, you will allow registered customers to use any past order as a new order.
Invoice and Packing Slip Design
In your Magento backend, you can choose to download a PDF of an invoice or packing slip, or view these in a new browser window (and later print it). By default, Magento will use the logo image you uploaded in the General | Design panel. In this panel, you can upload logo files that are of higher resolution or a more compatible height-to-width ratio. You'll have to experiment to find the ideal logo size and quality, but if you're going to e-mail PDF invoices or print packing slips for your packages, it's worth the effort.
You can also enter the address (or other information) you wish to appear at the top underneath your logo.
Minimum Order Amount
You may have the need to require a minimum order amount per order. Sometimes wholesalers require minimum order amounts. In other cases, we've had clients who have minimum requirements, because they offered some low-cost parts or small items: if a customer orders one small $2 part, the client would lose money processing the order. A minimum order amount can be set to make sure the smallest orders meet your baseline costs.
- Enable: Choose to enforce a minimum order level.
- Minimum Amount: Enter the minimum order total allowed after any discount has been applied, but before shipping and taxes.
- Include Tax to Amount: You can choose to include taxes in the minimum amount calculation.
- Description Message: Enter what you wish to communicate to your customers in cases where their shopping cart total does not meet the minimum order level.
- Error to Show in Shopping Cart: If a customer clicks on the "Proceed to Checkout" button, but has a cart total less than your minimum order amount, the text of this field will be displayed as an error message.
- Validate Each Address Separately in Multi-address Checkout: In Chapter 4, Preparing to Sell, we will describe how multi-address checkouts work. By enabling this setting, you can choose to apply the minimum order amount against each delivery address. If disabled, your minimum total level will be measured only against the entire order, regardless of which items are shipped to various addresses.
- Multi-address Description Message: For multiple address shipments, enter what you wish to explain to customers about your minimum order policy.
- Multi-address Error to Show in Shopping Cart: As described previously, you can enter the error message you wish to display when a shopper attempts to checkout with multiple destinations, and their order fails to meet your minimum order specifications.
Dashboard
The single configuration in this panel allows you to set whether or not to use real-time calculated data on your backend dashboard. If enabled, Magento will keep running totals on your store activity that are periodically updated, but not in real-time.
When you're starting out, you can probably use real-time data. However, if you have a busy store-and depending on your server configuration-you may find it less taxing on your Magento system to use aggregated data.
Orders Cron Settings
In previous versions of Magento, orders where payment was being processed could be stuck in the "processing" status for a very long time. By setting a limit here, orders that are pending payment can expire after a period of time.
Gift Options
It's not uncommon for many retailers-especially those selling gifts, flowers, jewelry, and so on-to allow customers to include a gift message with their order. Gift messages, if allowed, can be offered to customers at either or both of two levels: order and item. An order level gift message is one that is applied to the entire order, and will appear on the packing slip as a single comment. Order item level gift messages can be added for each item in the shopping cart, and will appear next to the item description on the packing slip.
Minimum Advertised Price
If you sell name-brand products, you will no doubt encounter the concept of MAP (Minimum Advertised Price). Generally, manufacturers or distributors may require you to only show MAP prices to consumers who visit your store. Many will allow you to sell at a lower price, but only if you hide the actual price; they may also require that the customer performs some action in order to have the true price revealed. Some manufacturers will never allow the display of a lower price, in which case, you should not enable the functionality of this feature. Simply use the MAP price as the MSRP price for a product.
- Enable MAP: You can globally enable the MAP functionality. Once enabled, MAP rules can be set or overridden at the product detail level. Therefore, even if you only need the MAP functionality for a single product, you have to first enable it here.
- Display Actual Price: You can choose how you reveal the actual price to your consumers. On Gesture will add a "Click for Price" link with a popup showing the discounted price as well as an explanation as to why you cannot show the actual price on the category listing. In Cart will display the actual price in the customer's shopping cart, and Before Order Confirmation means that the real price will only be displayed at the end of the checkout process, but before the customer completes their purchase.
- Default Popup Text Message: When you have MAP enabled, a "Click for price" link will appear if you have chosen On Gesture in the preceding field. The message you wish to show in this popup box can be entered here. You can use basic HTML tags, such as
<br />, for a line break. - Default "What's This" Text Message: Where you are not revealing the price until the Cart or Order Confirmation stages, a "What's this?" link will appear, and will display the text in this field.
As you process orders, your customers may expect e-mails to confirm their order, be notified about updates, and receive shipment notifications. This panel helps you configure these e-mails.
General Settings
In Magento 1.x, any action you took to send an e-mail to a customer would have to wait until the e-mail was processed and sent. While this might take nothing but seconds, Magento 2 allows you to set sending actions asynchronously, meaning that the sending function would happen by itself without causing you to wait before having your screen update.
For the remaining e-mails, the following settings are the same:
- Enabled: You don't have to send each e-mail. Only enable the ones you wish to have sent to your customers.
- Email Sender: Select the store contact you wish to have as the sending e-mail name and address.
- Template: Choose the default or customized template that will be used for the relevant e-mail message.
- Template for Guest: If a customer checks out as a "Guest," the chosen template will be used.
- Send Email Copy To: You can include a list of additional e-mail recipients, each separated by a comma. If you want to get a copy of what your customers see, enter your own personal e-mail address.
- Send Email Copy Method: You can choose to have the additional copies sent as Blind Carbon Copies (BCC) or as separate e-mails, each addressed to the recipients listed in the preceding field.
In your Magento backend, you can download invoices, shipments, and credit memos as PDFs. If you want the order ID or number shown in the head of each, you can enable it here.
The rules and conditions for applying tax rates will be explained in Chapter 4, Preparing to Sell. Here we want to address the default tax classes for your store(s), and how taxes will be applied and displayed to your customers.
Tax Classes
Here you can select any listed tax class that you wish to assign as the default for shipping, products, and customers.
Calculation Settings
Each jurisdiction has rules for how taxes are to be calculated on orders. Some require calculation on the order total or on each individual item; others may want prices displayed to include applicable taxes; and you may be required to apply taxes on pre-discounted prices.
You should consult with your tax advisor for rules relating to your own taxing jurisdiction(s).
Default Tax Destination Calculation
While actual taxes are managed by the tax rules you enter elsewhere (see Chapter 4, Preparing to Sell), you can set a default taxing jurisdiction, including state and postal code.
Price Display Settings
In the US, it is a common practice to display prices and shipping without including taxes. In some countries, it is more common to display prices including taxes. You can specify your preference here.
Shopping Cart Display Settings/Orders, Invoices, Credit Memo Display Settings
As with product prices, you can specify how you wish to display taxes in a customer's shopping cart, orders, invoices, and credit memos. The default settings are common for US-based retailers.
Fixed Product Taxes
In some parts of the world, products are sold with fixed taxes. If that applies to your business, you can enable Fixed Product Taxes (FPT), and specify how you wish to have them displayed.
When a customer is ready to buy, you have to provide the processes and features that will help them complete their purchase.
Checkout Options
- Enable One page Checkout: When enabled (default setting), your customers will see a Proceed to Checkout button on their shopping cart. If disabled, they will only have the ability to use the multi-step, multi-address checkout method.
- Allow Guest Checkout: You may allow customers to checkout without creating a customer account.
Tip
It's very common for retailers to assume that a Guest Checkout is less intimidating to customers, and therefore, less likely to turn away customers. However, without registering, customers cannot look up previous orders or utilize previous billing and shipping addresses. The only difference between guest checkout and registered customers' checkout is one additional field: password. We've never seen this one field keep customers from checking out. The key, we have found, is to edit the headings on the first checkout page panel to read "New Customer?" and "Existing Customer?" instead of "Register to Create an Account" and "Returning Customers?" This change sounds much friendlier and requires much less consideration by your shoppers.
- Require Customer To Be Logged In To Checkout: If you disable Guest Checkout, you can choose whether to require customers to be logged-in before purchasing. If a new customer registers-and this setting is enabled-they will need to confirm their account, and then log in to continue the checkout process. This can be important if you are offering discounts or special pricing to your registered customers.
- Enable Terms and Conditions: As an added measure of security and sound practice, you can display checkout terms and conditions during the checkout process, even requiring customers to affirm their acceptance (see Chapter 4, Preparing to Sell, for more on setting up Terms and Conditions).
Shopping Cart
- Quote Lifetime (days): When an order for which payment has not yet been obtained is created in Magento, such as in the case of a Purchase Order or Check/Money Order, the prices included in the order will be saved for the length of time entered here.
- After Adding a Product Redirect to Shopping Cart: As customers click the Add to Cart button on a page, they can either remain on the same page, or be automatically taken to the Shopping Cart page.
We will go into great detail about product types in Chapter 5, Products, and then the image choices for Grouped and Configurable products may make more sense. In short, however, you are choosing whether to show the main image for a group or configurable product, or the image of the child product actually selected.
My Cart Link
Choose if you would rather show the number of different products in a shopper's cart or the total number of individual quantities selected. Display number of items in cart will count the number of different items or SKUs in the cart (for example, 1 cap and 2 baseballs would show "2" as the number of items), whereas Display item quantities will add up all item quantities (for example, 1 cap and 2 baseballs would total 3 items).
Shopping Cart Sidebar
If your design theme allows, you can elect to show in the page sidebar a "mini-cart" of items in the shopper's cart. You can also limit the number of items shown to a number of the most recent additions.
Payment Failed Emails
If a customer checks out with a payment method that fails, you can have a notice sent to someone in your company. You can use this information, if you choose, to contact the purchaser, and help them complete the sale. Sometimes, a customer may not enter information correctly, and therefore, fail to use a valid payment method. Your intervention may help to complete a purchase. On the other hand, multiple failures may indicate that someone is trying multiple credit cards that were stolen in the hope that one will work.
Unless you're selling digital products or services, you will have products to ship to your customers. This simple panel provides fields for indicating the origin address of your shipments, which will be used to calculate shipping rates.
Tip
If you're shipping from multiple locations-such as multiple warehouses or distributors-you will need to investigate additional solutions to provide multiple origin addresses if you plan on using real-time shipping rates for your customers. If you use fixed shipping rates, multiple origin addresses are not necessary.
You can also specify a text message about your shipping policy that will be displayed to your customers. For example, you might want to let your customer know that "orders will ship within 3-5 business days, then delivered by the method selected during checkout".
One of Magento's best-kept secrets is its ability to allow a customer to take a single shopping cart, and ship portions of the order to multiple addresses.
On this panel, you can enable multiple address shipping as well as limit the number of different addresses to which a customer can ship a single order.
The delivery of products to your customers can be one of the most complex considerations in your business. However, with proper planning and careful attention to details, you can offer your customers affordable shipping methods while keeping your costs reasonable. Shipping and logistics is worthy of its own book!
While we cover table rate shipping in Chapter 4, Preparing to Sell, we want to take a moment to discuss certain configuration concepts that are common among the various carrier methods provided in a default Magento installation.
Real-time Rates
The carrier-based methods listed in this section (such as UPS, FedEx, USPS, DHL, and so on) provide real-time calls to the carrier's computer system to retrieve actual rates for an order based on the weight of the items in the order, the shipping origin and the destination of the shipment. This rate may be more than what you pay, depending on the negotiated rate you have established with a carrier based on your account particulars.
Real-time rates not only provide more accurate shipping rates than fixed or table rates, they also provide a verification of the services that can be provided to the shipping address. For instance, for some addresses, a carrier may not be able to ship overnight, or it may not be able to ship into a certain country.
Test Mode
In most carrier setup configurations, you have the opportunity to use a test mode during the setup of your store. As with payment gateways (discussed later in this chapter), testing your configurations is an invaluable way of ensuring that any settings or changes do not adversely affect a live site or send live data to the carrier or gateway. Each carrier has different ways of setting up test or live modes. Refer to their documentation for guidance.
Handling Fee
Most people think of handling fees as additional costs that increase a shopper's shipping expense. Handling fees can either be a percentage or a fixed amount. If you're entering a percentage, enter it as a decimal number. For example, for a 5% handling fee, enter 0.05.
Free Shipping
The creation of free shipping as a shipping option for your customers can be a bit confusing in this panel. The Free Shipping method (the first in the list of shipping methods) can be enabled if you want to provide free shipping as an option on each and every order. You can set a minimum order amount, but it is not based on service availability or any carrier restrictions on weight. This method can make it easy to offer a free shipping option across all shipping methods, but only if you're confident you can ship a product to all customers within what you have determined to be an acceptable cost to you.
Within each carrier-based shipping method, there is the opportunity to have Magento provide free shipping opportunities based on a minimum order amount. If you have carrier shipping accounts established, this can be a better way of offering free shipping, as it will only be made available if all conditions for delivery method, destination, and allowed weight are met.
Countries
You should pay careful attention to the countries you choose as available for shipping. If you only ship to addresses within your country, you should select it as the only country in the list of Ship to Specific Countries option. By selecting the exact countries into which you will or can ship (your carrier may have restrictions), you are providing customers with clear and professional feedback when they attempt to ship to a country that is not on your approved list. It's better to inform customers upfront, rather than have to contact them after the sale, and deliver the bad news.
Sort Order
As in so many places in Magento, you can control the order in which your shipping methods are displayed to customers by entering a number in this field. Sorting is in ascending order.
Tip
Dimensional Weights Most carriers today calculate shipping rates based on "dimensional weights". Since many packages are light in weight, yet take up as much room as heavier packages, carriers created the concept of dimensional weights to better price for the amount of room that packages take up in their trucks and planes. To calculate your actual weights, carriers multiply the dimensions (width, length, depth) and divide it by a factor (for example, 166). The result of this calculation is compared against the actual weight of the package. Your shipping rate is based on which figure is the greater of the two. Therefore, you might have a package shipping a small, lightweight product in a large box filled with cushioning material that weighs one pound. But, its dimensional weight might be two pounds because of the calculation of the box dimension. Therefore, you would be charged for a two-pound package. You should consult with your carrier to see if your normal packages might be charged at higher rates. If so, you may need to investigate Magento add-ons that can provide you with more accurate shipping rate calculations for your customers.
There's no doubt that Google-and your store's integration with Google services-can have an impact on the traffic to your store.
Google Analytics
Google provides free traffic analysis tools (http://www.google.com/analytics/) that are among the best and most comprehensive in the world. With simple information, Magento embeds the Google Analytics code that captures data about visitors to your site.
- Enable: Once you set up your Analytics account, you can activate the code in your Magento store.
- Account Number: Enter your Universal Analytics ID, which will be in the form "UA-XXXXXXXX-X".
- Enable Content Experiments: Google is always working to improve the amount and quality of the data it collects for your analytics account. By enabling this, you're allowing Google and Magento to make adjustments in the underlying code for testing new data-collection techniques.
Google AdWords
If you attract visitors using Google's pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, you can associate your AdWords account with your store so that transactions (that is, conversions) can be tracked against your campaigns, keywords, and ads. Conversions are considered completed checkouts by your customers.
- Enable: Set as Yes to have Magento add the necessary Google scripting to your pages.
- Conversion ID: Enter your Google AdWords conversion ID. You will get this once you have set up conversion tracking in your AdWords account. The ID is a numerical value (that is, no characters).
- Conversion Language: Select the language you use in your AdWords account, which may be different from the language of the website.
- Conversion Format: Google feels it's important to display a small notice at the bottom of your site telling your visitors that you're collecting analytics data via Google. If you enter a
1or2, a small one-line or two-line message will appear respectively. This message will include a Learn More link. If you enter3, no message will appear, but you should add a note in your Privacy Policy that you are using Google Analytics to collect visitor data. - Conversion Color: Enter a hexadecimal color to apply to the Google notice that appears on your site. This only applies if you choose
1or2as the Conversion Format. - Conversion Label: The text you enter in this optional field will be used as a label for any conversions that occur on your site.
- Conversion Value Type: For most merchants, Dynamic is the preferred choice, as it attaches the total of an order as the value of the conversion. You can, however, choose to assign a single, constant value to your conversions.
- Conversion Value: Enter the value of any constant conversion type using only numbers and a decimal point. Do not include money prefixes or commas (for example, enter
2000.00instead of$2,000.00).
Google Shopping
Similar to AdWords, Google Shopping allows you to promote your products to Google search users by bidding for placement. Magento 2 can, in conjunction with how you set up your Google Shopping account, feed your products to Google. In Chapter 5, Products, we will cover additional settings in your store relating to product preparation for Google Shopping.
Note
Google Shopping is officially called Google Merchants (https://merchants.google.com). We're not sure why Magento is retaining this older label, but it is the same.
- Account ID: Enter your Google Shopping account ID.
- Account Login: Enter your Google account username or e-mail address.
- Account Password: Enter your Google account password.
- Account Type: You can select your appropriate account type; based on how you configure your Google Shopping account, your feed is either sent to Google (Google) or fetched by Google from your Magento server (Hosted).
- Target Country: Select the target country you specified in your Google account.
- Update Google Shopping Item when Product is Updated: Most likely you will want to update Google whenever you make a change to your product.
- Verifying Meta Tag: In order to verify your ownership of your store, Google may ask you to add a Meta tag value.
- Debug: If you face any difficulty with your product feed, you can turn this on to have debugging information stored to a log on your server. You should probably consult with your developer for assistance.
- Destinations: You can choose to provide your product feed for use in multiple Google offerings. Each may have different costs or qualifications. Consult your Google account setup for more information.
Of course, to sell products on your store, you need to provide a means of payment. In Chapter 4, Preparing to Sell, we discuss the payment process, as it relates to the checkout process. For our purposes here, we will just go over the different payment methods available to you and how they differ.
Note
The individual processes of configuring, testing, and enabling payment gateways can be rather complex. We strongly suggest consulting with your Magento developer when configuring gateways in order to conduct proper testing, and later, adding the proper credentials for live, secure transactions. Due to the security considerations of payments, you need to make sure that you have SSL encryption, and have taken all proper measures to insure customer data safety.
There are several important decisions you need to make before configuring your payment gateways:
- Do you want to take credit and debit cards? If you do, you'll need a Merchant Account that allows you to take credit cards.
- Do you want to allow your customers to enter their credit card information on your site, or would you prefer to allow them to enter the information when they click to place their order? Taking credit card information on your site adds security issues, such as PCI compliance (see the box further in this section).
- Do you wish to offer subscription type payment services such as PayPal? According to BuiltWith.com, PayPal accounts for about one-third of all online transactions. It's inexpensive and easy to implement, but you do have to have a PayPal business account.
- Will you allow customers to pay by bank transfer, check, money order, purchase order, or COD? These methods mean you won't get paid until the customer sends payment or the appropriate paper work. If you're a retailer, you probably won't choose these methods, but if you're a wholesaler, these methods may be quite acceptable.
Whichever payment methods you choose, aim for those that accommodate the type of customers you intend to serve.
Note
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), commonly referred to as PCI compliance, means that your website and overall business operation has taken the proper steps to protect customer data. We've all read the headlines over the past few years where major retailers have been hacked, and millions of cardholders' data has been stolen.
If you're taking credit cards online, you should either have your Magento store configured and hosted by a company that provides PCI compliance, or use payment gateways that take credit card information off-site to the payment gateway's website.
One hosting provider we really like is MageMojo (www.MageMojo.com), which does provide PCI-compliant hosting servers, especially tuned for Magento stores.
Merchant Location
To begin the configuration process for payments, you need to select your Merchant Country. This is usually your home country; it is the one in which you have registered your payment gateway accounts such as PayPal and Authorize.Net.
Braintree
Recently, PayPal bought Braintree (www.braintreepayments.com), a merchant account provider. Many wondered how this acquisition would complement PayPal. Braintree provides additional payment methods to PayPal, such as ApplePay, Venmo, Android Pay, and Bitcoin. Braintree has a pricing model very similar to PayPal Payments (2.9% + 30¢); however, Braintree waives all fees on the first $50,000 of transactions, which can be beneficial if you're a new merchant, and you want a risk-free way of testing Braintree's functionality.
PayPal All-in-One Payment Solutions
While PayPal is no longer a part of the eBay company (which, at the time of this writing, owns Magento), it remains a very visible part of Magento, and for good reason. In our experience, PayPal can offer merchants a complete payment solution including credit and debit cards, e-checks, and credit terms as well as the use of a PayPal account.
The All-in-One solutions refer to the ability to allow your customers to pay by credit card as well as with a PayPal account:
- Payments Advanced: Customers are taken to a customized payment portal within PayPal, which reduces your need for PCI compliance.
- Payments Pro: You use the credit card form on your Magento site, but the backend processing is performed by PayPal.
- Payments Standard: Customers checking out are taken to PayPal to complete their purchase, which they can do with their PayPal account or a credit card. However, it is emphasized that your customers are to use a PayPal account.
With Payments Advanced and Payments Pro, you set up a Merchant Account with PayPal (as opposed to other merchant account vendors such as FirstData). The fee for transactions is 2.9% plus 30¢ per transaction, and applies to American Express, VISA, MasterCard, and Discover card. Customers who use their PayPal account cost you only a small transaction fee.
PayPal Payment Gateways
If you do have a merchant account, you can still use the convenience and integration of PayPal in your Magento store. Payflow Pro uses your Magento credit card checkout process, while Payflow Link takes customers to a PCI-compliant web page to complete their purchase. Customers can still use their PayPal account as well.
PayPal Express Checkout
Regardless of whether your use PayPal or another gateway for credit card purchases, you can easily allow customers to use their PayPal account for purchases. PayPal Express can place buy buttons on your product and cart pages to allow shoppers to quickly complete their purchase using a valid PayPal account.
Note
We like using PayPal as it commands a huge portion of the online payment marketplace. When you promote that you use PayPal for your payment processing, it can add credibility to your company. In addition, PayPal takes responsibility for validating customers, and can greatly help with fraud prevention. However, you should seek expert advice when configuring PayPal-as well as any payment method-both in Magento and in your PayPal account, as subtle configurations can make a huge difference on your acceptance policies and your ability to authorize and capture legitimate purchases.
Check/Money Order
Few, if any, online retailers will enable this method, but wholesalers may, particularly where deliveries are not immediately necessary. When you configure this method, you need to provide instructions to customers as to where they should send their payment.
Tip
As with any of the available payment methods, you have the ability to edit how the payment method is displayed to customers. The Title field in each method can be changed as you wish. For example, instead of Check / Money Order, you may want to use Pay by Cheque or Pay by Money Order (no checks allowed).
Bank Transfer Payment
Similar to Check / Money Order, this is a method that requires a customer to take action after the purchase process. The Instructions you provide will be communicated through the customer's order acknowledgement e-mail.
Cash On Delivery Payment
CODs are not as common in online transactions, as merchants rarely have the opportunity to meet or consider the validity of the customer. COD sales require a degree of trust: the merchant trusts that the customer will pay the full amount, including shipping and COD charges when the product is received. If the customer fails to pay or refuses the shipment, the merchant has to pay all the shipping and handling fees, and the sale is not completed.
Zero Subtotal Checkout
In some cases, a transaction may actually end up totaling $0. For example, if you offer a special discount for a free product, and there are no shipping or sales tax charges, the customer may end up with a completely free purchase. You can modify how this situation is communicated to the buyer.
Purchase Order
Large purchases, particularly in business-to-business transactions, are often created using a purchase order. If you're willing to take purchase orders, you can allow customers to confirm their billing information and enter a PO number for the order.
Authorize.Net Direct Post
If you already have established a payment gateway account with Authorize.Net, you can configure Magento to send your customers to a customizable payment page on the Authorize.Net servers. This is similar to PayPal Payments Advanced and PayPal Payflow Link in that the sensitive credit card information is captured outside of your Magento server.
The Services Panels contain settings that deal with the interaction of other systems with your Magento store. Due to the complexity and sensitivity of these operations, we suggest you consult with your Magento developer before making any changes to these panels. In all likelihood, you'll have little or no need to edit these settings.
Much of what exists in the Advanced panels is not relevant to the daily operations of your store, and is more useful to your Magento developer. However, there are a few settings within this section of which you may wish to at least have an understanding. Some deal with security, while others deal with ways to customize your Magento site.
We will touch on those items which we know from experience are more relevant to a store operator. Omitted settings are those for which you should obtain additional assistance from a qualified Magento developer before changing.
Admin User Emails
If you have several people accessing your Magento backend, you will want to provide them with means for recovering forgotten passwords.
- Forgot Password Email Template: Select the default or customized e-mail template that will be sent when a backend user requests a forgotten e-mail. The e-mail will contain a link to allow the user to reset their password (actual passwords are not e-mailed to backend users).
- Forgot and Reset Email Sender: Select the store contact from which these e-mails should come.
- Recovery Link Expiration Period (days): The link in the e-mail to reset a password expires after a period of time. You can enter the number of days for the expiration.
- Reset Password Template: Choose the default or customized e-mail template a user will receive after resetting their password. These e-mails also serve to notify a user that a password change has occurred, in case they did not actually trigger the change.
Startup Page
Select the backend screen you wish users to see after they first log in.
Dashboard
The dashboard shown after login can display charts showing sales activity. These charts take a bit of processing power, so, in some cases, you may wish to turn the charts off.
CAPTCHA
If you fear that login attempts are being made into your backend, you may wish to add a Captcha to the login form as a way to possibly thwart robotic attempts to discover usernames and passwords.
Note
While we didn't directly cover the Admin Base URL setting, we do suggest you have your developer configure your system to use a different backend path other than /admin. Since /admin is the default backend path for Magento stores, hackers often work at accessing your store's backend by testing username and password combinations in the login form. If you set your backend path to something other than /admin, hackers will find it much more difficult to discover a way into your store's administration. However, before making any changes to your Admin Base URL, consult with your developer, as these changes, if not properly made, could prevent you from logging into your store's backend.
The remaining settings with the Advanced panels should only be changed in consultation with your Magento developer. However, we will discuss some of these later in this book, as they pertain to optimization and speed.